Why do I love it so much?
What kind of magic is this?

How come I can’t help adore it?
It’s just another musical

No one minds it at all
If I’m having a ball
This is a musical

And there is always someone to catch me
There is always someone to catch me
There is always someone to catch me
There is always someone to catch me
When I’d fall

Why do I love you so much?
What kind of magic is this?

How come I can’t help adore you?
You are in a musical

I didn’t mind it at all
You were having a ball
This is a musical

And you were always there to catch me
You were always there to catch me
You were always there to catch me
You were always there to catch me
When I’d fall

I don’t mind it at all
If you’re having a ball
This is a musical

And I’ll always be there to catch you
I will always be there to catch you
I’ll always be there to catch you
I will always be there to catch you
You always be there to catch me
And there’s always someone to catch me
You always be there to catch me
You always there to catch me
When I’d fall

Mark Boulton, about Jesse James Garrett’s book: “The Elements of User Experience” [1]:

I’ve listed Garrett’s planes here, with my own description of each:

“Strategy: User Needs/Site Objectives”
The strategy layer is where it all starts. What do we need this website to do and deliver on? What is the proposition?

“Scope: Functional Specification/Content Requirements”
The strategy transforms into scope where the features and content are documented.

“Structure: Interaction Design/Information Architecture”
The structure layer is where the information is shaped. How does the whole site sit together?

“Skeleton: Information Design/Navigation/Interface Design”
The skeleton is the layer at which the interactions between the user and site are documented. What do people do on the site? More importantly, how do they do it?

“Surface: Visual Design”
This is where the color, typefaces, layout all come together to create the look and feel of the site.

[…]

Many also mistook this diagram as a process diagram. Agencies aligned their processes with Garrett’s five planes, and they assumed that meant that surface design came last.

Let’s be clear. From the position of graphic design, this model of UX is broken. It’s broken because graphic design is more than the look of something. It’s more than moving things around until they look right. Graphic design is a profession, a creative process, and a practice that has an established history.Graphic design is not decoration. It’s communication design, branding design, information design, packaging, and marketing. All of these things permeate the layer cake. They go way deeper than the surface plane; many go all the way to the bottom.

There’s a lot going on recently on a professional level. Between the requests from third parties to work as freelance on this or that project that I don’t have time to work on, and the questions raised during my daily job, I ended up questioning what kind of professional I am.

Not an easy question, and the answer might seem overly simplified, omitting a lot of shades of gray. Still, I think that contrast helps sometimes. I ended up opposing two profiles:

1. People who want to get involved in a project and get paid for it.
2. People who want to get paid and work on something for that amount of money.

Thinking about it, we might oscillate between both at times…

I would call the first Professional because their aim is to help people without the know‑how. They want to give satisfaction: to the people they work with first, then their own as a consequence. Workers will be here to do whatever is asked by the people they’re working for.

The first profile is more likely to be proactive and question ready‑made decisions in a constructive way, whereas people waiting for the paycheck will do whatever needs to be done to get the planned outcome, without much added value.

In this very narrowed down perspective, your profile might be summarized with one question: Do you care?