Design · User Experience Design
A topic within User Experience Design, itself one of 11 topics in that field and part of Design.
No prior grounding assumed.
The Elements of User Experience
Jesse James Garrett · 2000
Lays out user experience as five stacked planes, from strategy to surface, arguing that each plane's decisions are constrained by the choices already…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman · 1988
Argues that when people struggle to use an object the fault lies with its design, not the user, and lays out affordances, signifiers, mappings and…
+1 more at this level
3 works
Jesse James Garrett
Lays out user experience as five stacked planes, from strategy to surface, arguing that each plane's decisions are constrained by the choices already made in the plane below it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Don Norman
Argues that when people struggle to use an object the fault lies with its design, not the user, and lays out affordances, signifiers, mappings and feedback as the vocabulary for finding and fixing that failure.
NNgroup
Sets out the heuristic method: a small number of trained evaluators inspect an interface against ten general usability principles, which finds most serious problems without recruiting users.
link checked 17 Sept 2026