UX Design Glossary Flashcards
A/B testing
A/B testing (also known as split testing), is the comparison of two designs against each other to determine which performs better.
Above The Fold
The Content on a web page that doesn’t require scrolling the experience
Accessibility
The design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities
The practice of designing experiences for people who experience disabilities. This means considering and designing for people who are color blind, blind, deaf, and people with cognitive disabilities, etc.
Accessibility
The practice of designing experiences for people who experience disabilities. This means considering and designing for people who are color blind, blind, deaf, and people with cognitive disabilities, etc.
Active Listening
Active listening is a communication technique that requires the listener to demonstrate the act of alert, intentional hearing in order to extract the meaning from what the speaker is saying.
Advertising Agencies
Teams of creatives hired by clients to build marketing campaigns
Affinity
A feeling of like-mindedness or compatibility toward something or someone
Affinity Diagram
A Method of synthesizing that organizes data into groups with common themes or relationships
Affinity Diagramming
An exercise used to organise a large number of data and ideas, sorting them into groups based on their natural relationships and into more meaningful categories. Affinity Diagramming is frequently used following brainstorming sessions.
Affordance
In usability terms, Affordance refers to an objects characteristics in relation to its function. Affordances are clues that tell us how an element should behave.
For example, a door handle is an affordance designed to tell us it can be pulled or pushed.
Agile
Agile is an incremental approach to software development. The methodology incorporates iteration, continuous delivery, and feedback cycles called “Sprints”.
Instead of building the entire product at once, Agile breaks it down into smaller bits of user functionality.
Aggregated Empathy Maps
Represent a visualization of everything designers know about an entire segment or group of similar users
Alternative Text (Alt Text)
Text that helps translate something visual, such as an image or graph, into a description that can be read by screen readers
Analytics
A broad term that encompasses a variety of tools, techniques, and processes used to better understand and interpret patterns of behaviour on the products we use. Analytics in UX often measures user behaviour.
Anticipatory Design
Anticipatory Design is an approach to design where decisions are anticipated and made on behalf of customers, thus removing the need for choice and reducing cognitive load.
API
Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, are pieces of software that help different applications communicate with each other. Products develop APIs to let you access and read information on their server easily.
Apprenticeships
Long-term positions providing paid, on-the-job training to help you develop real skills
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, and decision-making.
Assests
everything from the text and images to the design specifications, like font style, color, size, and spacing
Assistive Technology
Any products, equipment, or systems that enhance learning, working and daily living for people with disabilities
Asymmetrical Layout
Having Purposeful imbalance between different sides of a page
Augmented Reality (AR)
A technology that adds a computer-generated, visual layer on top of the real world. For example, generating graphics, sound, or video into a live view of the user’s physical environment in real-time.
Avatar
Avatar is an object that represents the user’s identity on screen. Avatars are one of the most common UI elements usually within a circle or square. We have avatars in business apps, social networks, games.
Back-end Developer
Someone who writes code for the websites’s architecture and data storage or retrieval, based on the sitemap and functionality
Back-end Development refers to the server-side of development where you are primarily focused on how the app or website works. Think about back-end as the portion that the user doesn’t see, acting as the backbone logic and code that gives an application functionality.
Backlog
The backlog is a list of tasks to be completed. The list is prioritized and ideally, the tasks will be completed in the order listed.
Basic Grid
Intersecting lines that divide pages into small squares, which allows you to easily lay out elements in a design
Beacon
Beacons are small Bluetooth radio transmitters. They communicate with the user’s smartphone and are used to share information.
Benchmarking
Evaluate something, such as a user interface, against a standard or external comparator such as when comparing a website with a competitor.
Beta
A version of the product that is not final. A beta launch has limited functionality and is used to find bugs to improve the final product.
Bias
Favoring or having prejudice against something based on limited information
Big Picture Storyboard
A series of visually rendered panels that focus on the user’s experience
Blind Voting
Blind voting is where the votes from each person included in the poll remain hidden or secret until all votes are cast. This prevents bias and vote influencing.
Borders
A method of containment that uses continuous lines that often form shapes, like squares or rectangles, to break up sections of a page
Box Layout
A web page layout that consists of boxes or squares of various sizes and proportions
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is the process of generating ideas and solutions in a short amount of time.
This main technique is divided into two sub-techniques: Brainwriting and Brainwalking.
Brand Identity
The visual appearance and voice of a company
Branding
The process of creating and marketing a consistent idea or image of a product, so that it is recognisable by the public.
Breadcrumb
Breadcrumb is a type of navigation to help users understand their location in a website or app. They’ll show a sequence of steps users have to take to get where they are.
Budget Estimate
Details the expenses and profit margins that add up to an appropriate cost for services
Call-to-Action (cat)
A visual prompt that tells the user to take action such as download, buy, read.
Bug
Bugs are mistakes in software that can cause a product to glitch, behave in unintended ways, or even crash.
Business Analyst (BA)
In software development, business analysts often act as the bridge between product development and business stakeholders to craft and document product requirements and help ensure that product decisions make business sense.
Card Sorting
Card Sorting is a user-centered research method used to inform the design of the information architecture.
Card sorting involves users ‘sorting’ cards into groups that make the most sense to them. The goal is to understand how users view a given set of items and identify potential categories. The patterns that arise may help inform the menu items in a website’s navigation, or what information should be combined or separated.
There are two different types: an open or close card sort.
Cards
Rectangle parts of a design that contain content and actions about a single subject, which are often used in mobile app design
Carousels
Scrolling feeds of images or cards on a UI that can be sifted through with a click or that automatically loop while you’re on a the page
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A language that describes how HTML should be displayed. HTML is the barebones of the content, whereas CSS is applied to HTML to give elements styling options like layout, color, typography, and more.
Case Studies
Summarized presentation of a design project that typically includes
- Project Goals and Objectives
- Your role on the project
- Process your team followed
- Outcome of the project
Case Study
Leads the user through your design process from the beginning to the end
Case Study
A UX case study (usually making up a UX portfolio) showcases the process of solving design problems. An emphasis is placed on how design thinking, methods, and deliverables were used to solve user experience problems.
Chatbot
Chatbots let you ask the system questions via a chat interface. They are a popular customer service tool and resemble the experience of texting a friend.
A chatbot (short for chat robot), is a computer program that mimics conversation with people using artificial intelligence technology.
Close -up Storyboard
A series of visually rendered panels that focus on the product
Closed Questions
Closed questions are those that require only a yes or no response when answered.
Co-creation
Co-creation is the method by which products, services, and processes are created with the involvement of the organisation plus customers or users and other third parties, such as agencies.
The process can often be led by a design agency on behalf of a client. Often referred to as Collaborative Design.
Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are errors in reasoning, memory, or other cognitive processes that result from holding onto existing beliefs regardless of contrary information.
There are more than 100 documented cognitive biases, commonly categorized into four categories: biases that arise from too much information, not enough meaning, the need to act quickly, and the limits of memory.
Cognitive biases are particularly important to be aware of while conducting research, as a way of arriving at truer findings instead of relying on personal preferences.
Cognitive Load
Cognitive load refers to the amount of effort that is exerted or required while reasoning and thinking. Any mental process, from memory to perception to language, creates a cognitive load because it requires energy and effort.
When cognitive load is high, thought processes are potentially interfered with. To the UX designer, a common goal when designing interfaces would be to keep users’ cognitive load to a minimum.
Cognitive Walkthrough
Cognitive walkthrough is a usability method carried out by a trained professional who attempts to identify usability issues by mimicking the actions of a user.
Color Modification
Features that increase the contrast of colors on a screen, like high contrast mode or dark mode
Common Region
The Gestalt Principle that describes how elements located within the same area are perceived to be grouped together
Competitive Audit
An overview of your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis in strategic terms is a technique used to evaluate and identify the marketing and business strategy of competitive brands, businesses, and products. In user experience terms it is applied to identifying and analysing competitor’s web, mobile or digital strategies.
Complementary
Taking into account how the product design on each device can make the overall user experience better
Confirmation Bias
Occurs when you start looking for evidence to prove a hypothesis you have
Consistency
Having a uniform design, so users can expect the design to feel familiar across devices and products
Containment
The use of visual barriers to keep elements of a design neat and organized; the four methods of containment are dividers, borders, fill, and shadow
Content Management System (CMS)
Software that allows publishing, editing, and maintaining content from a central interface.
Content Strategist
Content strategists help maximize the usability and profitability of content, throughout the full content lifecycle: analyzing, planning, writing, editing, distributing, managing, and monitoring content. Due to the wide breadth of this field, the work that content strategists do often affect and involve information architecture and the user experience.
Content Strategy
The strategy, organization, and management of content that aligns between the user and business goals.
Context
Designing for the needs of a specific device and the way in which the user will use that device in any given situation
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual inquiry is a type of ethnographic field study that involves in-depth observation and interviews to gain an understanding of work practices and behaviors.
The research takes place in the users’ natural environment as they conduct their activities the way they normally would. The context could be in their home, office, or somewhere else entirely.
The researcher watches the user as she performs her task and asks for information to understand how and why users do what they do.
Continuity
Providing users with a smooth and uninterrupted experience as they move between devices
Conversational Interface
A Conversational Interface (or Conversation User Interface) emulates a conversation with a real human. It uses voice recognition and natural language processing to mimic human conversation.
For example, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana. and the Google assistant.
Conversion rate
Measures the percentage of users who complete a desired action
Conversion Rate
The Conversion Rate of a product or site is the percentage of users who complete a desired action. For example, an e-commerce website’s desired action is a successful purchase. The Conversion Rate would tell us how many users bought an item.
Corporation
A company with thousands of employees working on lots of different projects
Curb cut
The slope of the sidewalk that creates a ramp with adjoining street
Curb cut effect
A phenomenon that describes how products and policies designed for people with disabilities often end up helping everyone
Customer Experience (CX)
Customer Experience or CX refers to all the different interactions a user has with a brand through its different channels and products, and how a user feels about them.
Customer Journey Map
A holistic, visual representation of your users’ interactions with your organisation, products, or services. It helps you tell the story of your customers’ experiences with your brand across all touchpoints. Also called the Buyer Journey or User Journey).
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Relationship Management software systems help manage business processes, like sales, data, and customer interactions.
Customer-Centric
Customer centricity refers to companies that select a strategy focussed or built upon a specific orientation toward its customers and prospective customers.
For example, Amazon’s #1 Leadership Principle is Customer Obsession. Their leaders start with the customer and work backwards. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Customizable text
A feature that allows users to change how text is displayed in order to read the text more easily
Dark Patterns
Tricks used in websites and apps that cause unintended user action, like buying or signing up for things that you didn’t mean to.
For example, a checkbox beneath a password field when signing up in, but instead of “Keep me logged in”, it says, “I agree to subscribe to this newsletter.” That’s a dark pattern – when a product tricks you into buying or signing up for things that you actually don’t want.
Dashboard
A Dashboard is a simple visual representation of often complex data sets designed to make understanding and decision making easier.
Data Science
Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems to extract knowledge and insights from data.
The goal is to uncover valuable insights that help us make better product decisions.
Database model
A website structure that mixes a database, or an organized collection of information, with search functionality
Deceptive patterns
UX methods that trick users into doing or buying something they wouldn’t otherwise have done or bought
Dedicated mobile app
Built to live on the mobile device and is accessed through an icon on the phone’s home screen
Define
The phase of design thinking that involves leveraging the insights gained during the empathize phase to identify the problem you’ll solve with your design
Demographic
Demographics relates to how a population is structured and is used in user experience when defining participant profiles.
Design agency
Provides a one-stop shop for the look of brands, products, and services
Design critique session
A planned period of time where UX designers present their work to team members and listen to feedback
Design Debt
Design debt represents the full spectrum of design work that has been deprioritized in the backlog. It includes everything from lack of design thinking processes to specific UI bugs that need fixing.
For example, a newly launched web form is not consistent with the rest of the website, because a whole page template would need to be recoded.
Design Exercise
Often a take-home “quiz” of sorts to determine a design process. Sometimes a part of UX interviews.
Design Facilitation
The skill of facilitating design process and efforts, such as presenting to stakeholders or conducting design workshops.
Design Patterns
Repeatable design elements and components, often leveraging widespread user recognition to aid in the design process.
For example, a hamburger menu is now a design pattern that most users know how to interact with.
Design research
Answers the question: How should we build it?
Design Sprint
A time-bound process, with five phases typically spread over five full 8-hour days. The goal of design sprints is to answer critical business questions through designing, prototyping, and testing ideas with users
Design Sprint
The Design Sprint is a 5-day (sometimes shorter) process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.
Design system
A series of reusable visual elements and guidelines that allow teams to design and develop a product following predetermined standards
Design System
A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications.
Design thinking
A UX design framework that focuses on the user throughout all five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test
Design thinking is a 5-stage method for creative problem-solving. The 5 stages are:
Empathize: Understand the challenge
Define: Define the problem
Ideate: Brainstorm potential solutions
Prototype: Build your solutions
Test: Test your solutions
Diary Study
A qualitative research method asking users to record their experiences and thoughts about a product or task in a journal over a set period of time.
Digital literacy
A user’s level of ability related to using digital information and technologies
Direct competitors
Companies that have offerings similar to your product and focus on the same audience
Dividers
A method of containment that uses single lines to separate sections of a page
Domain
The address of your website
Dopamine
A natural chemical in the brain that’s released when something pleasurable happens, which makes us feel good or intrigued
Edge case
What happens when things go wrong that are beyond the user’s control
Edge Case
An edge case is a rare occurrence in the product or service. Edge cases deal with the extreme maximums and minimums of parameters. Sometimes edge cases threaten to break a system and lead to poor user experience.
For example, if an application allows for “unlimited” photo uploads knowing that users rarely upload more than 1000, how does the system deal with the edge case of the user who uploads millions of photos? Are there boundaries at this maximum end? That is an edge case, an unlikely-yet-potentially disastrous situation.
Elements
Building blocks for creating a design
Elevator pitch
A short, memorable description that explains a concept in an easy-to-understand way
Empathize
The phase of design thinking that involves getting to know your user through research
Empathy
The ability to understand someone else’s feelings or thoughts in a situation
Empathy map
An easily understood chart that explains everything designers have learned about a type of user
Empathy maps are collaborative tools that help us visualize user behavior, attitudes, and feelings. This is split into 4 equal quadrants containing information about what the user is saying, thinking, doing, and feeling. At the center, is our user persona. Each quadrant is filled with information gathered from user research.
Emphasis
A way of attracting attention to text, a button, or another object in a design
End-User
The person we are designing the product for.
Engagement
A typical success metric defined by an organisation.
For example, time spent on a web page, number of interactions on a piece of content (likes, shares, comments), etc.
Entry-level job
Roles that do not require prior experience in the field
Equality
Providing the same amount of opportunity and support
Equity-focused design
Designing for groups that have been historically underrepresented or ignored when building products
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study or science of understanding the interactions between humans and systems, products, or equipment. The goal is to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative research method used to capture information about behaviour in the context of people’s real-world environments. Through observations, It can be used to obtain unarticulated needs, motivations, and drivers to develop innovative designs.
Experience Design
Experience design is the approach for designing systems, products, processes, services, interfaces, and more with emphasis on the experience the user will have at the forefront of the design process.
Eye-Tracking
Eye-tracking measures the users eye activity whilst they are engaged in a particular task. Where a person looks, what they ignore, and when they blink.
Eye-tracking provides quantitative measures of attention. These can be correlated with task completion time, error rate, success rate, backtracking rate, and other indicators of an interface’s efficiency and used together as results from usability testing or as a standalone tool to tackle specific issues.
F-shape layout
A website layout that assumes that users will likely browse content on the page following an F-shaped pattern
Facilitator
Runs the critique session and guide the process
Facilitator
A facilitator, in the context of UX, is a practitioner who leads workshops, meetings, focus groups, or one-to-one sessions. The objective is to lead the group to achieve a common goal and/or be the main driver of the session.
False consensus bias
The assumption that others will think the same way as you do
Featured image layout
A website layout that places the user’s focus on a single image or video that often takes up the entire page above-the-fold
Feedback
Asking for or receiving ideas about what is or isn’t working
Feedback loops
The outcome a user gets at the end of a process
Fidelity
How closely a design matches the look and feel of the final product
Fill
A method of containment that assigns colors to borders and shapes
First interview
Introductory call with a recruiter or hiring manager to determine whether a candidate meets the minimum set of requirements for the role
Fitt’s Law
Fitt’s Law is a model that helps designers place and position the size and location of user interface elements for their optimal utility.
Fitt’s Law states “the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target”.
Flat Design
Flat design is a style of interface design emphasising minimum use of stylistic elements that give the illusion of three dimensions and is focused on a minimalist use of simple elements, typography, and colours.
Flowchart
A flow chart or flow diagram is a visual representation of a series of steps in a process that explains how the process works. Often used to illustrate the steps a user can take to complete a task on a product.
Focal point
A specific and distinct area that sticks out on a web page or mobile screen design, to guide the users’ attention
Focus groups
A Focus group is a session held with a group of representative users or consumers facilitated by a researcher who guides the discussion about a specific product, service, system, brand, or interface.
Font
The size, thickness, and emphasis of characters of text
Foundational research
Helps designers understand why or if they should build the product and to better understand the user problem they are trying to solve
Framework
Creates the basic structure that focuses and supports the problem you’re trying to solve
Freelancers
UX designers who work for themselves and market their services to businesses to find customers
Friendliness bias
The tendency of people to agree with those they like in order to maintain a non-confrontational conversation
Front-end developer
Someone who writes code for all the user-facing interface, based on the UX designer’s specifications
Front-End Development
Front-end development is the practice of implementing designs in code to be displayed on the web. Front-end developers primarily use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to code designs. “Front-end” refers to the “client-side” - for example, a user’s browser window.
Gamification
Gamification is the process of integrating game-design mechanics and principles in non-game contexts such as websites and mobile applications in an effort to drive increase user adoption, engagement, and retention.
Generalist
A UX designer with a broad number of responsibilities
Gestalt Principles
Describe how humans group similar elements, recognize patterns, and simplify complex images when we perceive objects
Gestalt principle is also known as the law of simplicity and concerns the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that people tend to perceive things in their simplest form.
Gesture
Any method of interaction a user has with information on their device using touch
GitHub
GitHub is a collaborative development platform used by developers.
Goal statement
One or two sentences that describe a product and its benefits for the user
Graceful degradation (top-down designing)
A method of designing from the largest screen, with a lot of features and interactions, to smaller screens, where features and interactions are scaled back
Graphic Design
Graphic design is one of the best-known practices within the world of design and technology. It includes fundamentals of design like typography, colour theory, illustration, and even photography.
Sometimes also referred to as communication design, the practice of developing and communicating media to target audiences.
Graphic designers
Create visuals that tell a story or message
Grid of cards layout
A website layout that features a series of cards, which are often square or rectangles, that provide previews of more detailed content
Grid System
A grid system works as a framework that helps product teams to arrange UI elements in a way that allows maintaining good visual balance from page to page.
Text, images, and functions are aligned on the column-based structure. It allows designers and developers to create more consistent and appealing UI.
Guerrilla Usability Testing
Guerrilla usability testing is a quick and inexpensive way of testing a prototype or website with real users.
Instead of recruiting a specific targeted audience to take part in sessions, participants are approached in public places and asked to take part in the research. These sessions normally last for only 10-15 minutes with little or no incentive.
Hamburger menus
A nickname for the type of navigation menu that is represented by an icon with three lines. When you click on the icon, it unfolds by sliding in from the side or taking over the whole page, revealing a menu of options to navigate through pages
Happy path
A user story with a pleasant ending
Heading
Titles or subtitles that stand out at the beginning of a paragraph, article, section, or another area of a website
Heat Map
A heat map is a graphical representation of the areas on your product that receive the most user attention. It uses a warm-to-cool colour spectrum to show you where exactly your users are going. Red indicates a high frequency of attention with degrees to white representing lower levels of attention.
Heuristic Evaluation
Heuristic evaluation is the documentation of a website or app’s usability flaws and other areas for improvement against the 10 best practice guidelines published by Jakob Nielsen to help guide usability assessments.
Hick’s Law
Hick’s law, sometimes referred to as Hick-Hyman law, is a model for measuring human reaction time based on the number of choices presented to them.
Hick’s Law states “the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices”.
Hierarchical model
A top-down approach to structure that starts with broader categories of information (parent) and narrows into more detailed information (child)
Hierarchy
A visual design principle that orders elements on a page and highlights them by their importance
High Fidelity Prototype
A prototype that is polished and similar to a final design, with lots of detail and a good indication of the final proposed aesthetics and functionality. It is sufficiently well formed to allow for rigorous testing with users.
High-fidelity (hi-fi)
A design that closely matches the look and feel of the final product and is more refined or polished; called “hi-fi” for short
High-fidelity prototypes
Polished designs that exhibit functionality and closely match the look and feel of the final product
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, is the standard programming language used to create websites and web applications. Unlike CSS, it is concerned with the structure of a website, similar to a blueprint of a building.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary field of study focusing on the design of computer technology and, in particular, the interaction between humans (the users) and computers. While initially concerned with computers, HCI has since expanded to cover almost all forms of information technology design.
Hypothesis statement
Our best educated guess on what we think the solution to a design problem might be
Iconography
A system of graphic images or symbols associated with a subject or an idea
Ideate
The phase of design thinking that involves brainstorming all potential solutions to the user’s problem
Ideation
The process of generating a broad set of ideas on a given topic, with no attempt to judge or evaluate them
Ideation
Ideation refers to a process or method for forming ideas or concepts.
Implicit bias
The collection of attitudes and stereotypes associated with people, without one’s conscious knowledge
Impostor syndrome
The belief that you’re unskilled, inferior to others, or bad at your job, despite your successes
Inclusive design
Making design choices that take into account personal identifiers like ability, race, economic status, language, age, and gender
Inclusive Design
Inclusive Design is a methodology, born out of digital environments, that enables and draws on the full range of human diversity. Most importantly, this means including and learning from people with a range of perspectives.
Indirect competitors
Have a similar set of offerings but focus on a different audience, or have a different set of offerings and focus on the same audience
Industrial Design
Industrial design uses both applied art and science to improve the aesthetics, functionality, ergonomics, and or usability of a physical product.
Infographic
Infographics or information graphics are visual representations of information or data designed to communicate complex or detailed information simply and contextually.
Information Architecture
Information architecture (IA) is the practice organizing and arranging information to make it understandable. This includes defining hierarchies, parent-child relationships and in general making sense out of an (informational) mess.
Information architecture (IA)
Organizes content to help users understand where they are in a product and where the information they want is
Initial focus
How you attract a user’s attention to help them accomplish a task
Innovation
Innovation is the process of developing or introducing something new.
Insight
An observation about people that helps you understand the user or their needs from a new perspective
Interaction Design (IxD)
Interaction Design, or IxD, is the practice of designing interactive digital products and considering the way in which users will interact with them.
A discipline that focuses specifically on how users interact with products (both digital and analog). This could be buttons on a page, swipes on an app, or how to use a can opener that only has one handle.
Interaction designers
Focus on designing the experience of a product and how it functions
Interactivity
Interactivity: Makes the prototype function
Interface
An interface is the point at which a person or user comes in to contact with an organisations systems, processes, products, or services.
Internship
A short-term role with limited responsibility
Interviews
A research method used to collect in-depth information on people’s opinions, thoughts, experiences, and feelings
Iterate
Revise the original design to create a new and improved version
Iteration
Doing something again, by building on previous versions and making tweaks
Iteration
Iterating is the act of repeating a process with the aim of approaching a desired goal, target, or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an iteration.
JavaScript
A call to action (CTA) is a message that invites a reader, user, or consumer to take an action such as download, buy, read.
Job Stories
Job stories (from jobs-to-be-done) help define user tasks in product design. Diffrent from user stories, it attempts to avoid leading a design with persona-first phrasing.
Format: When [name situation], I want to [list motivations and forces], so I can [expected outcome]. Example: When I go shopping for groceries, I want to find the cheapest available produce, so I can save money shopping.
Job-To-Be-Done
Jobs-to-be-done is a theory of consumer action. It describes the mechanisms that cause a consumer to adopt an innovation.
The theory states that markets grow, evolve, and renew whenever customers have a Job to be Done, and then buy a product to complete it (get the Job Done).
Kerning
Kerning is the spacing between individual letters or characters. Unlike tracking, which adjusts the amount of space between the letters of an entire word in equal increments, kerning is focused on how type looks — creating readable text that’s visually pleasing.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Critical measures of progress toward an end goal
KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are measurable values that help us understand and track how well a product is doing. As a UX designer, you’ll often work with KPIs like task success rate, user error rate, and time on task.
Key terms
Important words in a job posting that tell you the specifics about the role
Landing Page
Any page a user lands on is considered a landing page. However, landing pages are often tied to ads and search results and are designed to meet specific conversion goals. Not only are they the page a user lands on, but they are also a crucial part of marketing campaigns.
It’s common for landing pages that are part of a marketing campaign to be designed slightly differently than normal websites. Often, you’ll find that they do not feature a navigation and tend to push a single action, like a download, purchase, or registration.
Landmarks
Features — like navigation bars, search boxes, fixed sidebars, and footers — used to break up a lot of text on a web page and help improve the use of assistive technology
Law of Common Region
Law of Common Region states “Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.”
Adding a border around an element or group of elements is an easy way to create common region.
Common region can be created by defining a background behind an element or group of elements.
Law of Prägnanz
Law of Prägnanz states “People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of us.”
The human eye likes to find simplicity and order in complex shapes because it prevents us from becoming overwhelmed with information.
Research confirms that people are better able to visually process and remember simple figures than complex figures.
Law of Proximity
Law of Proximity states “Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together.”
Proximity helps to establish a relationship with nearby objects.
Proximity helps users understand and organize information faster and more efficiently.
Law of Similarity
Law of Similarity states “The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.”
Elements that are visually similar will be perceived as related.
Color, shape, and size, orientation and movement can signal that elements belong to the same group and likely share a common meaning or functionality.
Ensure that links and navigation systems are visually differentiated from normal text elements.
Law of Uniform Connectedness
Law of Uniform Connectedness states “Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection.
Group functions of a similar nature so they are visually connected via colors, lines, frames, or other shapes.
Alternately, you can use a tangible connecting reference (line, arrow, etc) from one element to the next to also create a visual connection.
Use uniform connectedness to show context or to emphasize the relationship between similar items.
Layout
The structure that supports how visual components on a page are arranged
