User experience of smart wardrobe lighting systems: identifying pain points and prioritizing core elements

Smart wardrobe lighting has been predominantly studied from a technical perspective, with limited understanding of user experience. This mixed-methods study investigates user experience in this context, combining interviews and a questionnaire survey targeting young adults as the core early-adopter demographic. Based on the User Experience Honeycomb framework, factor analysis identified five core dimensions: Usability; Findability; Value; Credibility; and Accessibility, while the Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation weighting method further revealed that Desirability and Usefulness carry the highest importance. The findings reveal an “Efficacy–Access Gap”: although users’ interactions are primarily guided by functional dimensions, their satisfaction ultimately depends on whether lighting effects meet situational needs. Credibility, manifested through concerns over data security and system integration, emerges as foundational for long-term engagement. Originality lies in applying the User Experience Honeycomb framework to this underexplored context, empirically quantifying dimension weights, and identifying this context-specific gap. The findings extend user experience theory and offer actionable design guidance, prioritize usability and findability to unlock perceived value, and embed credibility from the earliest design stages.