The elements of user experience

The elements of user experience

1. The surface plane

   • Sensory design
     • Made up of images and text
       • illustrations, photograph or the logo
     • user experience is a clearly articulated strategy
     • users informs the decisions we have to make about every aspect of the user experience
     • questions:
       • What do we want to get out of this product?
         • we describe the product objectives coming from inside the organization
       • What do our users want to get out of it?
         • product objectives and user needs form the strategy plane
   • Product Objectives
     • examining our own objectives for the product or service
   • Business Goals
     • identify in the most specific terms possible what we expect the product itself to accomplish
     • we have to make sure that every decision we make is rooted in a firm understanding of its consequences
   • Brand Identity
     • the concept of brand extends far beyond the visual
     • associations or emotional reactions
     • an impression about your organization is inevitably created by their interactions with your product
     • codifying the specific qualities, chances that it will be a positive impression
   • Success Metrics
     • These are known as success metrics: indicators we can track after the product has been launched to see whether it is meeting our own objectives and our users’ needs
       • those metrics must be clearly tied to aspects of user behavior that can be shaped by our design choices
     • achieving them provides concrete evidence of the value of user experience
   • User Needs
     • we need to understand who they are and what they need
     • we have to define just who our users are
     • ask them questions and observe their behavior
   • User Segmentation
     • We divide our audience into smaller groups
       • we need to understand what and how much they know about the subject matter of our site
       • Identifying the different roles of your product’s users can help you separate them and analyze their different needs
     • Psychographic profiles
       • the users’ attitudes toward the Web and technology itself
   • Usability and User Research
     • we first have to get a sense of who they are
       • surveys, interviews, or focus groups
       • Contextual inquiry refers to a whole set of methods
       • task analysis is a method of closely examining the precise steps users go through in accomplishing those tasks
       • users can test a work in progress or even a rough prototype of the finished product
       • is to have users work with prototypes
   • Creating Personas
     • Collecting all sorts of data about your users can be incredibly valuable
     • A persona is a fictional character constructed to represent the needs of a whole range of real users
       • used to breathe life into these characters who will stand in for our real, live users
   • Team Roles and Process
     • Strategists will talk to many people throughout the organization to get as many perspectives as possible on the questions of product objectives and user needs
     • stakeholders might include representatives from marketing communications and customer service as well as product managers

2. The skeleton plane

   • The placement
   • Information design
     • Interface design
     • navigation design

3. The structure plane

   • Interaction design
   • Information design

4. The scope plane

   • Funcional specifications
   • Content requeriments

5. The estrategy plane

   • User needs
   • Product objetives

6. This document isn’t just a list of objectives—it provides an analysis of the relationships among the various objectives and of how those objectives fit into the larger context of the organization. Strategy should be the beginning of your user experience design process, but that doesn’t mean your strategy must be set in stone before the project can move forward.