Quality of experience

Quality of experience, often shortened to QoE, is a way to measure how happy or annoyed someone feels when they use a service like browsing the web, making a phone call, or watching TV. It looks at the whole experience of using the service, not just small parts of it. This idea is similar to something called user experience, but it started in the world of telecommunication.

QoE is a new area that brings together many different fields, such as social psychology, cognitive science, economics, and engineering science. It helps us understand what people really need and want from the services they use every day. By studying QoE, companies and researchers can make services better and more enjoyable for everyone.

Definition and concepts

Quality of experience, or QoE, is how happy or unhappy someone feels when using a service like watching TV, making a phone call, or browsing the web. It is about whether the service meets the user's hopes and needs. This idea was clearly explained in 2013 and later used by an international group in 2016.

QoE comes from a related idea called Quality of Service (QoS), which looks at technical details like how well data travels. But QoE is different because it focuses on what the user feels. It asks questions like, "Does this service feel like what I wanted?" and "If not, what could be improved?" This helps companies learn how to make their services better for people.

QoE factors

QoE looks at everything that affects how happy or unhappy someone feels when using a service or system. This includes what the person is like, what the system is like, and the situation they are in.

Things about the person that matter include their senses, age, mood, and what they expect from the service. Things about the system include the quality of the content, how well the technology works, and how fast the network is. The situation also matters, like where the person is, what time it is, who they are with, and what task they are trying to do. Most studies have paid special attention to the system because QoE started in the world of networks and technology.

QoE versus User Experience

QoE is closely related to User Experience (UX), but they are different. Both focus on how people feel about services they use. QoE started from studies in telecommunication, while UX began in Human–Computer Interaction. Both areas bring together many different subjects to study.

QoE was especially pushed forward because of economic reasons, meaning businesses wanted to improve customer happiness for business success. This makes QoE a bit different from UX in its goals and history.

QoE measurement

QoE is important for designing systems and processes because it helps make sure users are happy with services like watching videos. When creating these systems, people often think about how good the experience will be for users.

To measure QoE, people sometimes ask users for their opinions. One common way is called the mean opinion score, which helps judge how good media like videos or music sounds and looks. However, this method has limits because it only looks at one type of media and doesn’t always consider what users expect.

There are also faster ways to measure QoE using computers, but these can sometimes be less accurate than asking real users. QoE can be affected by many things, like how well a video is compressed, how well the internet sends the video, or how well the device shows the video. All these parts can change how good the experience feels for the user.

QoE management

Several ways to manage networks and bandwidth have been created to improve the quality of experiences for users. These methods help make sure everyone is happy with the service they get.

When taking care of a network, it’s important to make sure everyone gets a fair and good experience. Instead of just focusing on old rules for network performance, QoE management looks at what users actually feel and tries to keep them happy. This can be hard because the Internet wasn’t built for today’s complicated services.

One way to do this is by letting network nodes understand how users feel about a service. This helps improve how the service is sent over the network. For example, traffic shaping can be used. QoE management helps save space and network power by only using what’s needed to keep users happy. Because this might mean giving some users or services less, it’s important to follow rules about net neutrality.