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19 reviews for:
The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond
Jesse James Garrett
3.84 AVERAGE
19 reviews for:
The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond
Jesse James Garrett
3.84 AVERAGE
casperpumpkin's review against another edition
5.0
This book essentially dissects the process of website creation, clearly defining every element that goes into planning and implementing a website. This would have provided an invaluable visual map during our last website redesign. Rather than a tangled ball of yarn, I can now see all of the wheels and cogs fit together in a logical manner.
It seems that, of the five planes of the user experience development process (the surface plane, the skeleton plane, the structure plane, the scope plane and the strategy plane), I am most interested in the skeleton plane (i.e. navigation, interface and information design) and the structure plane (information architecture).
I might have to own this book.
Favorite Quotes:
If your site consists mainly of what we Web types call "content" - that is, information - then one of the main goals of your site is to communicate that information as effectively as possible. It's not enough just to put it out there. It has to be presented in a way that helps people absorb it and understand it. Otherwise, the user might not ever find out that you offer the service or product they're looking for.
Habit and reflex are the foundation for much of our interaction with the world...
If it involves providing users with the ability to do things, it's interface design...If it involves providing users with the ability to go places, it's navigation design...If it involves communicating ideas to the user, it's information design.
Making your interface consistent with others that your users are already familiar with is important, but even more important is making your interface consistent with itself.
An interface that gives a small number of extreme cases the same weight as the needs of the vast majority of users ends up ill-equipped to make either audience happy.
Presenting a style on your web site that's inconsistent with your style in other media doesn't just affect the audience's impression of the site; it affects their impression of your company as a whole.
[Effective content] requires effective maintenance.
[Information architecture] draws on a number of disciplines that historically have been concerned with the organization, grouping, ordering, and presentation of content: library science, journalism, and technical communication, among others.
[Information architecture and interaction design] are about understanding people, the way they work, and the way they think.
It seems that, of the five planes of the user experience development process (the surface plane, the skeleton plane, the structure plane, the scope plane and the strategy plane), I am most interested in the skeleton plane (i.e. navigation, interface and information design) and the structure plane (information architecture).
I might have to own this book.
Favorite Quotes:
If your site consists mainly of what we Web types call "content" - that is, information - then one of the main goals of your site is to communicate that information as effectively as possible. It's not enough just to put it out there. It has to be presented in a way that helps people absorb it and understand it. Otherwise, the user might not ever find out that you offer the service or product they're looking for.
Habit and reflex are the foundation for much of our interaction with the world...
If it involves providing users with the ability to do things, it's interface design...If it involves providing users with the ability to go places, it's navigation design...If it involves communicating ideas to the user, it's information design.
Making your interface consistent with others that your users are already familiar with is important, but even more important is making your interface consistent with itself.
An interface that gives a small number of extreme cases the same weight as the needs of the vast majority of users ends up ill-equipped to make either audience happy.
Presenting a style on your web site that's inconsistent with your style in other media doesn't just affect the audience's impression of the site; it affects their impression of your company as a whole.
[Effective content] requires effective maintenance.
[Information architecture] draws on a number of disciplines that historically have been concerned with the organization, grouping, ordering, and presentation of content: library science, journalism, and technical communication, among others.
[Information architecture and interaction design] are about understanding people, the way they work, and the way they think.
founddrama's review
3.0
I’d like to revisit this book sometime, when I’m able to give it some day-time level attention and note-taking. Most of the ideas presented in here were ones I’d encountered before, usually divorced from this (original?) context. (It was published in 2011, after all.) that said, his “five elements” framework feels like an excellent foundation to work from, and I’ve already tried to apply it to my work.
sholmstedt's review against another edition
5.0
Do yourself a favor and get the most recent version possible. If you want to learn UX or learn how to communicate with a UX team, this book is indispensable in outlining the concepts and vocabulary of the trade.
zondra's review against another edition
3.0
I want to become a UX designer, but this book didn't give me insight into anything new. It seemed like very common sense things that explained why you should make a website easy to navigate, read, etc.
aqword's review against another edition
3.0
Perhaps the most pleasantly surprising thing about this book was realizing part-way through that it's a theory book. For the most part, I can't abide theory. I prefer writings that demonstrate their ideas with concrete principles, so I was pleased to realize while reading this book that I hadn't even noticed I was reading theory. The prose style is clear and concise enough that the pages fly by despite their abstract content.
Garrett considers five overlapping planes in website design: the surface, skeleton, structure, scope, and strategy (20-21). I initially interpreted these as roughly corresponding to the roles of graphic designer, interaction designer, information architect, developer, and business analyst, with a project manager overseeing all five, but found that Garret further subdivided each plane based on whether the website was approached from a functional standpoint or information standpoint to create a different set of labels (27-9). To me, the most interesting aspect of this division was his decision to place interaction design and information architecture on the same level (the structure plane) with interface design and navigation design overlaying these elements. I had assumed that interaction design overlaid information architecture, but he makes a good case for treating interaction design as a functional interpretation of the structure and information architecture as an information model of the structure, placing them at equivalent levels in the hierarchy.
Some more things this book says are:
* UX design considers how the user interacts with traditional aesthetic design and functional design. Instead of just making the product aesthetically appealing or possible to use, UX makes it easy to use (7-8).
* Conversion rate is more effective than sales at measuring the user experience because sales can depend on the external factor of marketing (15).
* The key to defining good product objectives is to balance between general and specific, being general enough to show what problems the product will solve, yet specific enough to give some sense of how it will solve them (38).
* Although many people think of brand identity in visual terms, it is important to specify at the level of product objectives how the brand identity ties into intended conceptual association and emotional reactions of the users (38).
* Possible requirements should be evaluated based on a combination of product needs, user requirements, and feasibility of implementation (75).
* Designing the information architecture from the top down can overlook some aspects of the content, while designing it from the bottom up can fit the existing content too closely (90).
* In a design comp, the term comp can signify a composite of the underlying layers of design hierarchy (148). I had always just assumed that comp was short for composition, but it makes the artifact more scientific to view it as a composite.
Garrett considers five overlapping planes in website design: the surface, skeleton, structure, scope, and strategy (20-21). I initially interpreted these as roughly corresponding to the roles of graphic designer, interaction designer, information architect, developer, and business analyst, with a project manager overseeing all five, but found that Garret further subdivided each plane based on whether the website was approached from a functional standpoint or information standpoint to create a different set of labels (27-9). To me, the most interesting aspect of this division was his decision to place interaction design and information architecture on the same level (the structure plane) with interface design and navigation design overlaying these elements. I had assumed that interaction design overlaid information architecture, but he makes a good case for treating interaction design as a functional interpretation of the structure and information architecture as an information model of the structure, placing them at equivalent levels in the hierarchy.
Some more things this book says are:
Spoiler
* UX design considers how the user interacts with traditional aesthetic design and functional design. Instead of just making the product aesthetically appealing or possible to use, UX makes it easy to use (7-8).
* Conversion rate is more effective than sales at measuring the user experience because sales can depend on the external factor of marketing (15).
* The key to defining good product objectives is to balance between general and specific, being general enough to show what problems the product will solve, yet specific enough to give some sense of how it will solve them (38).
* Although many people think of brand identity in visual terms, it is important to specify at the level of product objectives how the brand identity ties into intended conceptual association and emotional reactions of the users (38).
* Possible requirements should be evaluated based on a combination of product needs, user requirements, and feasibility of implementation (75).
* Designing the information architecture from the top down can overlook some aspects of the content, while designing it from the bottom up can fit the existing content too closely (90).
* In a design comp, the term comp can signify a composite of the underlying layers of design hierarchy (148). I had always just assumed that comp was short for composition, but it makes the artifact more scientific to view it as a composite.
kstar902's review against another edition
4.0
Quick, easy, non-technical book about taking user experience into consideration when designing websites.
evaward's review against another edition
3.0
Presents a helpful framework, but a bit light on concrete examples.
rbogue's review
3.0
Where does Information Architecture begin and end? It’s a question that I’ve been struggling with. There are so many impacts into user experience, visual design, navigation, etc. I tend to think of Information Architecture as the overall framework or structure. To me IA is the overarching thing under which many other disciplines fit. However, Jesse James Garrett sees the problem differently in The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond. The book walks through his model for how he believes user centered design should work. The heart of this is a diagram showing five planes (or levels)...
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davemmett's review against another edition
3.0
Read for the April UX Book Club.
This is a good grounding in how to do user experience design, though I didn't find much new here that I wasn't already aware of before.
I expect that this would make a great introduction to the field for people who want to get into it, or who need to work with UX people.
This is a good grounding in how to do user experience design, though I didn't find much new here that I wasn't already aware of before.
I expect that this would make a great introduction to the field for people who want to get into it, or who need to work with UX people.