The elements of User Experience
About the author (because I’m interested in these things): Jesse James Garrett co-founded Adaptive Path in 2001. His company was the first one to use the term ‘Adaptive Path’ to describe their work. They became international renowned for their pioneering work in the field of UX design. The company was sold in 2014 to Capital One and JJG now works as a Design Leadership Coach, Author, and Speaker.
This was a great introduction to UX and I’m really glad it was one of the first books I read.
Explaining the history of tech - the evolution and characteristics of Software Design, and Information Distribution and Retrieval (JJG calls this the Hypertext System) was really enlightening - perhaps because i started life as a print designer and so was more tuned in to how things looked on the web with less consideration given to how things can be programmed. But then these two worlds had to start working together to produce better, user centred products.
JJG explains how the UX process fits into a business structure and visualises how the the different job roles fit in that process using his infamous ‘Elements of User Experience’ diagram. Each ‘plane’ is explained chapter by chapter. He takes us through: the process to formulate a strategy, how this strategy defines the scope of the project, the structure of the site then pulls together all the requirements detailed in the scope, with the skeleton stage refining that structure with elements such as navigation and information, and finally when we get to ‘the surface plane’ we use visual design to bring together and finalise the goals of the other planes.
As I write this, I’m just finishing off “The inmates are running the asylum” by Alan Cooper, which goes into more detail again about the world of programmers and software design.
Doodle by Odette Kirby