Design Theory
The study of the principles and practices that inform and guide the design process. Essential for understanding the foundational concepts that underpin effective design.
The study of the principles and practices that inform and guide the design process. Essential for understanding the foundational concepts that underpin effective design.
The process of working together with others to generate creative ideas and solutions, leveraging diverse perspectives and skills. Essential for producing innovative and well-rounded design solutions.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) are integrated software systems that manage business processes across various departments, such as finance, HR, and supply chain. Essential for improving operational efficiency and providing a unified view of business operations.
The structural design of information environments, organizing and labeling content to support usability and findability. Essential for creating intuitive and navigable digital products.
The study of how individuals make choices among alternatives and the principles that guide these choices. Important for designing decision-making processes and interfaces that help users make informed choices.
A collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled to build any number of applications, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and efficiency across products.
User-Centered Design (UCD) is an iterative design approach that focuses on understanding users' needs, preferences, and limitations throughout the design process. Crucial for creating products that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying for the intended users.
A cognitive architecture model that explains how humans can learn and adapt to new tasks. Useful for understanding user learning and behavior adaptation, informing better user experience design.
A user experience that feels consistent and unified across different elements and touchpoints. Crucial for ensuring a seamless and engaging user journey.
The behavior of seeking information or resources based on social interactions and cues. Important for understanding how users gather information in social contexts and designing systems that support collaborative information seeking.
A design philosophy that emphasizes core design principles over rigid adherence to standardized processes. Essential for maintaining creativity and innovation in large-scale, process-driven environments.
The level of sophistication and integration of design practices within an organization's processes and culture. Essential for assessing and improving the effectiveness of design in driving business value and innovation.
A design principle that involves using relative size to indicate the importance of elements, creating visual hierarchy and focus. Crucial for guiding user attention and creating effective visual communication.
Specific roles assigned to HTML elements to define their purpose and behavior in an accessible manner. Crucial for improving the accessibility and usability of web applications.
An ongoing process of learning about user needs and validating assumptions through continuous research and experimentation. Crucial for staying responsive to user needs and improving products iteratively.
A design principle that suggests interfaces should minimize the need for users to recall information from memory, instead providing cues to aid recognition. Essential for creating user-friendly interfaces that reduce cognitive load and improve usability.
Data that provides information about other data, such as its content, format, and structure. Essential for organizing, managing, and retrieving digital assets and information efficiently in product design and development.
A type of testing conducted to determine if the requirements of a specification are met, often the final step before delivery to the customer. Important for ensuring that a product meets the defined criteria and is ready for release.
A writing style where the most important information is presented at the beginning, followed by supporting details in order of decreasing importance. Crucial for creating clear and effective information hierarchies in content design.
A cohesive system of visual and interaction design principles and guidelines that ensure consistency and coherence across a product or brand's interfaces and experiences. Essential for creating a unified and recognizable user experience, ensuring consistency, usability, and brand identity across all platforms and touchpoints.
The systematic process of capturing, evaluating, and implementing ideas to drive innovation, reflecting a collective commitment to continuous improvement and product excellence. Essential for harnessing team creativity and maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes successful product development.
A user experience design methodology focused on rapid iteration, collaboration, and learning through experimentation. Essential for creating user-centered designs efficiently and effectively.
A prioritized list of ideas and potential features for future product development, embodying a collective vision for innovation and improvement. Essential for managing creative input and maintaining an innovation pipeline that aligns with the team's entrepreneurial spirit and shared commitment to product excellence.
A team structure focused on delivering value streams, often organized around a specific business capability or customer need. Crucial for enhancing delivery efficiency and aligning with business goals.
A visual or auditory cue that indicates how to interact with an element in the user interface. Crucial for enhancing usability by clearly communicating the purpose and function of UI elements.
The practice of linking one page of a website to another page on the same website, improving navigation, user experience, and SEO. Essential for enhancing website structure, user engagement, and search engine optimization.
SAFe is a framework designed to scale agile practices across large organizations by integrating agile and lean principles. It is widely used but criticized for its rigidity, bureaucratic structure, and potential to stifle true agile culture.
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with each other. Crucial for creating a cohesive and intuitive user experience.
The process of evaluating and categorizing potential customers based on their likelihood to purchase. Essential for prioritizing sales efforts and improving conversion rates.
The design of interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. Crucial for creating engaging and user-friendly digital experiences.
Reasons to Believe (RTB) is a marketing concept that refers to the evidence or arguments that support a product's claims and persuade consumers of its benefits. Essential for building trust and credibility with customers.
A distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development. Essential for collaborative development and managing codebase evolution in digital product design.
A model by Don Norman outlining the cognitive steps users take when interacting with a system: goal formation, planning, specifying, performing, perceiving, interpreting, and comparing. Important for designing user-friendly and effective products by understanding and supporting user behavior at each stage.
User Experience (UX) refers to the overall experience of a person using a product, system, or service, encompassing all aspects of the end-user's interaction. Crucial for creating products that are not only functional but also enjoyable, efficient, and satisfying to use.
Customer Experience Management (CEM) is the process of managing and improving the interactions and experiences customers have with a brand across all touchpoints. This process is essential for building strong customer relationships and enhancing brand loyalty.
A concept that humans make decisions within the limits of their knowledge, cognitive capacity, and available time, leading to satisficing rather than optimal solutions. Crucial for designing systems and processes that account for human cognitive limitations and decision-making processes.
Feature Driven Development (FDD) is an agile methodology focused on designing and building features based on client-valued functionality. Essential for delivering client-valued features efficiently and effectively.
Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is an AI method that solves new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems. This approach is essential for developing intelligent systems that learn from past experiences to improve problem-solving capabilities.
A collection of reusable UI components that can be used to build applications. Helps in maintaining consistency and efficiency in the design and development process.
Narrative descriptions of how users might interact with a product or system to achieve specific goals, used to inform design and development. Important for understanding user needs and ensuring the design supports their tasks and goals.
The process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating potential threats that could impact the success of a digital product, including usability issues, technical failures, and user data security. Essential for maintaining product reliability, user satisfaction, and data protection, while minimizing the impact of potential design and development challenges.
The process of making tools, methods, and knowledge accessible to a broader range of people within an organization or community, allowing non-specialists to participate and contribute meaningfully. Important for fostering inclusivity, enhancing collaboration, and leveraging diverse perspectives to improve outcomes across various disciplines.
The process of setting short-term objectives and determining the actions needed to achieve them. Critical for aligning daily operations with strategic goals.
An environment used for testing software to identify issues and ensure quality before production deployment. Important for detecting and fixing bugs to ensure the software's reliability and performance.
The process of transitioning an organization to agile methodologies, including changes in culture, processes, and practices. Essential for organizations seeking to adopt agile practices for improved efficiency and responsiveness.
A quick and often temporary fix applied to a software product to address an urgent issue without going through the full development cycle. Essential for maintaining the stability and functionality of digital products in the face of critical issues.
A standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign, where visitors land after clicking on a link. Crucial for converting visitors into leads or customers.
The process of enabling users to take control of their interactions with a product or system, enhancing their confidence and satisfaction. Crucial for designing systems that provide users with the tools and information they need to make informed decisions.
A structured communication technique originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. Important for gathering expert opinions and making informed decisions.
Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won't have (MoSCoW) is a method used to prioritize features or tasks. Crucial for effective project management and ensuring focus on essential features.
A set of practices and principles that guide agile methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban, to improve project management and product development. Important for structuring agile practices and ensuring effective project delivery.
A phenomenon where learning is improved when study sessions are spaced out over time rather than crammed together. Crucial for designing educational and training programs that enhance long-term retention.
A problem-solving method that explores all possible solutions by examining the structure and relationships of different variables. Useful for generating innovative design solutions and exploring a wide range of possibilities in digital product development.
A type of artificial intelligence that enables systems to learn from data and improve over time without being explicitly programmed. Crucial for developing intelligent systems that can make data-driven decisions.
The cues and hints that users follow to find information online, based on perceived relevance and usefulness. Important for designing intuitive navigation and content structures that align with user expectations.
The belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task, influencing motivation and behavior. Crucial for designing systems that enhance user confidence and encourage goal achievement.
A development environment where software is created and modified. Crucial for allowing developers to build and experiment with new features.
A phenomenon where new information interferes with the ability to recall previously learned information, affecting memory retention. Crucial for understanding memory dynamics and designing educational or training programs.
The series of actions or operations involved in the acquisition, interpretation, storage, and retrieval of information. Crucial for understanding how users handle information and designing systems that align with cognitive processes.
A clear and concise list of criteria that a product or task must meet to be considered complete, ensuring alignment and understanding within a team. Essential for maintaining quality and consistency in agile project management.