Book Review: The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

The Elements of User Experience is a book I first came across as part of the recommended reading for my UX Diploma course with the UX Design Institute.

The book was first published in 2003, when UX itself was in its infancy in its adoption as a methodology to be used in creating software. One of the benefits of this for me reading it, is that the thoughts and ideas expressed in the book have a clarity and simplicity.

One of the ways that this clarity is provided is, as suggested by the title, separating out the different elements of user experience into a simple structure.

Summary

At the highest level, the elements are broken out into 5 different planes = Strategy. Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Service (as shown below):

The diagram above also breaks down some of the elements of each plane, depending on whether the focus of the website is deliver information, or has some functional application.

The planes are ordered from the most Abstract idea to the most Concrete user interactions. The Strategy plane is the most abstract, defining the value that the product is looking to deliver to the user, and how it will deliver it.

The value will be determined by conducting User Research to elicit the user’s needs and to create User Personas outlining the different types of target users. A Brand Identity is also created based on the segment of users that are expected to use the product. Elements that will be designed later in the process, such as fonts, logos, content and imagery, will conform to that brand identity, whether it be serious and corporate, or fun and silly.

The Scope plane defines the features of the product that will be built in order to meet the user’s needs. It covers both what the product will do, and also what it won’t do. In other words, the requirements, but at a level of specification of what will be built, not how it will be built.

The order in which the user will interact with each feature, as part of the user flow is defined in the Structure plane. In an information-heavy website, this could be how the content is arranged, or in a more functional website, it could be order in which a user completes elements of a booking or checkout process.

The Skeleton plane defines how different objects such as text, images, buttons, input fields etc, are arranged on a page. This is the User Interface design that most people confuse with User Experience design. A typical output of this plane are wireframes, mockups and prototypes proposing how a page should look and act based on user interactions.

Some of the more sub-conscious “micro-interactions” of the design are defined in the Surface plane. This cover ideas such as how the user’s eyes are follow different paths on the screen, how elements such as colours and contrasts can aid the user. In general, the idea is to help reduce the cognitive load of the user by allowing as much easy sub-conscious processing of how they interact with the site.

Review

As stated earlier, I did find having the different elements broken out in this structure very useful as an aid in thinking about User Experience. However, the detail that the book goes into at each level is quite basic and foundation level. It may be more useful for someone looking to learn about UX without having any business or technical background. I myself may have found it more useful when I was doing my own Foundation UX course and trying to work out the difference between UI Design and UX, but at this stage, found it more useful as a refresher.

So I would recommend it as an introduction to User Experience for someone with no previous experience, but not to any UXers that may have already gone past the Beginner level.

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