The
user experience design process is all about ensuring that no aspect of the
user’s experience with your product happens without your conscious, explicit
intent. This means taking into account every
possibility of every action the user is likely to take and understanding the
user’s expectations at every step of the way through that process. It sounds
like a big job, and in some ways it is. But by
breaking the job of crafting the user experience down into its component
elements, we can better understand the task as a whole.
The
Five Planes
Most
people, at one time or another, have purchased a physical product over the Web.
The experience is pretty much the same every time : You go to the site, you
find the item you want (maybe by using a search engine or maybe by browsing a
catalog), you give the site your credit card number and your address, and the
site confirms that the product will be shipped to you. That neat, tidy
experience actually results from a whole set of decisions, some small, some
large, about how the site looks, how it behaves, and what it allows you to do.
These decisions build upon each other, informing and influencing all aspects of
the user experience. If we peel away the layers of that experience, we can
begin to understand how those decisions are made.
The
Strategy Plane
The
same strategic concerns come into play for both functionality oriented products
and information-oriented resources. User needs are the goals for the site that
come from outside our organization, specifically from the people who will use
our site. We must understand what our audience wants from us and how that fits
in with other goals they have. Balanced against user needs are our own
objectives for the site. These product objectives can be business goals (“Make
$1 million in sales over the Web this year”) or other kinds of goals (“Inform voters
about the candidates in the next election”).
The
Scope Plane
On
the functionality side, the strategy is translated into scope through the
creation of functional specifications : a detailed description of the “feature
set” of the product. On the information side, scope takes the form of content
requirements : a description of the various content elements that will be
required.
The
Structure Plane
The
scope is given structure on the functionality side through interaction design,
in which we define how the system behaves in response to the user. For
information resources, the structure is
the
information architecture : the arrangement of content elements to facilitate
human understanding.
The
Skeleton Plane
The
skeleton plane breaks down into three components. On both sides, we must
address information design : the presentation of information in a way that
facilitates understanding. For functionality-oriented products, the skeleton
also includes interface design, or arranging interface elements to enable users
to interact with the functionality of the system. The interface for an information
resource is its navigation design : the set of screen elements that allow the
user to move through the information architecture.
The
Surface Plane
Finally,
we have the surface. Regardless of whether we are dealing with a
functionality-oriented product or an information resource, our concern here is
the same : the sensory experience created by the finished product.
Using
the Elements
This
model, divided up into neat boxes and planes, is a convenient way to think
about user experience problems. In reality, of course, the lines between these
areas are not so clearly drawn. Frequently, it can be difficult to identify
whether a particular user experience problem is best solved through attention
to one element instead of another. Can a change to the visuals do the trick, or
will the underlying navigation design have to be reworked ? Some problems
require attention in several areas at once, and some seem to straddle the
borders identified in this model. Few products or services fall exclusively on
one side of this model or the other. Within each plane, the elements must work
together to accomplish that plane’s goals. Separating the effects of decisions you
make about one element from all other elements on the plane is very difficult.
For example, information design, navigation design, and interface design
jointly define the skeleton of a product. All the elements on every plane have
a common function in determining the larger user experience, in this case,
defining the product’s skeleton, even if they perform that function in
different ways.
The
way organizations delegate responsibility for user experience issues often
complicates matters further. In some organizations, you will encounter people
with job titles like information architect or interface designer. Don’t be
confused by this. These people generally have expertise spanning many of the
elements of user experience, not just the specialty indicated by their title.
It’s not necessary to have a member of your team who is a specialist in each of
these areas; instead, you only have to ensure that someone spends at least part
of their time thinking about each of these issues. A couple of additional
factors go into shaping the final user experience that you won’t find covered
in detail here. The first of these is content. The old saying (well, old in Web
years) is that “content is king” on the Web. This is absolutely true, the
single most important thing most Web sites can offer to their users is content
that those users will find valuable. Users don’t visit Web sites to experience
the joy of navigation. The content that is available to you (or that you have
resources to obtain and manage) will play a huge role in shaping your site. In
the case of an online store, we might decide that we want the users to be able
to see cover images of all the books we sell. If we can get them, will we have
a way to catalog them, keep track of them, and keep them up to date ? And what
if we can’t get photos of the book covers at all ? These content questions are
essential to the ultimate user experience of the site.
Second,
technology can be just as important as content in creating a successful user
experience. In many cases, the nature of the experience you can provide your
users is largely determined by technology. In the early days of the Web, the
tools to connect Web sites to databases were fairly primitive and limited. As
the technology has advanced, however, databases have become more widely used to
drive Web sites. This in turn has enabled more and more sophisticated user
experience approaches, such as dynamic navigation systems that change in
response to the way users move through the site. Technology is always changing,
and the field of user experience always has to adapt to it. Nevertheless, the
fundamental elements of user experience remain the same. Although I developed
the Elements model in the course of my work on Web sites, others have since
applied it to a wide range of products and services. If you work on the Web,
everything in this book applies to you. If you work on other kinds of
technology products, you’ll see strong parallels to familiar considerations.
Even if you work on products or services that have nothing to do with
technology, you can map these concepts to your own processes.
Source
: Jesse James Garrett, 2010, The Elements of User Experience User-Centered
Design for the Web and Beyond, 2nd Edition, New Riders Press
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