Chapter 2 · Study 1Published in conference proceedings (ACM)

Measuring user experience in Latin America: an exploratory survey

The first study of the thesis: a snapshot of how user experience is understood, practiced and measured in the region, and of the obstacles reported by those who work on it daily.

Question: How do practitioners and researchers in Latin America understand and measure user experience?
Method: Online survey (112 responses, 40 complete questionnaires), preceded by interviews and a pilot survey with 40 Chilean professionals.
Instrument: Adapted from the User Experience Measurement Attitude Survey (UXMAS).
Coverage: Chile, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and other countries in the region.

What it is about

Measuring user experience is a recurring topic in HCI literature, yet it had barely been studied in Latin America. This study replicates and adapts an international instrument to describe how professionals and researchers in the region understand experience, which qualities they consider measurable, and what difficulties they face when trying to evaluate them.

The result is not a maturity measurement but a map of attitudes: what is declared measurable, what actually gets measured, and which theoretical, methodological and practical obstacles show up along the way.

How it was done

01The work started with exploratory interviews and an earlier survey with 40 Chilean professionals, which helped adjust the vocabulary and length of the final questionnaire.
02The main survey was distributed online across the region and collected 112 responses, of which 40 questionnaires were complete. The instrument had three parts: profile and background, experiential qualities and their measurability, and an open reflection on theoretical, methodological and practical issues.
03Analysis combined descriptive statistics of closed answers with thematic classification of open ones.

What was found

The most reported practical obstacles were the cost of the study (50% of complete questionnaires) and lack of time within product development (26%).
Recruiting users consistently, and lack of measurement knowledge and experience, also appeared, without an associated percentage.
A cross-cutting obstacle is the lack of a shared language with the rest of the organization: without it, evaluation results do not turn into decisions.
Several participants were skeptical about the very idea of measuring experience, foreshadowing a tension that reappears in later studies.

Study figures

Figures are reproduced with the original manuscript layout; only resolution and palette were adjusted to the OMMMICX colors.

Challenges

Third-party channels measurementCostLack of timeDigital touchpoints integrationInsights generalizationPeer-to-peer touchpoint measurementLongitudinal researchExperience with UX measurement

Challenges in measuring experience

Summary of the theoretical, methodological and practical obstacles identified from open answers.

Strategic questions	For what brand experience do we want to (re)design? How do we want our customer to feel along the customer lifecycle with our brand? What do we want our customer to do alongside that lifecycle with our brand?
Research culture	Decentralized research Collaboration Dissemination of research findings Experimentation
Research practice	Intended experience in mind Longitudinal research Unified metrics Flexible methodology Actionable insights in the short term
Measurement	Unified metrics Brand outcomes Actionable insights from existing data

Methodological recommendations

Recommendations for sustaining experience evaluation over time.

Discussion

The discussion of this chapter is revisited in chapter 7, where measuring experience is connected to organizational management.

The instrument shapes the answer

Questionnaire length was a real problem: several people needed more than 30 minutes to reflect deeply on the open questions. Vocabulary complexity, especially in the theoretical and methodological reflection section, largely explains the low response rate for that question (20%): 7 of the 23 people who did write their point of view said they did not know what to answer.

Categories do not transfer across contexts

Vocabulary also affected how issues were classified. One example: what the original UXMAS research treated as a methodological issue — resource-demanding evaluation with many heterogeneous users — was reported here as a practical one. Part of that difference is explained by the smaller share of academic profiles among respondents.

What it enables for the next study

The study opens three lines: understanding how cultural background and industry maturity shape UX practice; searching for methods and tools for issues specific to the Latin American context; and developing education and research programs to move the field toward maturity. A larger, multi-country sample is needed to identify local characteristics.

Reading it from chapter 7

In the thesis conclusions, this study reads as the starting point of a shift: the difficulty is not evaluating an interface, but sustaining evaluation over time and translating it into decisions. That shift ends in an instrument aimed at those who manage experience, not only at those who design it.

Limits

Exploratory, self-selected sample with 40 complete questionnaires: it describes attitudes and does not support statistical generalization.
Practitioner profiles are overrepresented compared with academic ones.
The original instrument's vocabulary influenced how reported issues were classified.

How to cite

Gerea, C., & Herskovic, V. (2015). Measuring User Experience in Latin America: An Exploratory Survey. Proceedings of the Latin American Conference on Human Computer Interaction. ACM.

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