Five Planes of User Experience

When developing any program (whether it is a class or a computer program) it is necessary to incorporate Five Plans of User Experience. Jesse James Garret in The Elements of User Experience Design has done a really great job of breaking down the frames of thought to help iterate through the User Experience and how to implement Designer (and company) goals, and how that plays out to the user.  For example, if you develop a really awesome on-line education course but no one is taking it -- you might want to know why and knowing the frame work where user experience breaks down would be useful in helping to develop the design. What are these five elements? They are: the Surface Plane (what is seen, how senses come into play in the user experience), the Skeleton Plane (what is the support and framework for which the sensory information is conveyed, what buttons are there to push, etc.), the Structure Plane (how does that skeleton fit into the rest of the world, how are things organized and placed/arranged), the Scope Plane (what are the goals, what are the necessary elements to make sure the goals are accomplished, what is needed for the user to be able to fully interact in the sensory plane and to be fully supported otherwise) and the Strategy Plane (how is information conveyed, how are customers finding out about information, what is offered for free, what is paid for, where are things placed, who is the target market, etc). All together these can help the designer create a foundation for user experience in any industry!  Today, we will talk about creating a functional website user experience....

The Strategy Plane		-  Location: In designing each element - Includes: What purpose designers are working towards, how users interpret what is conveyed - Purpose: Matching user with need or purpose to developing company - Languages: Various - Example: Some strategic objectives are obvious: users want to buy products, and we want to sell them. Or role that advertising content produced by users plays in business model which might not be so obvious
The Scope Plane		- Location: Many places on the site - Includes: What to save, data collected, features available, etc. - Purpose: What how various features and functions constitute and how they fit together. - Language: MySQL, PHP, Java, etc. - Example: Commerce sites offer a feature that enables user to save previously used shipping addresses so they can be used again. Whether that feature or any feature is included on a site is a question of scope
The Structure Plane		- Location: Arrangement of navigational elements ex if allowing users to browse categories of products was the skeleton - the structure would be the categories of browsing - Includes: Placement of interface elements, how site is navigable. - Purpose: To organize materials, categorize things and make them easier to find, and utilize - Language: MySQL
The Skeleton Plane		- Location: Beneath the Surface Plane. - Includes: Placement of buttons, controls, photos and blocks of text. - Purpose: Maximize effect and efficiency (you can't purchase something if you can't find the shopping cart button!) - Language: Java
The Surface Plane		- Location: the face of a web page - Purpose: Performs some sort of function - Includes: Images and text; logos, price information, pictures of items, etc. - Languages: HTML, CSS

It's also important to develop these processes simultaneously so that you can see how all the elements fit together!

From: The Elements of User Experience Design, 2nd ed.  by Jesse James Garrett