Overview - IEC TR 63478-1:2023 (User’s QoE on Multimedia Conferencing Services - Part 1: General)
IEC TR 63478-1:2023 provides general considerations for measuring a user’s Quality of Experience (QoE) in multimedia conferencing services. As the foundational Part 1 of the IEC 63478 series, this Technical Report defines high-level concepts, characteristics and a unified framework to assess subjective user satisfaction across video/audio conferencing, screen sharing and related collaborative features. The document clarifies how QoE differs from network-oriented Quality of Service (QoS) and sets the context for Parts 2 (requirements) and 3 (measurement methods).
Key topics and technical scope
- QoE definition and characteristics: QoE is described as the user’s perceived delight or annoyance across the entire service experience; it captures subjective satisfaction and emotional response.
- Factors influencing QoE: User demographics (age), service purpose (discussion vs. presentation), device type, and communication environment are recognized as driving different QoE requirements.
- QoE parameters: A set of parameters tied to conferencing functions (audio, video, UI/UX, latency, reliability) is outlined for evaluation (see Table 1 in the report).
- Measurement framework:
- Functional entities such as Multimedia Conferencing Client (MCC), Multimedia Conferencing Server (MCS), QoE Measurement Agent (QMA), and QoE Measurement Manager (QMM) are defined.
- Measurement operations between entities that support QoE data collection and analysis are described.
- Measurement models: The report introduces models for subjective assessment, including the common survey model, timeline rating model, and honeycomb model for UI/UX evaluation.
- Informative annexes: Visualization aids (measurement timelines, grading tables) and a gap analysis against existing standards help practitioners align with related work.
Practical applications - who should use it
- Service providers & platform developers: to design, benchmark and improve conferencing features based on user-centric metrics rather than purely network metrics.
- UX/UI designers and product managers: to evaluate interface impacts on perceived quality (using honeycomb/UI measures).
- Test labs & QA teams: to structure subjective testing and integrate QoE measurement into acceptance criteria.
- Network engineers & operations: to correlate QoE outcomes with QoS indicators (latency, jitter) and prioritize optimizations.
- Researchers & standards bodies: to harmonize methods and continue standardization in Parts 2 and 3.
Related standards and keywords
- Related parts: IEC 63478-2 (Requirements) and IEC 63478-3 (Measurement methods).
- SEO keywords: IEC TR 63478-1:2023, QoE measurement, multimedia conferencing QoE, quality of experience, QoS vs QoE, timeline rating model, honeycomb model, user interface experience, QoE framework.