The StyleSheet - For businesses that use the internet

Book Review: The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web

Posted February 1, 2007 By Caroling Lee |

“The right approach is one in which no aspect of the user’s experience is left to chance.”
—Jesse James Garrett

Jesse James Garrett is a well-known information architect who founded a company called Adaptive Path, a user experience consultancy, back in the days when even web professionals were struggling with the definition of the term. He also wrote the book I’m reviewing this month for The StyleSheet, ‘The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web’.

User experience, in a nutshell, is about how visitors interact, experience, navigate, and understand your website, its content and its features. In other words, do they visit your site and get what they came for? Do they know where and how to find the information that they need? Is it clear and easy to navigate to access key information?

Building sites and creating designs that help guide users to accomplish the tasks they want is not only important to their own goals, but also to the goals of your online business.

Garrett details what he calls ‘The Five Planes’ to consider when developing and designing a user’s experience on your website.

1. Strategy – high level planning that considers the user needs and site objectives for the website overall.
2. Scope – defining what will be part of the site elements focusing on content, features, functionality, etc.
3. Structure – determining how high-level sections of content get organized on the site. This is the site structure from a bird’s-eye-view.
4. Skeleton – laying out the composition of the content on each page (using wireframes ), bringing the important information and features to the forefront.
5. Surface – designing the aesthetic of the website, using graphics and establishing look-and-feel.

Garrett’s process begins with the Strategy, which shapes the subsequent phases and results in the Surface of a site (what the user sees) designed with user needs and site objectives in mind. From information architecture to navigation design, the user experience remains at the center of the site strategy.

Why is user experience important to your business?

Return on Investment (ROI). Garrett says that when users get what they need from your site (and not a competitor’s site), that translates directly into dollars and cents. When you’re spending your budget on a website that is meant to either save the business money or make the business money, it’s important that users who visit will re-visit the site or complete the task they came to accomplish initially. This builds loyalty, credibility and reliability to your site and your business.

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