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.
The compromises made between different design options, balancing various factors like usability, aesthetics, and functionality. Essential for making informed decisions that optimize overall design effectiveness.
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 collaborative tool used to visualize what a user thinks, feels, says, and does to better understand their experiences and needs. Essential for gaining deep insights into user behavior and guiding design decisions.
A design principle that states the design of a product or interface should primarily serve its intended purpose or functionality. Important for creating digital designs that are both practical and user-friendly.
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 practice of designing products that evoke specific emotional responses to enhance user experience and engagement. Crucial for creating deeply engaging and satisfying user experiences.
A usability evaluation method where evaluators walk through tasks to identify potential user difficulties. Essential for improving user interfaces and ensuring usability.
Plan, Do, Check, and Act (PDCA) is a four-step management method used for continuous improvement of processes and products. Essential for implementing and maintaining continuous improvement in business and design processes.
The perceived and actual properties of an object that determine how it could be used. Essential for designers to create intuitive and usable interfaces.
The practice of designing and implementing processes, systems, or business solutions in a way that ensures their long-term viability, efficiency, and maintainability. Crucial for creating durable and efficient designs that remain practical and effective over time, ensuring the ongoing success and feasibility of digital products and operations.
The study of social relationships, structures, and processes. Important for understanding the impact of social dynamics on user behavior and designing for social interactions.
A fictional representation of a user segment, created based on user research to guide design decisions and ensure the product meets the needs of its target audience. Crucial for keeping design efforts focused on user needs and preferences.
Principle of Least Astonishment (POLA) is a design guideline stating that interfaces should behave in a way that users expect to avoid confusion. Crucial for enhancing user experience and reducing the learning curve in digital products.
A field research method where researchers observe and interview users in their natural environment to understand their tasks and challenges. Crucial for gaining authentic insights into user behavior and needs.
A cognitive bias where people perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. Important for understanding and mitigating biases in user feedback and decision-making.
A user-centered design process that involves understanding users' needs and workflows through field research and applying these insights to design. Essential for creating designs that are deeply informed by user contexts and behaviors.
A statistical method used to predict a binary outcome based on prior observations, modeling the probability of an event as a function of independent variables. Essential for predicting categorical outcomes in digital product analysis and user behavior modeling.
A prioritization method that assigns different weights to criteria based on their importance, helping to make informed decisions and prioritize tasks effectively. Crucial for making objective and balanced decisions in project management and product development.
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 strategic approach where multiple potential solutions are tested to identify the most promising one. Crucial for innovation and reducing risk in decision-making.
A research method that focuses on understanding phenomena through in-depth exploration of human behavior, opinions, and experiences, often using interviews or observations. Essential for gaining deep insights into user needs and behaviors to inform design and development.
Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of interconnected physical devices embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, enabling them to collect and exchange data. Essential for creating smart, responsive environments and improving efficiency across various industries by enabling real-time monitoring, analysis, and automation.
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.
A practice of performing testing activities earlier in the software development lifecycle to identify and address issues sooner. Essential for improving software quality, reducing defects, and accelerating development cycles in digital product design.
An informal usability testing method where random passersby are asked to try out a product or feature and provide feedback. Essential for quickly identifying usability issues with minimal resources.
The first interaction or touchpoint a user has with a product or service, crucial for making a strong first impression. Crucial for designing engaging and intuitive initial user experiences.
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 day-to-day activities required to produce goods and services, manage resources, and support business functions. Essential for ensuring efficient and effective functioning of an organization.
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.
A clear, concise description of the issue(s) that need to be addressed, focusing on the specific challenge and its impact. Essential for guiding problem-solving efforts and ensuring a clear understanding of the issue at hand.
A prioritized list of tasks, features, and technical debt items that need to be addressed by the engineering team. Essential for managing and organizing work in software development projects.
Research focused on understanding and improving information architecture (IA), ensuring that information is logically and intuitively organized for users. Crucial for optimizing the organization and accessibility of information.
The tendency to believe that large or significant events must have large or significant causes. Important for understanding cognitive biases in decision-making and designing systems that present accurate causal relationships.
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric that measures how much effort customers have to put in to interact with a product or service. Crucial for identifying friction points and improving user experience in digital products.
The process of tailoring a product or experience to meet the individual needs and preferences of users. Essential for enhancing user engagement and satisfaction by delivering relevant experiences.
A phenomenon where users perceive greater value in a service or product if they believe more effort was involved in its creation or delivery. Important for enhancing perceived value and user satisfaction.
A testing method where the internal structure of the system is not known to the tester, focusing solely on input and output. Essential for validating the functionality of digital products from an end-user perspective.
The tendency for individuals to give positive responses or feedback out of politeness, regardless of their true feelings. Crucial for obtaining honest and accurate user feedback.
The tendency to overvalue new innovations and technologies while undervaluing existing or traditional approaches. Important for balanced decision-making and avoiding unnecessary risks in adopting new technologies.
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.
Knowledge Organization System (KOS) refers to a structured framework for organizing, managing, and retrieving information within a specific domain or across multiple domains. Essential for improving information findability, enhancing semantic interoperability, and supporting effective knowledge management in digital environments.
Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) is a concept in marketing that refers to the point in the buying cycle when the consumer researches a product before the seller even knows they exist. Crucial for understanding consumer behavior and optimizing marketing strategies to influence decision-making at this early stage.
Behavioral Science (BeSci) is the study of human behavior through systematic analysis and investigation. Essential for understanding and influencing user behavior in design and product development.
A framework for understanding what drives individuals to act, involving theories such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Important for designing products and experiences that align with users' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.
A collaborative process specific to the design phase that involves stakeholders, including users, in the refinement of user-centered design solutions. Essential for creating designs that truly meet user needs and expectations.
An approach to design that actively involves all stakeholders (e.g., employees, partners, customers) in the design process. Crucial for creating designs that truly meet user needs and expectations.
The ability to navigate through a web page or application using keyboard keys instead of a mouse. Important for enhancing accessibility and providing an alternative way to interact with content.
Numeronym for the word "Documentation" (D + 11 letters + N), creating detailed records and instructions to support the development, use, and maintenance of systems or products. Crucial for ensuring users and developers understand and properly use the system or product.
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.
An economic theory that explains why some necessities, such as water, are less expensive than non-essentials, like diamonds, despite their greater utility. Useful for understanding consumer behavior and designing pricing strategies.
The practice of guiding and inspiring teams to create effective, user-centered design solutions that align with business goals. Crucial for fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence in design practices within organizations.
A qualitative research method involving direct conversations with users to gather insights into their needs, behaviors, and experiences. Essential for gaining deep insights into user perspectives and informing design decisions.
A statistical rule stating that nearly all values in a normal distribution (99.7%) lie within three standard deviations (sigma) of the mean. Important for identifying outliers and understanding variability in data, aiding in quality control and performance assessment in digital product design.
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.
The path taken by a user to complete a task on a website or application, including all the steps and interactions along the way. Essential for designing intuitive and efficient user experiences.
Visual cues or instructions integrated into an interface to guide users on how to use certain features or functionalities. Important for improving user onboarding and enhancing the user experience.
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 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.
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.