Five Planes of UX
Updated 2026-08-13
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A model introduced by Jesse James Garrett that organizes user experience design into five planes: strategy, covering user needs and business objectives; scope, covering functional and content requirements; structure, covering interaction design and information architecture; skeleton, covering interface and navigation design; and surface, covering visual design. The core proposition is that each plane depends on the one below it. The qualification is that the dependency runs bottom-up, so a visual decision made without a settled strategy has nothing to rest on.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Layer walk: move from strategy upward and confirm each layer is settled before designing the next. - Dependency check: trace a visual decision back to the strategy it is supposed to serve. - Alignment tool: use the five layers to show a team which level a disagreement actually belongs to.
Anchor fast decisions
Decisions at each layer constrain the options available at the layer above, so a choice made without settling the layer beneath it has to be revised once that layer is fixed. Working upward therefore prevents rework, and it also localizes disagreement: a dispute about visual design often dissolves once the team discovers they disagree about strategy instead.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- ccnmtl.columbia.eduhttps://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/enhanced/noted/how_to_design_an_educational_user_experience.htmlverified
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