Basics of Web Authoring and Design

Garrett's 5 Planes of User Experience

The 5 Planes

The Surface Plane

The surface plane refers to the visual representation of a website.

Question to ask yourself: What will the finished product look like?

The Skeleton Plane

Right below the surface plane is the skeleton of the website. The skeleton is an expression of the abstract structure of the site. It is the placement of buttons, photos, tabs, and blocks of text. The skeleton defines the placement of the interface elements on a certain web page. It also defines the arrangement of the different navigational items on the site that allow users to move between webpages.

Question to ask yourself: What will enable users to use your site?

The Structure Plane

The structure defines the way in which the various features and functions of the site fit together. It defines how users get to different pages on the website and where they could go on the site next. The structure defines the actual categories of the navagational items of the site.

Question to ask yourself: How will the parts of the site interact and behave?

The Scope Plane

The scope of the site is the features and functions within a website. The structure places these different features and functions together. The scope is fundamentally determined by the strategy of the site.

Question to ask yourself: What does the site need to include?

The Strategy Plane

The strategy incorporates what the people running the site want to get out of it and what users want to get out of the site. This is the fundamental building block of your website design choices.

Question to ask yourself: What do we want to get from the site? What do users want?