The User Experience, better known as UX is the overall actions, perception, emotions, feelings that appear when using a product. As it is possible to appreciate, it includes many factors, sometimes not even directly related to the product. All of this must be considered in the first place even before starting the development.

Did you ever happen to see an application that looks nice, but useless because does not help customers with their problems? Or vice versa, an unshapely application which is quite popular among customers because it allows them to work on their important tasks? Nowadays we need to deliver products which look nice and are comfortable to use both to succeed and compete with other companies. In this post we will see how to work on a digital product without forgetting all the important areas so the customers are happy with the solution.

James Garrett proposed 5 levels in the User Experience Design in his book “The Elements of User Experience”. As per his idea, each level represents a key tasks to be solved in order to make the overall process as smooth as possible. The 5 levels method focuses on the user experience over the technology and helps to understand and deliver what the customers really need.

The Five Elements of UX

1. Strategy
2. Scope
3. Structure
4. Skeleton
5. Surface

The product creation begins on the first abstract level and develops towards the highest level getting more details and clear information. All levels are in a tight relation between each other - changes done on the higher level affect decisions made on lower levels. If you define improperly the strategy, then chances are hight that nobody will want to use your product. If you do a mistake in the information architecture, it may affect the future development and generate additional expenses to fix it.

1. Strategy

It is the most abstract level in the James Garrett’s model and the basis for the whole further work. Is dedicated to getting such important information as customers and business user expectations from the product. What are the problems the product will solve? The product goals must be defined and agreed by all sides here - while working on further levels, everyone will be aligning with them. If the goals or the customer needs were described improperly, the product will be useless.

Working on this level ask not only the stakeholders, but also to potential customers who may use the product. Collect as much information as you can.

The most important questions to be answered are:

1. What the product is? What is the this product for and how it will be used?
2. Who will use the product? Who is the customer?
3. What are the customer pains that solves the product?
4. Who are the competitors? Why is this product better and why should the customers choose it?
5. How do the product fits your company products strategy?

Organise a few researches to collect all that information and understand the product perspectives and if the expectations meet the market needs.

2. Scope (Features set)

The product functionality follows the strategy. On this level it is crucial to understand what should be done and what should not. The functionality should help the customers and the business to reach their goals.

James Garrett also includes the content requirements into this level. It depends on the product which content to be included and how users will get it - here we need to get that understanding. For example, the information may be displayed on content pages, sent via emails or push notifications. The customers also may generate content by themselves. If an additional video or audio content has to be produced, or if the content should include translations into multiple languages, that should be also indicated since it affects the project timeline.

Understanding of what will be in the scope of the project (product) and will help to reach the strategic goals, must be laid into the product documentation as functional requirements. Again, that should reflect the real users (customers) needs.

The most important questions to be answered are:

1. What functions will help customers to achieve their goals?
2. What minimal functions set will let us launch the product quickly and what are the functions to be launched later?
3. What do the competitors’ products do to solve similar customer problems?
4. Which content do the customers need?

3. Structure

The next thing after describing the required functionality is the information architecture and interaction design. Information architecture It should be designed once we get the understanding of what will be the content. It is necessary to organise all the content and data the correct way to help the customers to reach anything they need quickly and logically from their point of view. It should be able to adapt to future structure changes and product scaling (new product categories, new content section).

Interaction design It is about how the customers interact with the system interface and how the system responds. It must help the customers to achieve their objectives and prevent harmful actions. The interface should be easy to understand, and, if possible, without any documentation needed. The user actions must be accompanied with the system feedback (ie create, update, delete something).

This level is very important by several reasons:

• The product’s structure defines its appearance. It’s much easier to change structure on this level than later when the functionality is developed.
• The customers get used to the product’s structure. For example, if you update the navigation, it may be very difficult for the users to change their habits even if the previous version of the navigation was incorrect.

The structure level describes how, where and what for the customers are doing. The main objective is to create the correct structure of the product which visualises the functionality and content placement, and the logical connections between different parts of it. One of the most useful instruments to work on this level are the User Flows. The User Flows describe the customers way along the product to reach their objectives.

In result, the product structure must be simple and intuitive, tested on real customers and reflect their preferences.

The most important questions to be answered:

1. How may the customer reach the objective maximally effectively?
2. Do the customers understand the product navigation and if it meets the expectations?
3. Will the product be able to scale up or change its structure in the future without serious development?

4. Skeleton

Having a great structure for the product we move towards developing its functionality. On this level we understand more on how the product will look like based on how it works. The information should be displayed to the customers in a correct and useful way and represent all their needs at the moment. It should be neither redundant not insufficient.

As per Jessie Garrett, it divides into three components:

1. Interface design. Describes how the visual elements will be placed and displayed to the customers, how the customers will interact with them.
2. Navigation design. Describes the navigation structure, more like a part of the information design.
3. Information design. Describes how the information should be represented in the interface for better customers understanding.

Usually on this level different prototypes are tested on real customers in order to find an optimal solution. As result we get the wireframes useful for further development.

The most important questions to be answered:

1. Does the prototype help customers to reach their objectives?
2. Is the prototype easy to use without additional explanations for the functionality?
3. Is the navigation structure easy and let the customers reach the needed page quickly? How will the customers navigate through the product?
4. Is there anything important that still might be improved?
5. Is the solution easy to maintain and improve in the future?
6. Is the content presented clearly?

5. Surface

The surface level is the most important one - it determines the product appearance. This is where the UI elements and the overall design is created (ie fonts, colors, layout). At this level all the ideas described and clarified on the previous four melt down into a form.

Mostly is about visual and aesthetic, helping to express the brand, unite all the product components in one solid solution, attractive to the customers.

The most important questions to be answered:

1. Does the product solve customers problems?
2. Does it complete the objectives set on the first level (Strategy)?
3. Does the product meet all the planned functional requirements?
4. Do the customers like the product and want to get back to it again and again?

Summary

All the levels of User Experience used in the product design are dedicated to develop a good solution useful for the customer. The user experience has always to be considered when working on any digital tool since there are a lot of competitors and succeed those who who provide better UX, who solve the customers problems more effectively.

The 5 levels help to decompose the process of working on UX and work on it step by step, moving from the basics to the details. This method helps to create a solid product which meets all the requirements from the customers and from business.