The Layers of Design

From Andy Rutledge:

"Breaking the design process up into layers is a useful mechanism for ensuring that the effort is comprehensive and contextual. By starting with the most fundamental factors in the design and designing them to be contextually appropriate, you can build successive layers of the design on the right sort of foundation.

"Once you’ve got a clear picture of the client aims and desires, brand considerations, site and specific page purposes, target user habits and expectations and the different pages’ contents you can begin with the most fundamental layer. Different designers might categorize the layers differently, but my basic suggestion for layering would be:

• Information architecture - Start by deciding and/or planning for what information is available where, when, and under what conditions throughout the site.
• Interface behaviors - Specific behaviors are sometimes required or advisable for certain interface elements. These often affect the design effort from both a functional and visual standpoint.
• Visual hierarchy of the content - It’s often beneficial to provide clues to what’s most important on the page, next important, and so on.
• Layout - The fundamental visual framework to support the previously mentioned elements.
• Style - The look and feel of the page/site must support all of the above and tie things together neatly.
  

"Each layer is important and, done well, contributes to the wholeness of the design. Leave out one layer and the design will fail to reach its potential. One could go so far as to say, as I have on a few occasions, that designs that ignore one of these layers are simply poor designs."