Chapter 1: The Elements of User Experience > Intro
Meet the Elements
Hoofdstuk 2 uit The Elements of User Experience van Jesse James Garret
The five planes:
The surface plane
On the surface plane you see a series of Web pages, made up of images and text. They can
perform sort of function such as taking you to a shopping card.
The skeleton plane
Beneath that surface is the skeleton of the site.
The placement of:
- Buttons
- Controls
- Photos
- Block of text
The skeleton is designed to optimize the arrangement of these elements for maximum effect and
efficiency.
The structure plane
The skeleton might define the placement of the interface elements on our checkout page.
The structure would define how users got to that page and where they could go when they were
finished there.
The skeleton might define the arrangement of navigational elements allowing the users to browse
categories of products.
The structure would define what those categories were.
The scope plane
The structure defines the way in which the various features and functions of the site fit together.
The scope defines what those features and functions are.
The strategy plane
The scope is fundamentally determined by the strategy of the site. This strategy incorporates not
only what the people running the site want to get out of it, but what the users want to get out of
the site as well.
, Building from bottom to top
These five planes provide a conceptual framework for talking about user experience problems
and the tools to solve them.
On the lowest plane, we are not concerned with the final shape of the site. We only care about
how the site will fit into our strategy.
On the highest plane, we are only concerned with the concrete details of the appearance.
Each plane is dependent on the planes below it.
When the choices we maken don’t align with these above and below, the user will hate it.
This dependence means that decisions on the strategy plane will have a sort of “ripple effect” all
the way up the chain.
conversely, the choices available to us on each plane are constrained by the decisions we make
about issues on the plane below it.
Dependencies run in both directions, with decisions made on upper planes sometimes forcing a
reevaluation of decisions on the lower planes.
A basic duality
When the Web started, it was all about information. Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) created
it as a way for researchers in the hight-energy physics community, who were spread out all over
the world, to share and refer to each findings.
People originally seized on the Web as a new publishing medium. After the Web began to catch
on in the larger Internet Community, it developed a more complex and robust feature set that
would enable web sites not only to distribute information but to collect and manipulate it as well.
The Web became more interactive.
The Web it’s members spoke two languages:
1. Saw every problem as an application design problem, and applied problem-solving
approaches from the traditional desktop and mainframe software-worlds.
2. Saw the Web in terms of information distribution and retrieval, and applied problem-solving
approaches from the traditional world of publishing, media and information science.
Very little progress could be made when the community could not even agree on basic
terminology.
With the basic duality:
On the left, we’ll put those elements specific to the Web as a platform for functionality.
On the right, we’ll put the elements specific to the Web as an information medium.
Functionally
We are concerned with:
- Tasks
- The step involved in a progress
- How people think about completing them
Information
We are concerned with:
- What information the product offers.
- What does it mean to our users.
Meet the Elements
Hoofdstuk 2 uit The Elements of User Experience van Jesse James Garret
The five planes:
The surface plane
On the surface plane you see a series of Web pages, made up of images and text. They can
perform sort of function such as taking you to a shopping card.
The skeleton plane
Beneath that surface is the skeleton of the site.
The placement of:
- Buttons
- Controls
- Photos
- Block of text
The skeleton is designed to optimize the arrangement of these elements for maximum effect and
efficiency.
The structure plane
The skeleton might define the placement of the interface elements on our checkout page.
The structure would define how users got to that page and where they could go when they were
finished there.
The skeleton might define the arrangement of navigational elements allowing the users to browse
categories of products.
The structure would define what those categories were.
The scope plane
The structure defines the way in which the various features and functions of the site fit together.
The scope defines what those features and functions are.
The strategy plane
The scope is fundamentally determined by the strategy of the site. This strategy incorporates not
only what the people running the site want to get out of it, but what the users want to get out of
the site as well.
, Building from bottom to top
These five planes provide a conceptual framework for talking about user experience problems
and the tools to solve them.
On the lowest plane, we are not concerned with the final shape of the site. We only care about
how the site will fit into our strategy.
On the highest plane, we are only concerned with the concrete details of the appearance.
Each plane is dependent on the planes below it.
When the choices we maken don’t align with these above and below, the user will hate it.
This dependence means that decisions on the strategy plane will have a sort of “ripple effect” all
the way up the chain.
conversely, the choices available to us on each plane are constrained by the decisions we make
about issues on the plane below it.
Dependencies run in both directions, with decisions made on upper planes sometimes forcing a
reevaluation of decisions on the lower planes.
A basic duality
When the Web started, it was all about information. Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) created
it as a way for researchers in the hight-energy physics community, who were spread out all over
the world, to share and refer to each findings.
People originally seized on the Web as a new publishing medium. After the Web began to catch
on in the larger Internet Community, it developed a more complex and robust feature set that
would enable web sites not only to distribute information but to collect and manipulate it as well.
The Web became more interactive.
The Web it’s members spoke two languages:
1. Saw every problem as an application design problem, and applied problem-solving
approaches from the traditional desktop and mainframe software-worlds.
2. Saw the Web in terms of information distribution and retrieval, and applied problem-solving
approaches from the traditional world of publishing, media and information science.
Very little progress could be made when the community could not even agree on basic
terminology.
With the basic duality:
On the left, we’ll put those elements specific to the Web as a platform for functionality.
On the right, we’ll put the elements specific to the Web as an information medium.
Functionally
We are concerned with:
- Tasks
- The step involved in a progress
- How people think about completing them
Information
We are concerned with:
- What information the product offers.
- What does it mean to our users.
