The goal of any user experience project is to ensure users have a positive experience with a product. And of course between the initial idea and the final product rests a number of steps that impact the user experience.
In this post we will see the 5 elements of UX design by Jesse James Garrett, who wrote a book called: The elements of user experience.
1- Strategy: user needs & product objectives
As the most abstract and least constrained part of the project, this is where decisions should be made about what objectives the product should be designed to meet.
On one hand, we must be sure to meet the product objectives, on the other hand, we need to understand what goals users would have when using the app, which we can discover through user research.
— > The strategy helps you identify who you are designing for and why.
2- Scope: Features & Content requirements
In here where all the product’s features are decided upon, including the information that users can find and the functionality that users can interact with.
In this step, the UX team will identify and describe features of the product and content requirements.
— > The scope defines what you will be designing.
3- Structure: Interaction design & information architecture
Now it is time to start working on the structure of the product.
On the interaction design side, we define how users will interact with the product and the respond of the system.
For the information architecture, we need to structure the content the product offers in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for.
In addition, user flow can be included to show how the system responds after a user makes an iteration.
— > The structure defines how the product or solution works
4- Skeleton: Information, interface & navigation design
In this phase, the UX designers will make decisions about the product information design, creating wireframes and prototypes in a way that ensures that users can quickly navigate between pages to find the information they need, while also understanding which elements of each page are interactive and which are not.
— > Skeleton, laying out the first interfaces of the solution and creating the first tangible elements of user experience.
5- Surface: Visual design
The wireframes and prototypes created in the skeleton phase will be used to create the final pages for the product.
At this stage, we’re concerned with the users’ sensory experience, including colours and textures to help users interact with the product by drawing their eyes to key information based on content presentation.
— > The surface that your users see and interact with.