Design Canon
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
A reusable solution to common design problems that provides a standard way of addressing recurring issues in design. Essential for creating consistent and efficient design solutions.
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.
The process where design services and outputs become standardized and interchangeable, often leading to competition based primarily on price rather than quality or creativity. Important for understanding market trends and pressures that reduce the perceived value and uniqueness of design work, impacting pricing and differentiation strategies.
A collection of design patterns that provides solutions to common design problems. Useful for standardizing design solutions and promoting best practices across projects.
A common solution to a recurring problem that is ineffective and counterproductive, often resulting in negative consequences. Important for recognizing and avoiding poor design practices and improving overall design quality.
The principles and guidelines that govern the moral and ethical aspects of design, ensuring that designs are socially responsible and beneficial. Crucial for creating designs that are ethical, inclusive, and socially responsible.
The accumulated consequences of poor design decisions, which can hinder future development and usability. Crucial for understanding and addressing the long-term impact of design choices.
Crit (Design Critique) is a structured feedback session where designers present their work and receive constructive feedback from peers. Essential for refining design quality through collaborative input.
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.
The orchestration and optimization of design operations to improve efficiency, quality, and impact of the design function within an organization. Crucial for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of design teams.
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.
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is an approach to problem-solving that involves the human perspective in all steps of the process. It ensures designs are user-friendly and meet actual user needs.
An activity during a design audit where printed screens representing customer journeys are reviewed collaboratively with stakeholders to assess design quality and identify areas for improvement. Essential for ensuring design consistency, gathering feedback, and making informed decisions on design enhancements.
A dark pattern where it's easy to get into a situation but hard to get out of it, such as signing up for a service but finding it difficult to cancel. Awareness of this tactic is crucial to design fair user experiences with straightforward entry and exit points.
A type of usability testing conducted at the end of the design process to evaluate the effectiveness and overall user experience. Important for assessing the final design's usability and identifying any remaining issues.
The quality of being uniform and coherent across different elements and touchpoints in design. Crucial for creating predictable and reliable user experiences.
The use of icons or graphical symbols to represent objects, actions, or concepts, enhancing usability and visual communication. Crucial for creating intuitive and accessible user interfaces.
A system of design variables used to maintain consistency in a design system, such as colors, fonts, and spacing. Crucial for ensuring uniformity and scalability in design across different platforms and products.
Emerging patterns and movements in design that gain popularity and influence on a global scale. Important for staying current with industry standards and innovating design practices.
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.
A design philosophy that considers the diverse needs and abilities of all users, aiming to create products that are accessible to everyone. Crucial for ensuring that products are usable and accessible by the widest possible audience.
The practice of designing applications specifically for a particular operating system or platform, leveraging its unique features and capabilities. Important for delivering high-performance and responsive user experiences.
A framework that incorporates privacy considerations into the design and development of products and services from the outset. Crucial for ensuring user privacy and compliance with data protection regulations.
A dark pattern where the user interface is manipulated in a way that prioritizes certain actions over others to benefit the company. It's crucial to avoid this tactic and design fair interfaces without manipulating user actions.
The consistent spacing of text and elements in a design to create a harmonious and readable layout. Crucial for improving readability and visual appeal in design.
A dark pattern where the design focuses the user's attention on one thing to distract them from another. Designers should avoid this deceptive tactic and ensure user attention is not unfairly diverted.
A dark pattern where the user is required to do something in order to access certain functionality or information. Designers must avoid compulsory actions and provide optional choices to respect user autonomy.
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with external standards or other products. Important for ensuring compatibility and user familiarity across different systems.
The design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities or specific needs. Crucial for creating inclusive products that can be used by everyone, including those with disabilities.
A type of usability testing conducted during the design process to identify issues and improve the design iteratively. Crucial for refining designs and ensuring usability before final release.
The process of comparing design metrics to historical performance, competitive standards, or industry best practices to identify areas for improvement. Crucial for measuring progress, improving practice maturity, and evaluating competitive differentiation.
UI/UX design tactics that intentionally manipulate users into taking actions they might not otherwise take. Important for recognizing and avoiding unethical design practices.
A set of ten general principles for user interface design created by Jakob Nielsen to improve usability. Essential for evaluating and improving user interface designs.
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.
A dark pattern where users are tricked into confirming a subscription through misleading language or design. It's crucial to avoid misleading users and ensure clear communication about subscription terms and conditions.
A dark pattern where a product sneaks an additional item into the user's shopping cart, often through a pre-selected checkbox. Designers should avoid this practice and ensure users have full control over their purchases to maintain trust.
A dark pattern where options to opt out or cancel services are deliberately hidden or made difficult to find. It's essential to avoid hiding options and provide clear, accessible choices for users to manage their preferences.
Ensuring that color choices in design are inclusive and usable by people with color vision deficiencies. Crucial for creating accessible and inclusive designs.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web. Essential for creating and maintaining protocols and guidelines that enable the Web to function and evolve.
Information provided by users about their experience with a product, used to inform improvements and adjustments. Crucial for continuous improvement and user-centered design.
A dark pattern where options that benefit the service provider are pre-selected for the user. Designers should avoid default selections and ensure users make active choices that are in their best interest.
A strategic framework that designs user experiences to guide behavior and decisions towards desired outcomes. Crucial for creating effective and ethical influence in digital interfaces.
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 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.
Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a workflow, using standardized symbols and notations. Essential for creating clear, standardized diagrams that facilitate understanding and communication of business processes in digital product design.
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 structure or framework used to create effective prompts for AI systems, ensuring clarity and context. Important for standardizing and improving AI prompt design.
Specific attributes used to enhance the accessibility of web content and applications by providing additional information to assistive technologies. Crucial for making dynamic web content more accessible to users with disabilities.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of attributes that enhance the accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. Essential for making web applications more usable and inclusive.
The study and application of ethical considerations in the development, implementation, and use of technology. Crucial for ensuring that technological advancements align with ethical standards and societal values.
Adhering to laws, regulations, and guidelines relevant to business operations and product development. Crucial for ensuring products and practices meet legal and ethical standards.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of guidelines developed by WAI to make web content more accessible. Essential for ensuring that websites are usable by individuals with disabilities, thereby promoting inclusivity and compliance with accessibility standards.
Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) is a language used for modeling business processes, enabling the design and implementation of process-based applications. Important for defining complex business processes and ensuring their effective implementation in digital products.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a method used to transform customer needs into engineering characteristics for a product or service. Essential for ensuring that customer requirements are systematically incorporated into the design and development process.
3-Tiered Architecture is a software design pattern that separates an application into three layers: presentation, logic, and data. Crucial for improving scalability, maintainability, and flexibility in software development.
A collection of pre-written code and tools that provide a foundation for building the front end of websites and applications, such as Bootstrap or React. Crucial for streamlining the development process and ensuring consistency.
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.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is a program developed by W3C to improve web accessibility. Essential for creating guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
A statistical measure that quantifies the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values. Essential for understanding data spread and variability, which helps in making informed decisions in product design and analysis.