A psychological phenomenon where a person who has done a favor for someone is more likely to do another favor for that person than if they had received a favor from them. Useful for building positive relationships and encouraging cooperative behavior in design and user interactions.
The tendency to cling to one's beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence. Important for understanding resistance to change and designing interventions that address this bias.
A theory of emotion suggesting that physical and emotional responses to stimuli occur simultaneously and independently. Important for understanding user emotions and designing empathetic user experiences.
The phenomenon where people remember information better when it is presented through multiple sensory modalities rather than a single modality. Crucial for enhancing memory retention and understanding through multimodal presentations.
A cognitive bias where individuals overlook or underestimate the cost of opportunities they forego when making decisions. Crucial for understanding user decision-making behavior and designing systems that highlight opportunity costs.
The tendency to attribute positive qualities to one's own choices and downplay the negatives, enhancing post-decision satisfaction. Useful for understanding user satisfaction and designing experiences that reinforce positive decision outcomes.
A strategy where an additional, less attractive option is introduced to make other pricing options look more appealing, often steering customers towards a particular choice. Important for guiding user decisions and increasing the perceived value of targeted pricing tiers.
A psychological model that outlines the stages individuals go through to change behavior, including precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Crucial for designing interventions and experiences that support users at different stages of behavior change.
The act of persuading individuals or organizations to act in a certain way based on moral arguments or appeals. Useful for designing persuasive communications and ethical influence strategies.
A logical fallacy in which it is assumed that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, due to an irrelevant association. Important for avoiding incorrect associations in user research and data interpretation.
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 study of how information is transmitted and received, including the processes and methods that facilitate communication. Important for designing effective communication strategies and user interfaces.
A theory suggesting that information processed at a deeper, more meaningful level is better remembered than information processed at a shallow level. Crucial for designing educational and informational content that enhances retention and understanding.
The tendency to favor people who are similar to oneself in terms of background, beliefs, or interests. Important for recognizing and mitigating bias in user research and team dynamics.
A behavioral economics model that explains decision-making as a conflict between a present-oriented "doer" and a future-oriented "planner". Useful for understanding user decision-making and designing interventions that balance short-term and long-term goals.
A cognitive bias where people are less likely to spend large denominations of money compared to an equivalent amount in smaller denominations. Useful for designers to understand consumer behavior and design pricing strategies that consider spending biases.
A decision-making strategy where individuals allocate resources proportionally to the probability of an outcome occurring, rather than optimizing the most likely outcome. Important for understanding decision-making behaviors and designing systems that guide better resource allocation.
A system that allows customers to access information and perform tasks on their own without the need for assistance from customer service representatives. Important for improving customer experience and reducing support costs.
The underlying goal or motivation behind a user's search query, crucial for understanding and optimizing content to meet user needs and improve SEO. Essential for creating content that aligns with user needs and improving search engine rankings.
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 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.
A usability testing approach where designers assume that users are easily confused and distracted, focusing on simplicity and clarity in design. Crucial for ensuring that interfaces are intuitive and easy to use under various conditions.
A dark pattern where the product asks for the user's social media or email credentials and then spams all the user's contacts. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to protect user trust and avoid spamming their contacts.
A principle stating that users spend most of their time on other websites and prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. Crucial for designing user-friendly and familiar interfaces.
Operations and processes that occur on the user's computer rather than on a server. Crucial for creating responsive and interactive web experiences that leverage the user's device.
Conversational User Interface (CUI) is a user interface designed to communicate with users in a conversational manner, often using natural language processing and AI. Essential for creating intuitive and engaging user experiences in digital products.
The concept of providing flexible and adaptive user interactions based on user input and behavior. Crucial for creating responsive and personalized user experiences.
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 user experience design methodology focused on rapid iteration, collaboration, and learning through experimentation. Essential for creating user-centered designs efficiently and effectively.
A state of overthinking and indecision that prevents making a choice, often due to too many options or uncertainty. Important for designing interfaces that simplify decision-making processes for users.
The tendency for people to value products more highly if they have put effort into assembling them. Important for understanding user satisfaction and product attachment.
A visual representation of the user or customer journey, highlighting key interactions, emotions, and pain points. Essential for identifying opportunities to improve user or customer experiences.
Design strategies aimed at preventing user errors before they occur. Crucial for enhancing usability and ensuring a smooth user experience.
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.
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.
A navigation design pattern where users follow a specific order of steps or stages to complete a task, often used in forms, surveys, and instructional guides. Essential for guiding users through processes in a clear and structured manner, improving usability.
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.
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.
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.
A dark pattern where a free trial ends and the user is automatically charged without warning. Designers should avoid this practice and ensure users are clearly informed about charges to maintain ethical standards.
Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR) are the four main principles of web accessibility. These principles are essential for creating inclusive digital experiences that can be accessed and used by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities.
A strategy that focuses on identifying and addressing the specific problems or "pain points" of users in order to improve search engine rankings and attract more targeted traffic. Essential for creating content that directly addresses user needs and improves website visibility.
The process of providing incentives or rewards to encourage specific behaviors or actions. Important for motivating user behavior and increasing engagement.
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.
Needs and expectations that are not explicitly stated by users but are inferred from their behavior and context. Crucial for identifying and addressing unarticulated user needs.
A usability test where users are shown a design for 5 seconds to measure recall and initial reactions. Important for designers to test how well key information and elements are conveyed quickly to users.
A cognitive bias where individuals believe that past random events affect the probabilities of future random events. Important for designers to understand user decision-making biases related to randomness.
A psychological phenomenon where people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Crucial for designing engaging experiences that leverage task incompletion to maintain user interest.
The area within which a user can interact with an element, designed to be large enough for easy tapping. Essential for creating accessible and user-friendly touch 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.
The application of game-design elements and principles in non-game contexts to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. Crucial for enhancing user engagement and motivation in various contexts.
Minimum Viable Feature (MVF) is the smallest possible version of a feature that delivers value to users and allows for meaningful feedback collection. Crucial for rapid iteration in product development, enabling teams to validate ideas quickly and efficiently while minimizing resource investment.
A dark pattern where users' activities are tracked without their explicit consent or knowledge. Designers must avoid this practice and ensure clear communication about tracking to respect user privacy.
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.
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.
An economic approach that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, focusing on capturing and retaining user attention. Crucial for understanding user engagement and designing products that effectively capture and retain attention.
A predictive model of human movement that describes the time required to move to a target area, used to design user interfaces that enhance usability. Important for designing efficient and user-friendly interfaces.
A team focused on designing and improving the user experience across products and services. Essential for ensuring cohesive and high-quality user experiences.
A reading pattern where users focus on individual elements or "spots" of interest on a page, rather than following a linear path. Crucial for designing engaging and attention-grabbing content layouts.
A psychological phenomenon where people follow the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. Essential for designing interfaces and experiences that leverage social influence to guide user behavior and increase trust and engagement.