Absolutely essential reading if this is an area of professional or personal interest.

I try and reread this book once a year as a kind of grounding and to re-establish the key processes and steps involved in considered and effective UX design.

One of the original handbooks for contemporary ux. It is important for new ux folk to be familiar with this work so that we keep in touch with the roots of our field.

Wonderfully concise and logical fundamentals book. Was a bit disappointed — although not at all surprised — that the chapter on "sensory design" didn't mention even one basic heuristic or guideline for effective content/copy.

The just-won't-die convention of keeping copy / content removed from UX design processes is a perpetual point of frustration for me. I love content strategy, but I am getting really tired of being brought in at the point of web-project crisis and expected to resolve strategy/scope/structure problems with the content by tinkering with 'surface-plane' page copy. Siiiiiiigh.

In any case, this is still a great book!

This is an interesting take on UX. The author explains the ux process starting from stating the business objectives to building the user interface. I appreciated that the author went for a more general process overview rather than techniques and tools of UX, specially for someone like myself who has been checking out these techniques and learning about them but without any proper structure or skeleton that addresses the utility and complementary nature each one provided to the other. It also shed some light on how UX is fleshed out throughout different phases of the project and how each phase is affected its predecessor and affects its successor. However, the thing that won me over the most was all of the knowledge I learned about information architecture. This book has been a great primer and an eye opener on information architecture and its role in the UX process.

The structure of the book is very clear and made it easy to connect the dots throughout and it was an easy and pleasant read that shifts away from the complexity of jargon and interweaving concepts in complicated ways.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get started in UX, or anyone who wants to think of UX as a process rather than a step or a technique that is applied when needed.

Great book and what I'd recommend to people seeking to cross the UX chasm (yeah I made that up but it exists). Recommended ESPECIALLY to colleagues that you may work with who just don't *fully* get it. Gripes: More of a bibliography is needed and more mobile would've been appreciated. All in all. ABSOLUTELY WORTH READING...

The diagram that lies at the heart of the book, a layered view of user experience design, is solid. The book itself feels kind of padded, though, and I found myself skimming a lot. You might be better served by simply meditating on the diagram itself ( http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf ), and only referring to the book if you need more explication.

Not what I expected, but still interesting. I think if I was starting a major web design project (rather than being in the middle of one) I'd find this book useful. Still, it reinforced things I thought I already knew and will help me have a better dialog with the Marketing folks I'm working with right now.

Creo que este es un libro que hay que leer si te interesa el tema. El problema es que es lentísimo y denso. De todas formas vale la pena.

So vague about everything. Page upon page of passing mentions. At one point he talks about user research methods without listing the methods, or at least the methods he used most often… I understand you can't cover everything in a book seemingly about anything :)) but that bit of information would actually qualify as useful.

I did find the levels of design—so beautifully illustrated in this book and the reason why I even started it—to be just the map I needed to draw the boundaries between me, in charge of product, and the CEO. He clearly get the last say for business objectives, we need to talk about user needs and functional specifications, but anything below that is my turf :)

In conclusion, just download the illustration and have a look at his visual vocabulary. That's all you need.

What it's about: Using design as a way to achieve business goals + user goals, including an important framework ("5 Planes") for thinking about user experience.

Why Read It: A foundational way to think about design strategy, helpful for approaching new projects

When to Read it: This is one of those reads that makes you step back and reevaluate your work, and the way you work.

Reading this book gives you depth. While most people spend time arguing about how UX is not UI (which is true), you see deeper than they do. You see projects in the five layers of strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface – which the author covers in great depth and clarity.

I've referenced - and continue to use - Jesse James Garrett's 5 Planes framework on the UXBeginner.com and in my own design work.

This is a must-read book for anyone involved in web development.

It takes a holistic look at the subject of user experience and provides a very useful vocabulary for all the elements involved in user experience design.

The author provides a model that consists of 5 planes that cover the abstract as well as the concrete aspects of the user experience.

The 5 planes are:

1- Strategy (why you're building the site for you and your users)
2- Scope
3- Structure
4- Skeleton
5- Surface (the visual elements of the site)

Every plane depends on and influences every other plane and it's important to maintain consistency and harmony amongst the planes, so that the user doesn't experience any clashes or inconsistencies.

If you struggle to make sense of what makes bad web design bad, then this book could shed light on the matter and help you identify the type of problems that lead to poor design.

More importantly, it offers a very helpful approach you can follow to create great websites that please - rather than frustrate - your users.

Published in 2003, this book holds up well in 2020. It's worth reading or re-reading, particularly for those teaching user experience or UXers trying to demonstrate the value of UX within their organization.