A document that defines the functionality, behavior, and features of a system or component. Important for providing clear requirements and expectations for product design and development teams, ensuring alignment and successful project outcomes.
A methodology for creating design systems by breaking down interfaces into their basic components (atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages). Essential for creating scalable and maintainable design systems.
A systematic process for determining and addressing needs or gaps between current conditions and desired outcomes. Important for identifying user requirements and guiding the development of digital products that meet those needs.
The practice of using data analytics and metrics to make informed decisions, focusing on measurable outcomes and efficiency rather than intuition or traditional methods. Important for optimizing design processes, improving product performance, and making data-driven decisions that enhance user experience and business success.
An overarching idea or theme that guides the design process, providing direction and coherence to the final product. Essential for ensuring that all design elements align with a central vision and purpose.
A consensus-building technique where participants show their level of agreement or support by raising zero to five fingers. Useful for quickly gauging team agreement and making collaborative decisions in product design and development meetings.
The set of shared values, practices, and goals that characterize a startup company. Important for fostering innovation, agility, and a collaborative environment within product design teams.
Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) is a data-driven improvement cycle used in Six Sigma. Crucial for systematically improving processes and ensuring quality in digital product development.
A deployment strategy where a new version is released to a small subset of users to detect any issues before a full rollout. Crucial for minimizing risk and ensuring the stability of digital products during updates and deployments.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model where applications are hosted by a service provider and accessed over the Internet. Crucial for enabling scalable and cost-effective software solutions for users.
A set of criteria that a user story or task must meet before being accepted into the development cycle, ensuring it is actionable and clear. Essential for ensuring that tasks are well-defined and ready for development.
The ability of a system to maintain its state and data across sessions, ensuring continuity and consistency in user experience. Crucial for designing reliable and user-friendly systems that retain data and settings across interactions.
Application Support Engineer (ASE) is a professional responsible for maintaining and supporting software applications, ensuring their availability and performance. Crucial for ensuring the reliability and user satisfaction of digital products through effective support and maintenance.
A statistical technique that uses random sampling and statistical modeling to estimate mathematical functions and simulate systems. Useful for risk assessment, decision-making, and performance optimization in digital product design.
An approach to information architecture that begins with high-level structures and breaks them down into detailed components. Helps in creating a clear and organized framework from the outset, ensuring consistency and coherence.
A dark pattern where the user is tricked into publicly sharing more information about themselves than they intended. Designers must avoid this deceptive practice and ensure clear, consensual data sharing to respect user privacy.
An approach to design that aligns design activities with strategic business goals, ensuring that design contributes to overall organizational success. Essential for integrating design into the strategic planning process and achieving business objectives.
The process of continuously improving a product's performance, usability, and value through data-driven decisions and iterative enhancements. Crucial for ensuring that a product remains competitive and meets evolving user needs.
A methodology that focuses on minimizing waste and maximizing value in business processes. Essential for improving efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction by eliminating non-value-adding activities.
A cross-functional team focused on solving customer problems and achieving business outcomes, with a strong emphasis on discovery, experimentation, and continuous improvement. Crucial for creating valuable and innovative products that meet user needs and drive business success through iterative development and close collaboration with stakeholders.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures used to evaluate the success of an organization, employee, or project in meeting objectives for performance. Essential for tracking progress, making informed decisions, and aligning efforts with strategic goals across various business functions, including product design and development.
A prioritization framework used to assess and compare the value a feature will deliver to users against the complexity and cost of implementing it. Crucial for making informed decisions about feature prioritization and resource allocation.
A list of tasks and deliverables that a team commits to completing during a sprint, providing a clear focus and scope for the sprint's duration. Essential for organizing and prioritizing work within an Agile sprint.
A prioritization technique where stakeholders use a limited budget to "buy" features they believe are most valuable, helping to prioritize the development roadmap. Useful for involving stakeholders in the decision-making process and aligning development priorities with business value.
Large Language Model (LLM) is an advanced artificial intelligence system trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like text. Essential for natural language processing tasks, content generation, and enhancing human-computer interactions across various applications in product design and development.
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.
The practice of quickly testing and iterating on ideas to validate assumptions and learn from user feedback in a short time frame. Essential for agile development and making data-driven decisions efficiently.
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.
The process of making predictions about future trends based on current and historical data. Useful for anticipating user needs and market trends to inform design decisions.
A strategic planning tool that outlines the future direction of a project or product using Kanban principles, emphasizing continuous delivery and improvement. Important for aligning team efforts and maintaining focus on long-term goals.
Business-to-Business-to-Business (B2B2B), a business model where businesses sell products or services to other businesses that then sell them to additional businesses. Crucial for understanding multi-tiered business relationships and strategies.
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.
Cost of Delay (CoD) is a metric that quantifies the economic impact of delaying a project, feature, or task. Important for making informed decisions about project prioritization and resource allocation.
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 Lean methodology concept identifying seven types of waste in processes to improve efficiency. Valuable for product managers and engineers to optimize processes and eliminate inefficiencies.
An interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data. Essential for driving data-informed decision making, predicting trends, and uncovering valuable insights in digital product design and development.
The spread and pattern of data values in a dataset, often visualized through graphs or statistical measures. Critical for understanding the characteristics of data and informing appropriate analysis techniques in digital product development.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction based on their likelihood to recommend a product or service to others. Crucial for gauging overall customer sentiment and predicting business growth through customer advocacy.
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.
The phenomenon where individuals' expectations about a situation influence their actual experience of that situation. Useful for understanding the influence of expectations on outcomes.
A symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution of data where most observations cluster around the mean. Fundamental in statistics and crucial for many analytical techniques used in digital product design and data-driven decision making.
Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) is a prioritization method used in agile and lean methodologies to maximize value by comparing the cost of delay to the duration of tasks. Essential for effectively prioritizing work to ensure the highest value tasks are completed first.
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.
A visual technique used in Agile development to arrange user stories in a way that helps teams understand the user journey and prioritize work effectively. Crucial for ensuring that development efforts are aligned with user needs and priorities throughout the project.
A team responsible for developing and maintaining the foundational systems and services that support other teams and products. Crucial for ensuring scalability and efficiency across the organization.
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.
Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task (HEART) is a framework used to measure and improve user experience success. Important for systematically evaluating and enhancing user experience.
Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is a methodology that uses visual modeling to support system requirements, design, analysis, and validation activities throughout the development lifecycle. Essential for managing complex systems, improving communication among stakeholders, and enhancing the overall quality and efficiency of systems engineering processes.
An agile methodology focused on delivering value to the customer through principles such as eliminating waste, amplifying learning, and delivering as fast as possible. Crucial for improving efficiency and effectiveness in software development processes.
Application Release Automation (ARA) is the process of automating the release of applications, ensuring consistency and reducing errors. Crucial for accelerating the delivery of software updates and maintaining high-quality digital products.
A detailed description of a system's behavior as it responds to a request from one of its stakeholders, often used to capture functional requirements. Essential for understanding and documenting how users will interact with a system to achieve their goals.
A self-regulation strategy in the form of "if-then" plans that can lead to better goal attainment and behavior change. Useful for designing interventions that promote positive user behaviors.
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) is an agile project delivery framework focused on delivering business value early and continuously. Essential for ensuring that projects align with business goals and user needs through iterative processes.
A strategic planning technique that uses visual maps to align activities with business goals and user needs. Essential for ensuring that development efforts are aligned with strategic objectives.
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.
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.
A brief daily meeting in Agile project management where team members share updates on their progress, plans for the day, and any obstacles they face. Essential for maintaining communication, transparency, and coordination within Agile teams.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a prospective customer who has shown interest in a company's product or service and meets specific criteria indicating a higher likelihood of becoming a customer. Essential for prioritizing leads and optimizing the efficiency of sales and marketing efforts by focusing resources on prospects most likely to convert.
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.
A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or app to see which performs better in terms of user engagement or conversions. Crucial for designers and product managers to test variations and optimize user experience and performance.