Universal Principles of Design (reversed) Flashcards
A high percentage of effects in any large system are caused by a low percentage of variables.
80/20 Rule
Objects and environments should be designed to be usable, without modification, by as many people as possible.
Accessibility
An instructional technique that helps people understand new information in terms of what they already know.
Advance Organizer
Aesthetic designs are perceived as easier to use than less-aesthetic designs.
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
A property in which the physical characteristics of an object or environment influence its function.
Affordance
The placement of elements such that edges line up along common rows or columns, or their bodies along a common center.
Alignment
A tendency to find forms that appear humanoid or exhibit humanlike characteristics appealing.
Anthropomorphic Form
Universal patterns of theme and form resulting from innate biases or dispositions.
Archetypes
Alignment based on the area of elements versus the edges of elements.
Area Alignment
A tendency to see attractive people as more intelligent, competent, moral, and sociable than unattractive people.
Attractiveness Bias
A tendency to see people and things with baby-faced features as more naïve, helpless, and honest than those with mature features.
Baby-Face Bias
Environments rich in nature views and imagery reduce stress and enhance focus and concentration.
Biophilia Effect
A relationship between the perceived height of a ceiling and cognition. High ceilings promote abstract thinking and creativity. Low ceilings promote concrete and detail-oriented thinking.
Cathedral Effect
A technique of combining many units of information into a limited number of units or chunks, so that the information is easier to process and remember.
Chunking
A technique used to associate a stimulus with an unconscious physical or emotional response.
Classical Conditioning
A tendency to perceive a set of individual elements as a single recognizable pattern, rather than multiple, individual elements.
Closure
A tendency to seek consistency among attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs.
Cognitive Dissonance
Used in design to attract attention, group elements, indicate meaning, and enhance aesthetics.
Color
Elements that move in the same direction are perceived to be more related than elements that move in different directions or are stationary.
Common Fate
A method of illustrating relationships and patterns in system behaviors by representing two or more system variables in a controlled way.
Comparison
A technique for preventing unintended actions by requiring verification of the actions before they are performed.
Confirmation
The usability of a system is improved when similar parts are expressed in similar ways.
Consistency
The tendency to perceive objects as unchanging, despite changes in sensory input.
Constancy
A method of limiting the actions that can be performed on a system.
Constraint
A tendency to favor objects with contours over objects with sharp angles or points.
Contour Bias
The level of control provided by a system should be related to the proficiency and experience levels of the people using the system.
Control
A process in which similar characteristics evolve independently in multiple systems.
Convergence
An activity will be pursued only if its benefits are equal to or greater than the costs.
Cost-Benefit
A space that has territorial markers, opportunities for surveillance, and clear indications of activity and ownership.
Defensible Space
A phenomenon of memory in which information that is analyzed deeply is better recalled than information that is analyzed superficially.
Depth of Processing
A design process based on consensus building, group decision making, and extensive iteration.
Design by Committee
Traces of use or wear that indicate preferred methods of interaction with an object or environment.
Desire Line
Successful products typically follow four stages of creation: requirements, design, development, and testing.
Development Cycle
A point of physical or attentional entry into a design.
Entry Point
An action or omission of action yielding an unintended result.
Errors
A phenomenon in which perception and behavior changes as a result of personal expectations or the expectations of others.
Expectation Effect
Repeated exposure to stimuli for which people have neutral feelings will increase the likeability of the stimuli.
Exposure Effect
The ratio of face to body in an image that influences the way the person in the image is perceived.
Face-ism Ratio
The use of more elements than is thought to be necessary to offset the effects of unknown variables and prevent system failure.
Factor of Safety
A relationship between variables in a system where the consequences of an event feed back into the system as input, modifying the event in the future.
Feedback Loop
A sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the preceding two.
Fibonacci Sequence
Elements are perceived as either figures (objects of focus) or ground (the rest of the perceptual field).
Figure-Ground Relationship
The time required to move to a target is a function of target size and distance to target.
Fitts’ Law
There are five ways to organize information: category, time, location, alphabet, and continuum.
Five Hat Racks
As the flexibility of a system increases, the usability of the system decreases.
Flexibility-Usability Tradeoff
Designs should help people avoid errors and minimize the negative consequences of errors when they do occur.
Forgiveness
Beauty in design results from the purity of function.
Form Follows Function
A technique that influences decision making and judgment by manipulating the way information is presented.
Framing
The ordered sequence of responses to acute stress in humans.
Freeze-Flight-Fight-Forfeit
The quality of system output is dependent on the quality of system input.
Garbage In-Garbage Out
A ration within the elements of a form, such as height to width, approximating 0.618
Golden Ratio
Elements arranged in a straight line or a smooth curve are perceived as a group, and are interpreted as being more related than elements not on the line or curve.
Good Continuation
A diagram that describes the general pattern followed by the eyes when looking at evenly distributed, homogeneous information.
Gutenberg Diagram
The time it takes to make a decision increases as the number of alternatives increases.
Hick’s Law
Hierarchical organization is the simplest structure for visualizing and understanding complexity.
Hierarchy
In order for a design to be successful, it must meet people’s basic needs before it can attempt to satisfy higher-level needs.
Hierarchy of Needs
A technique for bringing attention to an area of text or image.
Highlighting
A tendency to favor filling blank spaces with objects and elements over leaving spaces blank or empty.
Horror Vacui
A tendency for male children to be interested in hunting-related objects and activities, and female children to be interested in nurturing-related objects and activities.
Hunter-Nurturer Fixations
The use of pictorial images to improve the recognition and recall of signs and controls.
Iconic Representation
A state of mental focus so intense that awareness of the “real” world is lost, generally resulting in a feeling of joy and satisfaction.
Immersion
The failure to cognitively process a stimulus that is presented in clear view, leaving the observer without any awareness or memory of the stimulus.
Inattentional Blindness
A phenomenon in which mental processing is made slower and less accurate by competing mental processes.
Interference Effects
A method of information presentation in which information is presented in descending order of importance.
Inverted Pyramid
A process of repeating a set of operations until a specific result is achieved.
Iteration
A tendency to interpret ambiguous images as simple and complete, versus complex and incomplete.
Law of PrÌ_gnanz
The process of organizing information into related groupings in order to manage complexity and reinforce relationships in the information.
Layering
The visual clarity of text, generally based on size, typeface, contrast, text block, and spacing of the characters used.
Legibility
All products progress sequentially through four stages of existence: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
Life Cycle
A relationship between controls and their movements or effects. Good mapping between controls and their effects results in greater ease of use.
Mapping
People understand and interact with systems and environments based on mental representations developed from experience.
Mental Model
The act of copying properties of familiar objects, organisms, or environments in order to realize specific benefits afforded by those properties.
Mimicry
A method of reorganizing information to make the information easier to remember.
Mnemonic Device
A method of managing system complexity that involves dividing large systems into multiple, smaller self-contained systems.
Modularity
A method for determining the most commercially viable aesthetic for a design.
Most Advanced Yet Acceptable
A tendency to prefer faces in which the eyes, nose, lips, and other features are close to the average of a population.
Most Average Facial Appearance Effect
A term used to describe a set of data, that when plotted, forms the shape of a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve.
Normal Distribution
A bias against ideas and innovations that originate elsewhere.
Not Invented Here
A method for predictably altering behavior without restricting options or significantly changing incentives.
Nudge
Given a choice between functionally equivalent designs, the simplest design should be selected.
Ockham’s Razor
A technique used to modify behavior by reinforcing desired behaviors, and ignoring or punishing undesired behaviors.
Operant Conditioning
A phenomenon of visual processing in which certain line orientations are more quickly and easily processed and discriminated than other line orientations.
Orientation Sensitivity
The greater the effort to accomplish a task, the less likely the task will be accomplished successfully.
Performance Load
The designs that help people perform optimally are often not the same as the designs that people find most desirable.
Performance Versus Preference
A technique that employs fictitious users to guide decision making regarding features, interactions, and aesthetics.
Personas
Pictures are remembered better than words.
Picture Superiority Effect
The activation of specific concepts in memory for the purposes of influencing subsequent behaviors.
Priming
A strategy for managing information complexity in which only necessary or requested information is displayed at any given time.
Progressive Disclosure
The relationship between the elements of a design and the meaning they convey. Designs with high propositional density are more interesting and memorable than designs with low propositional density.
Propositional Density
A tendency to prefer environments with unobstructed views (prospects) and areas of concealment and retreat (refuges).
Prospect-Refuge
The use of simplified and incomplete models of a design to explore ideas, elaborate requirements, refine specifications, and test functionality.
Prototyping
Elements that are close together are perceived to be more related than elements that are farther apart.
Proximity
The degree to which prose can be understood, based on the complexity of words and sentences.
Readability
Memory for recognizing things is better than memory for recalling things.
Recognition Over Recall
A tendency to perceive women wearing red as more attractive and men wearing red as more dominant.
Red Effect
The use of more elements than necessary to maintain the performance of a system in the event of failure of one or more of the elements.
Redundancy
A technique for communicating novel information using elements of common understanding.
Rosetta Stone
A technique of composition in which a medium is divided into thirds, creating aesthetic positions for the primary elements of a design.
Rule of Thirds
It is often preferable to settle for a satisfactory solution, rather than pursue an optimal solution.
Satisficing
A tendency to prefer savanna-like environments to other types of environments.
Savanna Preference
A tendency to assume that a system that works at one scale will also work at a smaller or larger scale.
Scaling Fallacy
Items and opportunities become more desirable when they are perceived to be in short supply or occur infrequently.
Scarcity
A property in which a form is made up of parts similar to the whole or to one another.
Self-Similarity
A phenomenon of memory in which items presented at the beginning and end of a list are more likely to be recalled than items in the middle of a list.
Serial Position Effects
A technique used to teach a desired behavior by reinforcing increasingly accurate approximations of the behavior.
Shaping
The ratio of relevant to irrelevant information in a display. The highest possible signal-to-noise ratio is desirable in design.
Signal-to-Noise Ratio
Elements that are similar are perceived to be more related than elements that are dissimilar.
Similarity
A method for dramatically increasing the recognition, recall, and unsolicited sharing of an idea or expression.
Stickiness
A method of creating imagery, emotions, and understanding of events through an interaction between a storyteller and an audience.
Storytelling
There are three ways to organize materials to support a load or to contain and protect something: mass structures, frame structures, and shell structures.
Structural Forms
A property of visual equivalence among elements in a form.
Symmetry
An ability to detect threatening stimuli more efficiently than nonthreatening stimuli.
Threat Detection
A tendency to see objects and patterns as three-dimensional when certain visual cues are present.
Three-Dimensional Projection
A tendency to interpret shaded or dark areas of an object as shadows resulting from a light source above the object.
Top-Down Lighting Bias
Anthropomorphic forms are appealing when they are dissimilar or identical to humans, but unappealing when they are very similar to humans.
Uncanny Valley
The act of measuring certain sensitive variables in a system can alter them, and confound the accuracy of the measurement.
Uncertainty Principle
Elements that are connected by uniform visual properties, such as color, are perceived to be more related than elements that are not connected.
Uniform Connectedness
A tendency to find a product desirable because it has a high price.
Veblen Effect
The usability of a system is improved when its status and methods of use are clearly visible.
Visibility
A phenomenon in which an image achieves optimal clarity due to resonance between the spatial frequency of the image and the observer’s distance from the image.
Visuospatial Resonance
A phenomenon of memory in which noticeably different things are more likely to be recalled than common things.
von Restorff Effect
Objects and environments that embody naturalness, simplicity, and subtle imperfection achieve a deeper, more meaningful aesthetic.
Wabi-Sabi
A preference for a particular ratio of waist size to hip size in men and women.
Waist-to-Hip Ratio
The process of using spatial and environmental information to navigate to a destination.
Wayfinding
The use of a weak element that will fail in order to protect other elements in the system from damage.
Weakest Link
