User Experience

          In Jesse James Garrett's The Elements of User Experience, Chapter 1 "User Experience and Why It Matters" discusses what user experience is and what role it plays in a customer or client's choices. The most obvious example of a service that is used by a wide volume of individuals that came to my mind is Google. Google has a large diversity of people that they help each and every day. When Bing came along, it faced the large Google audience to persuade. The only problem was that Google had build up a loyalty with its users, and those users also saw no reason to switch to Bing. There is nothing wrong with Google, and since it is now linked to many other parts of their users' lives, it makes finding what the user wants easier than ever. Bing promoted a "Bing It On" campaign in which users could do a search and choose which engine they liked the most. It was anonymous as to which search engine was on which side of the page, which gave the site credibility. This was because they were letting the user choose what they liked instead of putting forth their own page and the results and claiming that their page was superior. What do you think? Do you like Google or Bing better? Why? Why do you think people choose Google over Bing?

          Another common comparison of user experience is the Mac vs. PC debate. Mac came in with their computers, boasting an extremely friendly user base in which people who were not as tech savy could now navigate a computer, specifically a Mac. This converted a large amount of people from the harder to understand PC to the user friendly Mac. Are you a Mac person? Why or why not? Does it have to do with the user experience of that particular product?

          In Chapter 2, "Meet the Elements" Garrett puts forth five planes, or layers, of a website. This includes the surface plane, the skeleton plane, the structure plane, the scope plane, and the strategy plane. These planes are claimed to be the layers of a website interface that a user has to face. The surface plane would be the images of a product that a user could purchase, the skeleton plane would be the button placement and controls of the site, the structure plane would be the navigational aspect of the site, the scope of the site is what is appropriate for that particular site, and the strategy plane is determined by what the users want as well as what the people running the site want.