The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web (Voices That Matter) (Paperback)

by Jesse James Garrett (Author)
Key Phrases: scope plane, successful user experience, strategy plane, Southwest Airlines (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Finally, a concise explanation of User Experience that synthesizes its many disparate parts. Clear-headed, readable, and necessary." -- Louis Rosenfeld, Co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

"Finally, a concise explanation of User Experience that synthesizes its many disparate parts." -- Louis Rosenfeld, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

"Garrett brings incisive clarity to the complex process of providing a high-quality experience to people who use your web site." -- Alan Cooper, Author of About Face and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

"Garrett brings incisive clarity to the process of providing a high-quality experience to the people who use your web site." -- Alan Cooper, author of About Face and The Inmates are Running the Asylum

"Garrett has finally expanded his famous diagram into a book that clarifies the entire jumbled field of user experience design." -- Steve Krug, Author of Don't Make Me Think!

Product Description

Smart organizations recognize that Web design is more than just creating clean code and sharp graphics. A site that really works fulfills your strategic objectives while meeting the needs of your users. Even the best content and the most sophisticated technology won't help you balance those goals without a cohesive, consistent user experience to support it.

But creating the user experience can seem overwhelmingly complex. With so many issues involved-usability, brand identity, information architecture, interaction design-it can seem as if the only way to build a successful site is to spend a fortune on specialists who understand all the details.

The Elements of User Experience cuts through the complexity of user-centered design for the Web with clear explanations and vivid illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques. Jesse James Garrett gives readers the big picture of Web user experience development, from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design. This accessible introduction helps any Web development team, large or small, to create a successful user experience.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press (October 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735712026
• ISBN-13: 978-0735712027
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #26,494 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

99 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book; Misleading Title, August 19, 2003

By	Gunnar Swanson (Ventura, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Like many negative Amazon reviews, some detractors of this book seem to object to the fact that it is this book and not something else. In this case they may not be entirely unfair. If you are looking for advanced techniques in web design you won't find them in Garrett's book. If, however, you are looking for a good framework for thinking about design strategy--for your own thinking, for explaining things to clients, or for students--you will find this book indispensable. It is short, sweet, and straightforward. Whether that's good news of bad is something each reader will need to decide.

Some complain that The Elements of User Experience does not go deeply enough into a range of user experience issues. This may partially be the fault of the author and the publisher. The value of this book goes well beyond web projects and the "user experience" world. Much of it applies to a variety of design projects. If I were to make a major objection to the book it is not that it is too shallow but that it is conceived of as too narrow.

Much of the audience that would find this book to be an important breakthrough would never pick up a book that crams the word "User" into the title twice then gets in two buzz words and says "Web." I don't think this is one of the most important books about user experience or user-centered design. It is, however, a great basic book on design strategy. I hope disappointed people rating it poorly for not being the book they hoped for will not detract from this book finding the wider audience it richly deserves.

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for your library!, February 8, 2003

By	Dick Miller (Beaverton, OR USA) - See all my reviews

"Ready...Fire...Aim!"

How many times have you been involved in a Web site design effort that seems to fit this approach? Sadly, we all have such experiences in our lives. This delightful little book provides user experience designers a conceptual model for producing Web sites. This allows for a process that is rigorous, logical, and easily communicated.

Jesse James Garrett defines the term "user experience" as "...how (a) product behaves and is used in the real world." He focuses this book on consideration of one particular kind of product: Web sites.

In the Introduction, the author describes this book as
"...not a how-to book, ...not a book about technology, ...(and) not a book of answers. Instead, this book is about asking the right questions.
"This book will tell you what you need to know before you go read those other books. If you need the big picture, if you need to understand the context for the decisions that user experience practitioners make, this book is for you."

I agree wholeheartedly. The role that this book can play in developing your skill as a user experience practitioner is analogous to the role of ground school for a fledgling airplane pilot. Before a prospective pilot gets behind the controls, ground school teaches the principles of flight, aircraft systems, and other basics that need to be understood before actually taking off. Similarly, this book provides a way of understanding user experience that helps you make informed decisions as you begin and continue the design of a user experience. Garrett suggests (and I agree) that the two primary audiences for the book are newcomers (such as an executive responsible for assembling a user experience team) and those who are more familiar with user experience design and need to communicate their methods and concerns to others in an understandable way.

In a subsection of the Introduction entitled "The Story Behind the Book," Garrett relates the tale of how the book came to be. It goes back to a three-dimensional diagram he developed in late 1999 and early 2000, that serves as a model for visualizing both the elements of user experience and their interrelationships. Garrett points out that there is a duality to Websites, which he describes in a note accompanying that diagram as follows:

"The Web was originally conceived as a hypertextual information space; but the development of increasingly sophisticated front- and back-end technologies has fostered its use as a remote software interface. This dual nature has led to much confusion, as user experience practitioners have attempted to adapt their terminology to cases beyond the scope of its original application."

Furthermore, the diagram provides a clear and consistent way to use the plethora of terms that have been used (and, in many cases, misused) to refer to aspects of user experience design. He includes such terms as User Needs, Site Objectives, Content Requirements, Functional Specifications, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Information Design, Navigational Design, Interface Design, and Visual Design, shows them in the context of his model, and clarifies their underlying relationships. This diagram, which is available on the Web, was first published in March 2000 and, in the ensuing year, was downloaded more than 20,000 times. Garrett's Web site also includes other information useful to user experience designers.

A more detailed explanation of that diagram and how it can be used to understand the aspects and processes of intelligent user experience design form the core of the book. Garrett begins with a lucid and succinct explanation of what is meant by "user experience" and why it is important. He follows this with an introduction to the diagram and chapters on each of its five planes: Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton, and Surface. He then ties it all together with a chapter that looks at how these understandings can be applied to the actual development of Web sites.

The book is very well written and executed. Diagrams are clear, terminology is used consistently, navigation aids and advance organizers are used to good advantage, and the book design is clean and visually appealing. Garrett's writing style makes approachable a highly complex subject, while still including all the essentials. The book includes a 13-page index, which is quite extensive for a volume of this length. This serves as a useful tool that allows you to dip into the information as needed once you have read it through. This slim volume is just the right length to be read in a single sitting, say, on a business flight.

I wish that this book and the diagram upon which it is based were available when I first attempted the design of user experiences. It could have saved me from false starts, sub-optimal choices, and other hard-won lessons, and would have made it much easier for me to communicate my ideas to my fellow team members and to the managers for whom I worked. "Better late than never" is an adage that applies here. I'm glad it is available now, and I expect to get my money's worth from it.

Get this book. Read it. Understand it. Apply it. You'll be a better user experience designer because of it.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Small book, big subject., October 26, 2002

By	"karlpeter6" (Australia) - See all my reviews

Information architecture is a phrase beginning to be bandied about in web design and development circles, but its speakers are often unfamiliar with the meaning of the term. In one case I witnessed it was greeted with giggles and guffaws of incomprehension.

Yet an industry-wide understanding of information architecture is crucial, especially now that the days of corporate web sites as little more than online brochures, or marketing eye candy, are well and truly over. Web sites, if they are to provide real value to their readers and publishers, must fulfil real business functionality. Above all their functions, look and feel must be aimed squarely at satisfying the reader and her needs, at providing the optimum user experience. According to Garrett, planning is the key.

Five Part Plan.
Garrett divides a web site's planning into five parts, from top to bottom - Surface, Skeleton, Structure, Scope and Strategy. Bottom comes first, then you work your way to the top, the design and programming of the site itself. Garrett recommends that all sites are planned using this conceptual framework.

But, how many times have you seen a web site built in reverse - look and feel coming first, perhaps with some concession made to planning the structure and the content to go into it? Practices still vary widely across the industry - Garrett makes an excellent case for adopting a more structured method, supporting it with sound arguments and good examples throughout the book.

An Odd Omission.
I have rated The Elements of User Experience at four stars, not five, due to a surprising omission. It would have made so much sense to have published the diagrams and notes about information architecture located on Jesse James Garrett's [website] as appendices.

Books are made to be read in places you might not want to take computers - the bathroom, the bus, the train, in bed. I found myself wanting to relate Garrett's revelations in the book to the more technical stuff on his website, especially his Visual Vocabulary. I could not do that, unless I also happened to be carrying my stack of dog-eared single-sided web page print-outs - not a pretty sight.

That small complaint aside, The Elements of User Experience should be bought and read by everyone involved in a web site's conception through to birth - client, creative lead and chief programmer at the very least. It shows why someone must take responsibility for the project's architecture, even if that person does not go under the title of Information Architect. The time when the title is in common use, no longer laughed at, is when the Web will really begin fulfilling its potential.

From small beginnings good things grow.