As a semiconductor manufacturer, Intel's competitive edge has been based on technology design leadership combined with industry-leading manufacturing technology. Both the rapid evolution of technology and delivering high-quality products in large volumes are among Intel's primary strengths. Recently, the strategy for staying ahead of the competition has been evolving to become more closely tied to the creation of noticeable end-user value. Our traditional technology optimization goals of rapidly improving performance and power are necessary but not sufficient in the context of competitive pressures. A user-centered approach allows new growth opportunities through creation of platforms that support new consumer usages and ensure noticeable differences in the quality of User Experience (UX) for Intel^® platforms. In this way, establishing platform credibility has extended beyond technology-based development processes to include planning and assessment of the UX itself.

The platform approach recognizes the importance of the end-user experience resulting from the combination of hardware, software, and services. These elements are often inextricable from a UX perspective and work in concert to enable end-user value propositions. For this reason, the platform approach emphasizes holistic solutions in Intel's product line planning strategies. These solutions involve hardware and software development, ecosystem enabling, and influencing industry standards.

Explicitly targeting UX and associated end-user value propositions requires a holistic understanding of how people interact with technology. This has presented new challenges and opportunities in setting User Experience Quality (UXQ) goals and ensuring proper validation against these goals.

Across the technology industry, assessing and improving the UX of products has become an increasingly sought-after objective. This is reflected in a greater number of conference topics on UX, and to a lesser extent, an increasing number of books and journal articles [2, 3] over the past ten years. This increase in attention reflects the fact that consumers have now come to expect products to be easy to use. As ease-of-use becomes more and more of a basic expectation, it is becoming more important for companies to differentiate on other aspects of UX [4].

Despite good intentions, there are often many barriers to designing and delivering good user experiences [5, 6]. Reasons include lack of understanding of users, poor usage model definitions, too many constraints on the technology, and inconsistency and/or inability to integrate the technology with other parts of the ecosystem. One of the overarching issues is a lack of a top-down approach to UX and an inability to systematically measure and communicate UX. Although UX is increasingly valued as an outcome tied to business objectives, in the past, it has often been thought of by decision makers as intangible or immeasurable. Traditional human factors engineering approaches have tended to focus on task-based efficiency and effectiveness at the moment of use [3] rather than emotional, attitudinal, and perceptual aspects; and across the stages of the usage lifecycle (including the "moments of truth" before, during, and after initial use of the product).

Over the past decade, a wider approach to UX has been taking hold in the fields of psychology, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and the human factors disciplines [3, 4, 7]. As technology develops to the point where PCs have become more usable, people increasingly seek to satisfy higher-level needs including emotional needs. Recent examples highlighting the importance of emotion and attitudes in product design include Emotional Design [8], Designing Pleasurable Products [4], and Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment [9]. The trend in the literature toward recognizing the importance of a wider conception of UX reflects progress that has been made within private industry. Although these trends create new opportunities to educate and motivate stakeholders, there is still a need to better define these concepts and to explicitly distinguish them from related concepts and metrologies.