I just had a look at the paper «Comfort in Using Hand Tools» and found quite interesting the different definitions authors give for the term «Comfort»:
According to Peter Vink , Comfort is «a convenience experience by the end‐user during or just after working with the product«.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, defines Usability as a term «used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal».
To me, both of them are quite similar for several reasons:
- They have qualitative attributes;
- They are focused on the end-user;
- They look for best experience.
But curiously, the paper mentioned above just outlines «Usability» once…
The only difference I see between these two concepts could be in the «touching» experience: Comfort is a bit more narrow, more related to physical objects. Usability is a wider concept, including not only physical hardware but also digital sofware.
From now on, I think I would include Confort when talking about Usability. The term sounds human, smooth and friendly…
