Generative Research
Research aimed at exploring and identifying new opportunities, needs, and ideas to inform the design process. Essential for discovering user insights and guiding innovative design solutions.
803 topics found for:
“design understanding”
Illusory Superiority
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate their own abilities, qualities, or performance relative to others. Important for understanding user self-perception and designing systems that account for inflated self-assessments.
Decision Utility
The value or satisfaction derived from a decision, influencing the choices people make. Crucial for understanding user preferences and designing experiences that maximize satisfaction.
Storyboard
A visual representation of a sequence of events or user interactions, used to plan and communicate the flow of a narrative or process. Important for visualizing and communicating design concepts and user journeys.
Iconic Memory
A type of sensory memory that briefly holds visual information for a fraction of a second. Useful for understanding how users process visual information and designing interfaces accordingly.
Constancy
The perception of objects as unchanging despite changes in sensory input, such as changes in lighting, distance, or angle. Important for understanding user perception and designing stable visual experiences.
Omission Bias
A cognitive bias where people judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions). Important for understanding user decision-making and designing systems that mitigate this bias.
Placement Bias
A cognitive bias where people overemphasize information that is placed prominently or in a way that catches their attention first. Crucial for designing interfaces and information displays that manage user attention effectively.
Accot-Zhai Steering Law
A model predicting the speed-accuracy trade-off in pointing tasks when using devices like a mouse, important for user interface design. Useful for designing user interfaces that are efficient and easy to navigate.
Visual Hierarchy
The arrangement of visual elements in a way that signifies their importance, guiding users' attention to the most critical parts of a design. Essential for creating effective and intuitive user interfaces that enhance usability and user experience.
Heuristic
A rule-of-thumb or shortcut that simplifies decision-making and problem-solving processes. Essential for designing user-friendly interfaces that facilitate quick and efficient decision-making.
Problem Space
The context and set of conditions surrounding a problem that needs to be solved. Essential for understanding the full scope of a problem and identifying potential solutions.
Limited Attention
The concept that humans have a finite capacity for attention, influencing how they perceive and interact with information. Crucial for designing user experiences that are not overwhelming and facilitate focus.
Negativity Bias
The tendency to give more weight to negative experiences or information than positive ones. Crucial for understanding user behavior and designing systems that balance positive and negative feedback.
Screen Density
The number of pixels per inch (PPI) on a display, affecting the sharpness and clarity of visual elements. Crucial for optimizing visual content for different devices.
Projection Bias
The tendency to overestimate how much our future preferences and behaviors will align with our current preferences and behaviors. Important for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that account for changes over time.
Law of the Instrument
Also known as "Maslow's Hammer," a cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on a familiar tool or method, often summarized as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.". Important for designers to recognize and avoid over-reliance on familiar methods in problem-solving and design.
Mental Accounting
A behavioral economics concept where people categorize and treat money differently depending on its source or intended use. Crucial for understanding financial behavior and designing systems that align with users' mental accounting practices.
Think-Aloud Protocol
A usability testing method where participants verbalize their thoughts while interacting with a product. Essential for understanding user thought processes and identifying usability issues.
Scarcity Tactics
A dark pattern where availability is falsely limited to pressure users into making a purchase. Awareness of this deceptive practice is important to provide honest information about product availability.
Directed Cognition
The process by which attention is guided by internal goals and external stimuli, affecting how information is processed and remembered. Useful for designing user interfaces that direct user attention effectively.
Horn Effect
A cognitive bias where one negative trait of a person or thing influences the perception of other traits. Important for designing experiences that counteract or mitigate negative biases in user perception.
Homo Economicus
A theoretical concept in economics that portrays humans as rational and self-interested agents who aim to maximize their utility. Important for understanding economic decision-making and designing systems that align with rational behavior.
Poka-Yoke Principle
A Japanese term for "mistake-proofing," referring to any mechanism or process that helps prevent errors by design. Crucial for designing systems and processes that minimize the risk of human error.
Product Critique
A structured evaluation process where a product's design, functionality, and user experience are assessed, often by peers or experts. Essential for identifying areas for improvement and fostering a culture of continuous enhancement.
Goldilocks Effect
The psychological phenomenon where people prefer options that are not too extreme, but just right. Crucial for designing products and experiences that cater to the majority preference.
Normalcy Bias
The tendency to believe that things will always function the way they normally have, often leading to underestimation of disaster risks. Important for understanding risk perception and designing systems that effectively communicate potential changes.
Herd Behavior
The tendency for individuals to mimic the actions of a larger group, often leading to conformity and groupthink. Crucial for understanding social influence and designing experiences that consider group dynamics.
Declarative Memory
A type of long-term memory involving information that can be consciously recalled, such as facts and events. Important for understanding how users retain and recall information in design.
Tiny Habits
A behavior change method that encourages the adoption of small, easy-to-do habits that can lead to larger, sustainable behavior changes. Important for designing systems that support gradual and sustainable behavior change.
Repetition Blindness
A phenomenon where people fail to recognize a repeated item in a visual sequence, impacting information processing and perception. Important for understanding visual perception and designing interfaces that avoid repetitive confusion.
Multistability
A key aspect of Gestalt psychology that explains the tendency for ambiguous images to pop back and forth unstably between alternative interpretations in the mind. Important for understanding visual perception and designing interfaces that avoid ambiguity.
Expectation Effect
The phenomenon where individuals' expectations about a situation influence their actual experience of that situation. Useful for understanding the influence of expectations on outcomes.
Wayfinding
The process of designing intuitive navigation systems within a digital product that help users easily understand their current location, navigate to desired destinations, and efficiently complete tasks. Crucial for enhancing user experience, reducing cognitive load, and ensuring users can achieve their goals seamlessly.
Positivity Effect
A cognitive bias where individuals tend to focus on positive information or events more than negative ones, especially as they age. Useful for understanding user preferences and designing experiences that emphasize positive outcomes.
Ratio Bias
A cognitive bias where people judge the likelihood of an event based on its relative size rather than absolute probability. Important for understanding user decision-making biases and designing systems that present information accurately.
Rule of Three
A writing and design principle that suggests that things grouped in threes are more satisfying, effective, and memorable for audiences. Important for creating impactful and memorable content and designs.
Hidden Subscription
A dark pattern where users are unknowingly signed up for a recurring subscription. Awareness of this tactic is important to ensure transparent subscription services and prevent deceptive charges.
Impact Bias
The tendency to overestimate the duration or intensity of the emotional impact of future events. Important for understanding user expectations and satisfaction.
Truth Bias
The tendency for people to believe that others are telling the truth, leading to a general assumption of honesty in communication. Important for understanding communication dynamics and designing systems that account for this bias.
Secondary Reinforcer
A stimulus that gains reinforcing properties through association with a primary reinforcer, such as money or tokens, which are associated with basic needs. Essential for understanding complex behavior reinforcement strategies and designing effective reward systems.
MINDSPACE
Messenger, Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, Affect, Commitment, and Ego (MINDSPACE) is a framework used to understand and influence behavior. Crucial for designing interventions that effectively influence user behavior.
Hedonic Adaptation
The observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. Useful for designing experiences that maintain user engagement and satisfaction over time.
Less Is Better Effect
A cognitive bias where people prefer a smaller set of higher-quality options over a larger set with lower overall quality. Useful for designing product offerings and experiences that emphasize quality over quantity for users.
Peltzman Effect
The hypothesis that safety measures may lead to behavioral changes that offset the benefits of the measures, potentially leading to risk compensation. Crucial for understanding risk behavior and designing systems that account for compensatory behaviors.
Closure
A Gestalt principle where the mind completes incomplete figures to form a whole, aiding in the perception of shapes and objects. Crucial for designing visual elements that are easily understood by users.
Suffix Effect
The phenomenon where people have a reduced ability to recall the last items in a list when additional, unrelated information is added at the end. Crucial for designing information presentation to optimize memory retention.
Intention Action Gap
The discrepancy between what people intend to do and what they actually do. Crucial for designing interventions that bridge the gap between user intentions and actions.
Egocentric Bias
A cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on their own perspective and experiences when making decisions. Important for designers to recognize and mitigate their own perspectives influencing design decisions.
Layer Cake Pattern
A reading pattern where users scan a page in horizontal stripes, focusing on headings and subheadings. Important for structuring content in a way that facilitates quick scanning and information retrieval.
Iconography
The visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a subject, often used in design to communicate ideas quickly and effectively. Important for creating cohesive and meaningful visual systems.
Fresh Start Effect
A cognitive phenomenon where people are more likely to pursue goals or change behavior following a temporal landmark (e.g., new year, birthday). Useful for designing interventions and features that leverage these moments to encourage positive behavior.
Mere Exposure Effect
A psychological phenomenon where people develop a preference for things simply because they are familiar with them. Crucial for designing user experiences that leverage familiarity to increase user comfort and satisfaction.
Decision Fatigue
The deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making, due to mental exhaustion. Important for designing interfaces that minimize cognitive load and simplify decision processes.
Framing Bias
A cognitive bias where people's decisions are influenced by how information is presented rather than just the information itself. Crucial for designers to minimize bias in how information is presented to users.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. Crucial for understanding cognitive biases that affect user decision-making and designing interventions to mitigate them.
Worse-Than-Average Effect
A cognitive bias where individuals underestimate their own abilities and performance relative to others, believing they are worse than average. Important for understanding self-perception biases among designers and designing systems that support accurate self-assessment.
Information Processing
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.
Change Blindness
A phenomenon where users fail to notice significant changes in their visual field. Important for understanding and designing around potential user perception issues.
Attribution Theory
A theory that explains how individuals determine the causes of behavior and events, including the distinction between internal and external attributions. Crucial for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that address both internal and external factors.