False Bottom
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.
376 topics found for:
“interface design”
Contrast Effect
The enhancement or diminishment of perception, cognition, or related performance as a result of exposure to a stimulus of greater or lesser value in the same dimension. Useful for designing interfaces that leverage contrasting elements to guide user attention and behavior.
Flexibility-Usability Tradeoff
A principle stating that as the flexibility of a system increases, its usability often decreases, and vice versa. Crucial for balancing versatility and ease of use in design.
Good Defaults
Pre-selected options in a user interface that are chosen to benefit the majority of users. Essential for simplifying decision-making and improving user experience by reducing the need for customization.
Visual Cueing
The use of visual elements to draw attention to important information or guide user actions. Important for enhancing user experience and ensuring key information is noticed.
Breakpoint System
A structured set of breakpoints used to create responsive designs that work seamlessly across multiple devices. Important for maintaining consistency and usability in responsive design.
Golden Ratio
A mathematical ratio, approximately 1.618:1, often used in design and art to create aesthetically pleasing compositions. Important for designing visually balanced and appealing layouts, leveraging natural aesthetics to enhance user experience.
Pre-Selected Options
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.
Consistency
The quality of being uniform and coherent across different elements and touchpoints in design. Crucial for creating predictable and reliable user experiences.
Frontstage
The parts of a service or product that are visible to and interact with the user, as opposed to the backstage operations. Important for designing user experiences that are engaging and effective.
Information Hierarchy
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.
Forced Enrollment
A dark pattern where users are forced to sign up for an account to complete a basic task. Designers should avoid this practice and provide optional account creation to respect user preferences.
Cognitive Load Theory
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.
HCI
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.
Principle of Scale
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.
Overchoice
The phenomenon where having too many options leads to decision-making paralysis and decreased satisfaction. Crucial for understanding and designing user interfaces that avoid overwhelming users with choices.
Conspicuity
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.
Connectedness
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.
Automaticity
The ability to perform actions or behaviors automatically due to learning, repetition, and practice. Important for understanding user habits and designing intuitive user interfaces.
Centre-Stage Effect
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.
F Pattern
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.
Mnemonic Device
A memory aid that helps individuals recall information through associations, patterns, or acronyms. Important for designing educational content and interfaces that enhance memory retention.
Banner Blindness
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.
Right Rail Blindness
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.
Aria Roles
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.
Page Parking
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.
Content-First Design
An approach to design where content is prioritized and designed before other elements like layout and visual design. Crucial for ensuring that the design supports and enhances the content.
Design Language
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.
Data-Driven Design
An approach to design that relies on data and analytics to inform decisions and measure success. Crucial for making informed design decisions that are backed by evidence.
Design Audit
A comprehensive review of a brand's design assets and practices to ensure consistency and effectiveness. Important for maintaining a cohesive and effective brand identity.
Inclusive Design
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.
Emotional Design
The practice of designing products that evoke specific emotional responses to enhance user experience and engagement. Crucial for creating deeply engaging and satisfying user experiences.
Adaptive Interfaces
User interfaces that change in response to user behavior or preferences to improve usability and efficiency. Crucial for creating personalized and efficient user experiences.
Sensory Design
The practice of creating products and environments that engage multiple senses, enhancing user experience and emotional connection. Crucial for designing immersive and impactful user experiences that go beyond visual appeal.
Anticipatory Design
A design approach that predicts user needs and actions to deliver proactive and personalized experiences. Crucial for creating seamless and intuitive user experiences.
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.
Heuristic Evaluation
A usability inspection method where experts review a user interface against a set of heuristics to identify usability issues. Crucial for identifying usability problems early in the design process.
Similarity
A Gestalt principle that states that objects that are similar in appearance are perceived as being more related than objects that are dissimilar. Essential for creating visually cohesive and intuitive designs.
Trigger
A prompt or cue that initiates a behavior or response, often used in behavior design to encourage specific actions. Crucial for designing systems that effectively prompt desired user behaviors.
Seven Stages of Action
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.
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.
Tesler’s Law
The principle stating that there is a limit to the amount of complexity that users can handle, and if designers don't manage complexity, users will. Crucial for designing user-friendly systems that manage complexity effectively.
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.
Dark Patterns
UI/UX design tactics that intentionally manipulate users into taking actions they might not otherwise take. Important for recognizing and avoiding unethical design practices.
Emergence
A key aspect of Gestalt psychology where complex patterns arise out of relatively simple interactions. Crucial for understanding how users perceive complex designs and patterns.
Principle of Contrast
A design principle that states that contrasting elements (such as color, shape, size) can be used to draw attention and create visual interest. Important for creating visually engaging and accessible designs that guide user attention effectively.
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
The phenomenon where users perceive aesthetically pleasing designs as more usable, regardless of the actual usability. Important for designers to understand the impact of aesthetics on user perception and usability.
Object Constancy
The principle that elements in a digital interface maintain consistent appearance, position, and behavior across different pages and states to help users maintain orientation and familiarity. Important for creating a stable and predictable user experience, reducing disorientation and enhancing usability.
Obfuscated Options
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.
Postel’s Law
A principle stating that a system should be liberal in what it accepts and conservative in what it sends, meaning it should handle user input flexibly while providing clear, consistent output, similar to the principle of fault tolerance. Essential for designing robust and user-friendly interfaces that accommodate a wide range of user inputs and behaviors while maintaining reliability and clarity in responses.
Common Region
A Gestalt principle where elements that are located within the same closed region are perceived as being grouped together. Essential for creating designs that are easily understood and visually organized.
Common Fate
A Gestalt principle stating that elements moving in the same direction are perceived as a group or a single entity. Crucial for creating visual designs that effectively convey movement and relationships.
von Restorff Effect
A phenomenon where an item that stands out is more likely to be remembered than other items, often used in design to highlight important elements. Crucial for designing interfaces that effectively capture user attention.
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.
Misdirection
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.
Clickability
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.
Signifier
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.
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.
Bait and Switch
A dark pattern where users think they are going to take one action, but a different, undesirable action happens instead. Designers must avoid this deceptive practice and be aware of its impact to ensure transparent user interactions.
Confirming Subscription
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.