UX, DX, and Engineering Outcomes

User Experience (UX) has separate definitions for “a user experience” and “the field of User Experience”. Developer Experience (DX, DevEx) does not. The result is ambiguity between “a developer experience”, experience optimization, and engineering outcomes. This post disambiguates them by defining and contextualizing a developer experience, the field of Developer Experience (DX, DevEx), and DX’s relation to engineering outcomes.

Definitions (TL;DR)

A developer experience is the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a software developer and a part of their work context (e.g., a tool, platform, portal, process, workflow, activity, document, system, culture, or physical environment).

The field of Developer Experience (DX, DevEx) is a professional practice focused on continuously improving stakeholder and business outcomes, by improving developers’ experiences, by optimizing parts of developers’ work context (e.g., tools, platforms, portals, processes, workflows, activities, documents, systems, cultures, or physical environments).

How Does Developer Experience Relate to Engineering Outcomes? Developer Experience is an Engineering Outcomes optimization strategy that leverages qualitative data to discover and prioritize optimizations more effectively and efficiently than purely quantitative approaches, yielding equivalent or greater business and stakeholder outcomes.

What is a Developer Experience?

Neilsen/Norman Group’s 2024 UX definition:

• “A user experience (UX) is the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a person and a product, service, or company.” - Neilsen Norman Group

Related Developer Experience definitions:

• Developer experience is how developers feel about the tools and processes they use to create software… - Atlassian
• Developer experience (DevEx, DX) is the overall experience of a developer when they are building software in a team. - Swarmia
• Developer experience (DevEx) refers to how developers perceive and interact with their work environment… - DX
• [Developer Experience is] How developers think about, feel about, and value their work. - DX Research Paper

Synthesized Definition: A developer experience is the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a software developer and a part of their work context (e.g., a tool, platform, portal, process, workflow, activity, document, system, culture, or physical environment).

Similar to the UX and related definitions above, this definition focuses on developers’ personal aspects like thoughts, emotions, and behaviors/interactions. The field focuses on stakeholder and business outcomes instead.

What is the field of Developer Experience (DX, DevEx)?

Neilsen/Norman Group’s 2024 UX Field definition:

• “The field of user experience (UX) is a professional practice focused on designing and enhancing the interactions and overall experience for all users of a product, service, or brand.” - Neilsen Norman Group

Related Developer Experience definitions:

• Developer experience (DevEx) refers to how developers perceive and interact with their work environment across four key dimensions: speed, effectiveness, quality, and business impact. - DX
• DevEx refers to the systems, technology, process, and culture that influence the effectiveness of software development. - Github
• We define the developer experience as the skills, tools, frameworks, and methodologies aimed at creating, maintaining, and enhancing code throughout the entire software delivery lifecycle (from creation through production) and improving developer productivity, both individually and collectively. - Forrester
• Developer experience refers to the overall satisfaction and productivity of software developers when using tools, frameworks and platforms to build applications. - Gartner

Synthesized Definition: The field of Developer Experience (DX, DevEx) is a professional practice focused on continuously improving stakeholder and business outcomes, by improving developers’ experiences, by optimizing parts of developers’ work context (e.g., tools, platforms, portals, processes, workflows, activities, documents, systems, cultures, or physical environments).

Surprisingly unlike the UX Field definition, related Developer Experience definitions omit improving developer experiences. Most even omit developer-specific outcomes like satisfaction. My guess is that such definitions evolved through DevEx pitches failing to gain traction with leaders. To be fair, each definition is taken out of its context. The origin articles usually mention improving some developer-specific outcomes. Regardless, it makes sense for a DX Field definition to include improving developer experiences since they are both outcomes and leading indicators (as increasingly supported by research).

Developer experiences appear in the definition as a leading indicator, but they exist implicitly in its outcomes too.

The Developer Experience field definition explicitly optimizes developer context aspects, not developer experiences (perceptions, emotions, interactions). Directly manipulating experiences without understanding and consent is unethical. Further, persuading developers to change their own experiences is often ineffective without accompanying context changes. Consider improving a team’s PR response time to 24 hours. Asking developers to respond faster (an interaction) will work briefly but eventually regress above 24 hours. Context changes like PR review reminders help reach and maintain such targets. Optimizing context aspects is more ethical and effective than optimizing experiences (including interactions/behaviors).