As infor­ma­tion archi­tects, we’ve all seen Jesse James Garrett’s sem­i­nal Ele­ments of User Expe­ri­ence diagram.

JJG’s Elements of User Experience

It’s the clas­sic tool used to con­tex­tu­alise the mate­r­ial and envi­ron­ment IAs are work­ing with when assist­ing in the devel­op­ment of projects designed for web-​​based deliv­ery. And, it cov­ers the full range of needs, from the very high over­all busi­ness and user goals, right through the end deliv­ery of the system.

On the other hand, not so many of us will have seen this.

Forces of User Experience

Now, this is interesting!

Not that I’m say­ing Jesse’s orig­i­nal dia­gram isn’t, but Richard Dalton’s Forces of User Expe­ri­ence re-​​imagining of Jesse’s orig­i­nal is a use­ful tool for get­ting a han­dle on the influ­ences act­ing across all planes of user expe­ri­ence from the strat­egy plane.

In par­tic­u­lar, I can see this ver­sion being use­ful in aid­ing IAs work­ing at the strate­gic end of projects — unfor­tu­nately some­thing that can hap­pen all too rarely, but that should always be the case — under­stand and speak to the 40000′ view of user and busi­ness require­ments. It also neatly illus­trates that each plane in the ele­ments acts upon the oth­ers — no one plane acts on a sin­gle other, and it’s not a ser­ial set of ele­ments or forces.

I think also, that it’s a use­ful tool in help­ing to imag­ine how senior man­age­ment and other influ­en­tials whose work is entirely focussed on the strat­egy plane are think­ing, and how us IAs might be able to help them under­stand what their think­ing affects.

In my expe­ri­ence, the ear­lier an IA can get involved in a project and the more strate­gi­cally they are able to think, the bet­ter the tac­ti­cal approach to the other planes can be. Early, influ­en­tial think­ing can be the maker or breaker of a project.