What is User-centered web design and why is it important? The answer to the first question has a simple answer, but the process of making it happen is fairly complex. User-centered web design involves taking the user into account during all phases of a web project. Why is this so important? The process of building a user-centered website ensures that everything that happens on the site is a direct result of decisions you have made. Not only will you reduce the likelihood of technical errors like 404 pages and broken links, you can create a quality experience that will satisfy both the business and user's goals.
Now that we know what user-centered design is, how do we go about it? The best way to explain the process is to use the model developed by user experience expert, Jesse James Garrett. Garrett breaks up the model into 5 planes in his book, The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web. The 5 planes are strategy, scope, structure, skeleton and surface. This model also addresses the duality of website functionality. Some websites are used as software interfaces, while others are hypertext information spaces. And then there are some websites that perform both of these functions. This is why there is a line drawn down the middle of the model to deal with those differences. Let's go into a little more detail about the 5 planes.
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