The 5 Planes

“The goal of these plane are to create the best user experience possible.”

The Surface Plane

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The surface plane consist of webpages, such as ads and or pop up that try to persuade you to click onto their link to direct you to that particular page. The can also be made up of images. For example, you are shopping for clothes. They usually have the seasons category with the upcoming and latest looks for that season. Although you might have planned to go shopping online for something else that image and outfit captured your attention and drew you click on it. The surface plane is pretty much as self explanatory as it’s name. Its what you can see/access to easily.


The Skeleton Plane

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This plane is located underneath the surface plane. It consist of buttons, controls, and blocks of text. The goal of the skeleton plane is to have all images and links where they need to be. When everything is where it is supposed to be then the webpage is reaching is maximum effort. It would be a shame for a consumer to get frustrated because the can not find the shopping cart and leave the website without purchasing anything.


The Structure Plane

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This plane functions off of the Skeleton Plane. Its job is to define how users get to specific pages. What did they click on? Where did they click? What page was quickly viewed? Aside of being able to define how users get to specific pages, the Structure Plane also is able to define where the user will be going when they are finished with a page.

“The skeleton might define the arrangement of navigational elements allowing the users to browse categories of products; the structure would define what those categories were”


The Scope Plane

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This best defined as what are the features of the site? Some sites allow you to keep your mailing address in their system so that you don’t have to fill out pages of info every time you want to make a purchase. Other sites such as Forever21 allow you to keep items in your shopping cart for as long as you want as long as you are signed in onto their website. Any question that is presented about features of a website is an question for Scope.


The Strategy Plane

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This purpose of this plane is to benefit two sides. First, what the producers want to get out of the site. They have a team who put together plans and ideas to create a general image of what they want their website to be able to do. The second beneficial party belongs to the consumers. Consumers feed off of attractive webpages and well structured websites. The bottom line is producers want to sell products and consumers want to buy products. The goal is to find a balance in the two so that both parties are able to do what they want with their resources. Ex. shop, sell..

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