Resources
by Jesse James Garrett
Garrett breaks user experience into five stacked planes — strategy, scope, structure, skeleton and surface — each one resting on the one beneath it. It turns a discipline that can feel vague into an ordered sequence of decisions, and makes it obvious why a late visual change so often exposes an unresolved question further down.
Key Concepts
The Strategy Plane
User needs and product objectives. What are we making, who is it for, and what does the business get out of it?
The Scope Plane
Functional requirements and content requirements — deciding what the product will actually contain.
The Structure Plane
Interaction design and information architecture: how the pieces relate and how the system responds.
The Skeleton Plane
Interface, navigation and information design — the concrete arrangement of elements on the screen.
The Surface Plane
The sensory and visual layer the user finally sees, and the only one most people ever notice.
Decisions Cascade Upward
Every plane constrains the ones above it, so an unresolved question low down resurfaces as a visual problem later.
Value & Benefits
A Shared Vocabulary
Names the layers of a design so a team can say which one they are actually arguing about.
Order of Operations
Clarifies what has to be settled before the next set of decisions can be made well.
Diagnosing Rework
Persistent surface churn usually signals an unanswered strategy or scope question underneath.
Scoping Conversations
Gives a concrete frame for negotiating what is in and out before production starts.