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.