How do we know how usable and useful a product is?<\/p>\n Understanding and predicting usage, adoption, and growth starts with measuring usability<\/strong> and usefulness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Our research has shown that perceptions of usability and usefulness predict both intention to use and recommendation intentions. Both of these predict future usage<\/a>.<\/p>\n To understand the current consumer software landscape, in January 2025, we conducted a large-scale retrospective benchmark with 1,896 U.S. respondents on 40 popular consumer software products, similar to what we\u2019ve done for the last 10+ years<\/a>. Respondents tended to be younger (50% below the age of 35), most (85%) had had at least some college, and a bit over half (56%) were female.<\/p>\n The 40 software products included a mix of popular productivity, storage, security, music streaming, language learning, and generative AI software:<\/p>\n Participants were asked to reflect on their most recent experiences with the software and answer several items, including the System Usability Scale<\/a> (SUS), the UX-Lite<\/a>\u00ae<\/sup>, the standard likelihood-to-recommend (LTR) question used to compute the Net Promoter Score<\/a> (NPS), and the Technical Activities Checklist<\/a> (TAC-10\u2122). The full details are available in the report<\/a>. Here are some highlights.<\/p>\n The most popular method to measure loyalty is the Net Promoter Score<\/a> (NPS). It\u2019s calculated using an eleven-point (0 to 10) likelihood-to-recommend question, with the NPS computed by subtracting the percent of detractors (0\u20136) from the percent of promoters (9\u201310).<\/p>\n Across the 40 products, the average Net Promoter Score was 24%<\/strong>, ranging from \u221212% to 56%. Firefox (56%), Google G Suite (55%), and Google Docs (52%) had the highest scores; the lowest were for Adobe Photoshop (\u22129%) and Microsoft Edge (\u221212%).<\/p>\n We have collected data from ten consumer software products every few years since 2011. From 2022 to 2025 the NPS for some products declined (e.g., Microsoft PowerPoint) while others improved (e.g., Microsoft Word, Quicken).<\/p>\n MS Word saw one of the largest increases in Net Promoter Scores (a statistically significant difference from 2022 to 2025, Z<\/em> = 2.1, p<\/em> = .04). The most commonly reported reason that people like MS Word is its ease of use with advanced functionality. As one user reported:<\/p>\n Figure 1: <\/strong>Previous and current NPS for Microsoft Word.<\/p>\n We used the popular System Usability Scale (SUS) to measure the perceived usability of the 40 products. SUS is a ten-item questionnaire with possible scores ranging from 0 to 100. The average SUS score from over 500 products<\/a> (including websites, consumer software, and business software) is 68. The average SUS score from this group of consumer products was 77, with a low score of 57 and a high score of 87. A raw SUS score of 77 compared to our SUS norms translates to the 80th<\/sup> percentile (well above the average 50th<\/sup> percentile).<\/p>\n The product with the lowest SUS score in this dataset was Adobe Illustrator, with a score of 56.5 (at the 22nd<\/sup> percentile). The top user comments regarding issues with Illustrator were its steep learning curve and expensive pricing.<\/p>\n The SUS scores for most of the eight products we tracked from the previous reports were reasonably stable from 2022 to 2025. Products that changed by six points or less were TurboTax, Dropbox, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, McAfee Antivirus, and Adobe Photoshop. Products that changed by more than six points were Microsoft Word (eight-point increase) and Quicken (ten-point increase).<\/p>\n In the report, we also present findings for the UX-Lite<\/a>. It\u2019s becoming an important benchmark for many organizations as part of using a single (succinct) score to quantify software acceptance and satisfaction. It\u2019s related to earlier research that produced the Technology Acceptance Model<\/a> (TAM), but it has only one item each for ease (how easy is the software to use) and usefulness (how well do the features meet users\u2019 needs). In aggregate, it provides a quick measure of technology acceptance (a mini-TAM).<\/p>\n We also used this new larger data set to revisit the strong relationship between perceptions of ease and usefulness to behavior intentions we demonstrated in our earlier research<\/a>.<\/p>\n We created a new structural equation model to map the relationship between Ease and Usefulness (using the UX-lite) with behavioral intentions to continue using and to recommend products to others, mediated through Overall Experience (\u201cHow would you rate your overall experience with {product}?\u201d; 0: Terrible, 10: Excellent) and Brand Attitude (\u201cHow would you describe your attitude toward {product}?\u201d; 1: Very Unfavorable, 7: Very Favorable).<\/p>\n Figure 2:\u00a0<\/strong>Structural equation model demonstrating the impact of perceived ease and usefulness on intentions to reuse and recommend.<\/p>\n The model has excellent fit statistics (c<\/em>2<\/sup>(3) = 5.3, p<\/em> = .15; CFI = 1.0; RMSEA = .02; BIC = 141.2), and the link (beta) weights are all statistically significant (p<\/em>\n<\/p>\n In summary, the model demonstrates the significant impact of perceived ease and usefulness on intentions to continue using and to recommend consumer software products, mediated by overall experience and brand attitude. This is why it is so important for companies to focus on making their products useful and easy to use.<\/p>\n Figure 3 shows a scatterplot of the two components of the UX-Lite scores. The dotted red lines indicate the component means from this study (78 for ease; 79 for usefulness).<\/p>\n Figure 3:\u00a0<\/strong>Scatterplot of products by their UX-Lite Ease and Usefulness means (dotted lines show the overall means across products, zoomed in).<\/p>\n The best products landed in the upper-right quadrant. Some examples of notable positive quotes from users are:<\/p>\n Credit Karma<\/strong><\/p>\n Google Docs<\/strong><\/p>\n Pandora<\/strong><\/p>\n The lower left quadrant shows the products with the lowest relative ease and usefulness scores. Some examples of notable negative quotes from users are:<\/p>\n Adobe Illustrator <\/strong><\/p>\n Babbel <\/strong><\/p>\n Excel<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ve been writing about the connection between usability and for over 15 years<\/a>. Figure 4 shows the SUS scores for NPS detractors, passives, and promoters (computed at the individual level for all responses; all differences are significant with p<\/em>\n<\/p>\n Figure 4:\u00a0<\/strong>SUS scores for each NPS category (with 95% confidence intervals).<\/p>\n This figure shows that, on average, promoters had SUS scores of 87.0 (an A+ on the Sauro-Lewis curved grading scale<\/a>). The mean SUS for passives was 73.5 (a B\u2212 on the Sauro-Lewis curved grading scale) and, for detractors, was 61.2 (a grade of D). We\u2019ve seen this pattern since we started publishing our consumer software reports in 2017<\/a>. This pattern is also consistent with previous research<\/a> we conducted that found that SUS scores above 80 have a good chance of indicating promoters.<\/p>\n![\"feature](\"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/022525-FeatureImage-1.png\")
<\/a>When we think about software, Artificial Intelligence has gotten a lot of attention lately. But throwing an AI label on a product doesn\u2019t necessarily make people use the software frequently or more effectively.<\/p>\n\n
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The Impact of Ease and Usefulness on Intentions to Reuse and Recommend<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Ease by Usefulness Scatterplot<\/span><\/h2>\n
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