process & strategy
UX honeycomb
What is the UX honeycomb?
The UX honeycomb is Peter Morville's model breaking user experience into seven facets: useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable. It's a reminder that good UX is more than usability - a product can be easy to use and still fail if it isn't useful, can't be found, isn't trusted, or doesn't deliver value.
Also known as: ux honeycomb, user experience honeycomb, facets of ux
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The demo
Here are the seven facets of UX. Tap any one to learn it - or switch one off and see how the whole experience fails in a different way. Good UX needs all seven, not just “usable”.
What this demo shows (text version)
An interactive honeycomb shows the seven facets of user experience - useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable. Tapping a facet explains what it means; switching one off illustrates how the whole experience breaks in a specific way: usable but not useful means it solves no real need; useful but not findable means nobody reaches it; polished but not credible means nobody trusts it. No single facet is enough on its own.
That's the UX honeycomb, Peter Morville's model for thinking about experience beyond usability. Its purpose is to broaden the conversation - a product can be easy to use and still fail if it isn't useful, findable, credible, desirable, accessible or valuable. Use it as a checklist to make sure you're not perfecting one facet while neglecting the rest.
Usability is necessary but not sufficient - UX has seven facets, and weakness in any one undermines the whole. Useful: it meets a real need. Usable: it's easy to use. Desirable: it's appealing and evokes positive emotion. Findable: people can locate it and navigate within it. Accessible: people of all abilities can use it. Credible: people trust it. Valuable: it delivers worth to users and the business. The honeycomb's job is to broaden the conversation beyond "is it usable?" - a beautifully usable product nobody can find, or doesn't trust, or that solves no real need, still fails. Use it as a checklist to make sure you're not optimising one facet while neglecting the others.
Turn each facet of the honeycomb off and watch the experience break in a different way: usable but not useful (solves nothing), useful but not findable (nobody reaches it), polished but not credible (nobody trusts it). That's the point of the honeycomb - UX is seven things at once, and a gap in any one sinks the rest. It widens "is it usable?" into the fuller question of whether the whole experience works.
Morville's seven facets: Useful (it serves a genuine purpose and need), Usable (it's easy and efficient to use - traditional usability), Desirable (its aesthetics and emotional design make it appealing and create positive feeling), Findable (people can find the product and navigate/locate content within it), Accessible (people with the full range of abilities can use it), Credible (people trust and believe it), and Valuable (it delivers value - to users in benefit, and to the organisation in outcomes).
The model's purpose is to expand UX beyond usability. Teams often equate good UX with ease of use, but a perfectly usable product still fails if it's not useful (solves no real problem), not findable (users can't reach it), not credible (they don't trust it with their data or money), not desirable (no emotional pull), not accessible (excludes people), or not valuable (no worth delivered). The honeycomb makes these dimensions explicit so none is overlooked.
Use it as a heuristic checklist and a shared vocabulary: assess a design against all seven facets to find which are weak, prioritise accordingly, and discuss UX in richer terms than "is it easy to use?". The facets interrelate - credibility supports value, findability enables usefulness, accessibility is part of inclusion - and "valuable" sits at the centre as the outcome the others combine to produce. It's a thinking tool, not a rigid formula, but a useful guard against tunnel vision on any single dimension.