Product Architecture
The structural design of a product, defining its components, their relationships, and how they interact to fulfill the product's purpose. Important for ensuring that a product is well-organized, scalable, and maintainable.
The structural design of a product, defining its components, their relationships, and how they interact to fulfill the product's purpose. Important for ensuring that a product is well-organized, scalable, and maintainable.
The practice of drawing inspiration from sources outside of one's field to generate creative ideas. Useful for fostering creativity and innovation in design and product development.
The ability of a UI component to adjust its appearance and behavior based on different contexts or devices. Crucial for responsive design and ensuring a consistent user experience.
A reading pattern where users focus on individual elements or "spots" of interest on a page, rather than following a linear path. Crucial for designing engaging and attention-grabbing content layouts.
Numeronym for the word "Accessibility" (A + 11 letters + Y), designing for ease of use by all people, ensuring equal access to those with disabilities. Crucial for ensuring inclusivity and compliance with accessibility standards.
The study of the interplay between individuals and their surroundings, including built environments and natural settings. Essential for designing spaces that enhance well-being and productivity.
A design flaw where users mistakenly believe they have reached the end of the content due to a misleading visual cue. Crucial for ensuring content is properly signposted to avoid user confusion and ensure thorough exploration.
A key aspect of Gestalt psychology describing the mind's ability to fill in gaps to create a whole object from incomplete elements. Crucial for designing creative and engaging visuals that are both pleasing to the eye and cleverly satisfying to the mind.
The perceived affordance of an element to be clickable, indicating that it can be interacted with. Essential for improving user interface design and guiding user actions.
A navigation design pattern where users follow a specific order of steps or stages to complete a task, often used in forms, surveys, and instructional guides. Essential for guiding users through processes in a clear and structured manner, improving usability.
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate how well their thoughts, feelings, and emotions are understood by others. Crucial for designing communication and user interfaces that account for and mitigate this bias.
A framework inspired by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, applied to user experience design, prioritizing basic functionality and reliability before enhancing usability and delight. Essential for creating well-rounded and satisfying user experiences.
Ensuring that color choices in design are inclusive and usable by people with color vision deficiencies. Crucial for creating accessible and inclusive designs.
The idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up. Useful for designing user experiences that consider the limitations of willpower and self-control.
Design strategies aimed at preventing user errors before they occur. Crucial for enhancing usability and ensuring a smooth user experience.
The ratio of interactive elements (links, buttons) to the number of goals on a landing page. Important for optimizing landing page design to improve conversion rates.
Replacing one UI component with another, often used in adaptive or dynamic interfaces. Crucial for maintaining flexibility and adaptability in UI design.
A dark pattern where repetitive notifications or prompts are used to wear down user resistance. Recognizing the annoyance of this tactic is important to maintain respectful user interactions and avoid interruptions.
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.
The study of the nature, functions, and effects of cinema, exploring how films communicate and create meaning. Useful for understanding narrative and visual techniques that can be applied in multimedia design.
The arrangement of information in a way that prioritizes the most important content, guiding users through the information in a logical order. Crucial for creating clear and navigable interfaces that enhance user experience.
Tell, Don't Ask (TDA) is a design principle in software engineering that promotes encapsulation by having objects handle their own data and actions. Essential for maintaining object-oriented integrity and reducing dependencies in the code.
A team focused on designing and improving the user experience across products and services. Essential for ensuring cohesive and high-quality user experiences.
The study of the relationships between people, practices, values, and technologies within an information environment. Helps in understanding and designing systems that are sustainable and adaptive to human and environmental changes.
A series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, creating a pattern found in nature and various fields. Useful for understanding natural growth patterns, efficient estimation techniques, and its relationship to the aesthetically pleasing Golden Ratio.
The minimum difference in stimulus intensity that a person can detect, also known as the just noticeable difference (JND). Crucial for designing user interfaces that are sensitive to changes in user input and feedback.
A phenomenon where vivid mental images can interfere with actual perception, causing individuals to mistake imagined experiences for real ones. Important for ensuring that marketing and product design set realistic user expectations to avoid disappointment and maintain brand integrity.
The drive to perform an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. Crucial for designing experiences that engage users through inherent enjoyment and interest.
The process of quickly creating a preliminary version of a product to test and validate ideas before full-scale development. Important for validating design concepts and gathering user feedback early.
A pop-up dialog that appears when a user attempts to leave a page or application, which can be used to prevent loss of progress or data, or to confirm user intent. While it can be used ethically to prevent data loss or confirm actions, designers must avoid using it to deceive, delay, block, or interfere with the user's intent, thus ensuring it does not become a dark pattern.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of designing interfaces and interactions between humans and computers. It ensures that digital products are user-friendly, efficient, and satisfying.
The study of how people interact with their environment and products, aiming to improve comfort, efficiency, and safety. Crucial for designing user-friendly and safe products and workspaces.
A schedule of reinforcement where a desired behavior is reinforced every time it occurs, promoting quick learning and behavior maintenance. Important for designing systems that encourage consistent user behavior.
The tendency for individuals to recall information that is consistent with their current mood. Important for understanding how mood affects memory and designing experiences that account for emotional states.
A psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow that outlines a five-tier model of human needs, ranging from basic physiological needs to self-actualization. Crucial for designing products and services that address various levels of user needs.
A common pattern of eye movement where users scan web content in an "F" shape, focusing on the top and left side of the page. Crucial for designing web content that aligns with natural reading patterns to improve engagement.
A memory aid that helps individuals recall information through associations, patterns, or acronyms. Important for designing educational content and interfaces that enhance memory retention.
A dark pattern where users are shown a preview of content that is then gated behind a paywall or sign-up. It's crucial to avoid this misleading practice and be transparent about access requirements.
The study of how colors affect perceptions and behaviors. Important for designing experiences that evoke desired emotional responses from users.
The tendency for people to pay more attention to items placed in the center of a visual field. Crucial for designing layouts that maximize visibility and impact of key elements.
A Gestalt principle suggesting that elements are perceived as a single unit or group if they share an organizing visual cue like bullet points, or connecting lines. Essential for creating designs that organize and define related elements through grouping.
The study of computers as persuasive technologies, focusing on how they can change attitudes or behaviors. Important for designing systems that effectively influence user behavior ethically.
A dark pattern where it's easy to subscribe but very difficult to cancel the subscription. Awareness of this tactic is important to provide straightforward and user-friendly subscription management.
A reading pattern where users skip over certain sections of content, often due to a lack of perceived relevance. Crucial for designing content that is engaging and relevant to prevent users from bypassing important information.
A technique that visualizes the process users go through to achieve a goal with a product or service. Essential for identifying pain points and optimizing user interactions to improve overall experience.
Model-View-Controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern that separates an application into three main logical components: the Model (data), the View (user interface), and the Controller (processes that handle input). Essential for creating modular, maintainable, and scalable software applications by promoting separation of concerns.
Capability, Opportunity, Motivation (COM...) is a framework for understanding Behavior (àB). Important for designing interventions that effectively change user behavior.
A strategy where less immediate or tangible rewards are substituted with more immediate or tangible ones to encourage desired behaviors. Important for designing systems that leverage immediate incentives to promote long-term goals.
The ability of an object to stand out and attract attention within its environment. Important for designing elements that need to be easily noticed by users.
A theory that explains how information is processed through different sensory modalities, such as visual, auditory, and tactile. Important for designing user experiences that engage multiple senses for better interaction and understanding.
A theory that explains how the amount of mental effort required to process information can impact user experience and task performance. Important for designing user interfaces that minimize unnecessary cognitive effort, enhancing usability and user satisfaction.
A cognitive bias where someone mistakenly assumes that others have the same background knowledge they do. Essential for designers to ensure communications and products are clear and accessible to all users, regardless of their background knowledge.
The phenomenon where a humanoid object that appears almost, but not exactly, like a real human causes discomfort in observers. Important for understanding user reactions to lifelike robots and avatars.
The study of how people acquire knowledge, skills, and behaviors through experience, practice, and instruction. Useful for creating educational content and interactive tutorials that enhance user learning.
The study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception. Useful for understanding and applying narrative techniques in design and communication.
The process of designing and refining prompts to elicit accurate and relevant responses from AI models. Crucial for optimizing the performance of AI applications.
The practice of keeping multiple web pages open in browser tabs for future reference or action. Important for understanding user behavior and designing for multi-tab usage.
A specific form of banner blindness where users ignore content placed in the right-hand rail of a web page. Important for optimizing web page layouts and placing critical information where it will be seen.
A phenomenon where users consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information or advertisements on websites. Important for designing effective web content that captures user attention.
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.