Making the Web Work: Designing Effective Web Applications

Living With a Model: What the Model Implies About Design Priorities, Resources, and Feedback

This model of a complete user interface is useful because it provides a common method and vocabulary for deconstructing the aspects of an interface, for prioritizing design tasks, for allocating design resources, and for interpreting user feedback. As shown in Figure 3.3, the order of the layers follows three distinct axes.

Figure 3.3. By adding the three axes to the bottom of the diagram, the implications for prioritizing and ordering design tasks are clear.

Technical Flexibility. Because the structural layers describe the fundamental qualities ...