Participants:
-
- Craig Nishizaki, Head of Business @UpTop
- Michael Woo, Head of Design @UpTop
Length: 1m 57s
Craig Nishizaki:
To help frame the conversation from a UX strategist perspective, what are elements of the user experience that need to be engineered?
Michael Woo:
That’s a really good question. There are generally five elements or layers to view ux, essentially if you look at the bottom layer or layer one, you have strategy, and this is the most abstract layer, but here you have to define what it is, the vision that you’re trying to achieve and the goals that will get you there. The goals should be a combination of what the business objectives are and what the user needs are. Then you have layer two, which is the scope, that is what are the functional specifications, features and requirements needed to create the product or digital experience. Then there’s layer three, which is the structure, and the structure includes the navigation and information architecture of your digital experience.
Here’s where you also look at user flows or ingress and egress points. Then you look at layer four, which is the skeleton, or we commonly call layer four, the wire frames. You guys probably have heard that where general layout of the screen elements are created. Content strategy plays a big vital role here. What content does the user see? And when a lot of thought is put into interaction design, looking at how a user would click on buttons or links, fill out a form or engaged with a myriad of design patterns, and in this layer you should have a good blueprint by now for your intended design. Finally, layer five is what we call the surface. Here is where visual design comes into play. It ties back to the whole design of the screens, but you’re looking at the company brand images, illustrations, icons, text styling, things like micro interactions or it’s been said to be the skin on the wireframes.
For more information, watch the entire podcast which includes the clip above.
