Glossary of Experience Design
15 min readOct 22, 2023
Most Important Terms You Need to Know as Designer, Developer, and User
— A
- A/B Testing
What is A/B testing, and why should you consider this method for measuring the business value of design changes?
- Acceptance criteria (AC)
Specific standards and functional requirements that a task or user story in the product backlog must meet before it is considered complete. - Affinity Diagramming
Affinity diagramming has long been used in business to organize large sets of ideas into clusters. In UX, the method is used to organize research findings or to sort design ideas in ideation workshops.
- Antipersonas
Antipersonas represent people who could misuse your product in ways that negatively impact target users and the business. Formalizing a description of the 8 aspects of an antipersonas can help a design team mitigate such risks.
- Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
- Affordances
An affordance is what a user can do with an object based on the user’s capabilities.
— B
- Basic Psychology
Basic psychological principles can guide you as a UX designer because most users share many common characteristics. Consider learning more about: motivation, attention, memory, persuasion, learning, decision making, emotion, sensation, perception, or cognitive biases.
- Benchmarking UX
Quantitatively evaluate a product or service’s user experience by using metrics to gauge its relative performance against a meaningful standard.
- Banner Blindness
Recent eyetracking studies confirm an old finding: People tend to ignore design elements that signal advertisements.
— C
- Content Strategy
A content strategy is a high-level plan that guides the intentional creation and maintenance of information in a digital product.
- Cognitive Load
The total cognitive load, or amount of mental processing power needed to use your site, affects how easily users find content and complete tasks.
- Common Region
Items within a boundary are perceived as a group and assumed to share some common characteristic or functionality.
- Card Sorting
Card sorting is a UX research technique in which users organize topics into groups. Use it to create an IA that suits your users’ expectations.
- Clickstream Analytics
An analytics method that involves analyzing the sequence of pages that users visit as they use a site or application. It can provide insights about potential issues, typical navigation routes, and the content that users interact with right before completing key actions on a site or in an application.
- Campbell’s Law
When organizations optimize metrics at the cost of all else, they expose themselves to metric corruption, which can have disastrous consequences.
- CASTLE Framework
The HEART framework is great for B2C products but is lacking for workplace applications where users cannot choose the product. CASTLE offers a complementary assessment framework for UX that focuses on the needs of internal product teams.
- Conversion Rate
Conversions measure whether users take a desired action on your website, so they are a great metric for tracking design improvements (or lack of same). But non-UX factors can impact conversion rates, so beware.
- Cancel vs Close
Distinguishing between these two actions is critical to avoiding losing users’ work. Save changes before closing a view, use text labels rather than an X icon, and provide a confirmation dialog before destructive actions.
- Cognitive Walkthroughs
A cognitive walkthrough is a task-based usability-inspection technique used to evaluate the learnability of a system from the perspective of a new user.
— D
- Dark Mode
In people with normal vision (or corrected-to-normal vision), visual performance tends to be better with light mode, whereas some people with cataract and related disorders may perform better with dark mode. On the flip side, long-term reading in light mode may be associated with myopia.
- Dark Patterns
Dark design patterns intentionally trick users into doing things they don’t want to do. This is different than persuasive UX which nudges users without deception.
- Demographic Data
Demographic questions related to age, race, gender and income can be sensitive topics for research participants and need to be carefully framed by UX researchers.
- Design Systems
A design system is a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels.
- Doherty Threshold
Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.
- DesignOps
DesignOps (Design Operations) is a system for amplifying user experience design’s value and impact at scale.
— E
- ELIZA Effect
Users quickly attribute human-like characteristics to artificial systems, which reflect their personality back to them. This phenomenon is called the ELIZA effect.
- Engagement Metrics
Engagement is an abstract, complex concept used to understand how much people interact with our products. Choosing the right engagement metrics goes beyond time spent.
- Empathy Maps
The empathy-mapping process helps distill and categorize knowledge of the user into one place, while the artifact serves as quick, digestible way to illustrate user attitudes and behavior
- Eyetracking
Task scenarios are core to usability studies. The way researchers write tasks can bias usability results by influencing where people focus their attention.
— F
- Fitts’s Law
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
— G
- Gamification
Gamification is the usage of game mechanics in nongame contexts, such as mainstream UX design. The most successful implementations of gamification begin with a learner-centered mindset.
- Gestalt Principles
The gestalt principles for visual perception make users see some graphical user interface design elements as parts of a whole, and others as being separate, and thus different.
- Grid system
Grids help designers create cohesive layouts, allowing end users to easily scan and use interfaces. A good grid adapts to various screen sizes and orientations, ensuring consistency across platforms.
- GUI Streering Law
In a graphical user interface, having the user move a cursor within a narrow path (e.g., in a hierarchical menu or a slider) follows a strict law for how easy or difficult it is to do, depending on the specifics of the GUI.
- Goal-Gradient Effect
The tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal.
- Gestalt Principles
Gestalt Principles are principles/laws of human perception that describe how humans group similar elements, recognize patterns and simplify complex images when we perceive objects. Designers use the principles to organize content on websites and other interfaces so it is aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand.
— H
- Hawthorne Effect
Individuals often modify their behavior if they know they are being observed. That phenomenon became known as the Hawthorne effect or the observer bias. We can mitigate this effect by building rapport, designing natural tasks, and spending more time with study participants.
- Heuristic Evaluation
Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics can be used to analyze the UX of applications that support domain-specific, complex workflows.
- Halo Effect
The Halo Effect says that any one element in a user’s experience with a company will rub off on their interpretation of other elements and their feelings about the company as a whole. Good design in one part of a website will make people like other parts better (and like the company better), but the opposite is also true.
- Heatmap
These heatmaps are the results from a study on the effect of signifiers on user gaze patterns.
- How Might We
Constructing how-might-we questions generates creative solutions while keeping teams focused on the right problems to solve.
- Hick’s Law
Hick’s Law (or the Hick–Hyman Law) says that the more choices you present to your users, the longer it takes them to reach a decision. However, combining Hick’s Law with other design techniques can make long menus easy to use.
— I
- Interaction Cost
The interaction cost is the sum of efforts — mental and physical — that the users must deploy in interacting with a site in order to reach their goals.
- Information Architecture (IA)
Navigation, taxonomies, and the full IA structure are different ways of modeling a product’s structure. We review the differences and similarities between these three different IA models.
- Information Scent
When deciding which links to click on the web, users choose those with the highest information scent — which is a mix of cues that they get from the link label, the context in which the link is shown, and their prior experiences.
- Intelligent Assistants
Are Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant truly intelligent? While they do have some “intelligent” features, they are still far from what people expect such an intelligent assistant to do.
- Inclusive Design
Inclusive design describes methodologies to create products that understand and enable people of all backgrounds and abilities. It may address accessibility, age, economic situation, geographic location, language, race, and more.
- Information Foraging
To decide whether to visit a page, people take into account how much relevant information they are likely to find on that page relative to the effort involved in extracting that info.
- Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things (IoT) poses many challenges since these systems rarely follow even basic usability guidelines. UX professionals have many opportunities for contributing to this new generation of devices and solutions in a major way.
— J
- Journey Mapping
A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.
- Jakob’s Law
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
— K
— L
- Less Is More
Having a feature-rich interface can make navigation difficult to learn and overly complex.
— M
- Miller’s Law
The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.
- Mental Models
What users believe they know about a UI strongly impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new.
- Mood Boards in UX
Create mood boards to collect visual inspiration, communicate brand identity, and decide on the product’s visual direction.
- Microinteractions
Microinteractions convey system status, support error prevention, and communicate brand. They are initiated by a trigger, are single-purpose, and can make the experience engaging.
— N
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) can be gamed, and its definition loses information and precision by treating fairly dissimilar responses in the same way. It should be used together with other UX metrics rather than in isolation.
— O
- Omnichannel
When you interact with your customers over whatever channels they prefer — at a brick-and-mortar store, over the internet, via text, or through social media — that’s omnichannel marketing.
— P
- Pareto Principle
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
- Peak-End Rule
People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
- Primacy Effect
The primacy effect influences how user perceive and remember your designs. Learn how to work with it to create more effective experiences.
- Passwordless Accounts
A new pattern allows users to create an account without defining a password. Later on, they can log in through an OTP or a passkey.
- Prioritization Matrices
Prioritization charts or matrices can help UX practitioners base important decisions on objective, relevant criteria instead of subjective opinions.
- Paradox of specificity
The Paradox of Specificity is a user research and user experience theory which suggests that adapting our efforts to the needs of a more specific group will result in solutions (products, concepts, services) which are actually useful to a much wider audience. - Problem statement
In the discovery phase of a UX project, a problem statement is used to identify and frame the problem to be explored and solved, as well as to communicate the discovery’s scope and focus.
- Prototype
Element, functionality, and content are three types of prototype specifications that help us document design details that are otherwise easily overlooked.
- Postel’s Law
Postel’s Law (also known as the Robustness Principle) was formulated by Jon Postel, an early pioneer of the Internet. The Law is a design guideline for software, specifically in regards to TCP and networks, and states “TCP implementations should follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others”. In other words, programs that send messages to other machines (or to other programs on the same machine) should conform completely to the specifications, but programs that receive messages should accept non-conformant input as long as the meaning is clear.
- Phone-Tree Systems
Phone trees are notoriously frustrating for 4 main reasons. There are many small ways to make them more usable and less miserable, however.
— Q
— R
- ROI
Demonstrating the value of design improvements and other UX work can be done by calculating the return-on-investment (ROI). Usually you compare before/after measures of relevant metrics, but sometimes you have to convert a user metrics into a business-oriented KPI (key performance indicator).
- Recognition and Recall
Showing users things they can recognize improves usability over needing to recall items from scratch because the extra context helps users retrieve information from memory.
- ResearchOps
The practice of Research Operations (ResearchOps) focuses on processes and measures that support researchers in planning, conducting, and applying quality research at scale.
— S
- Spatial Memory
With repeated practice, users develop imprecise memory of objects and content in a UI, but still need additional visual and textual signals to help them find a specific item.
- Service Blueprints
Service blueprints visualize organizational processes in order to optimize how a business delivers a user experience.
- Selection Bias
Every research study has bias, but you can curate and prioritize certain biases to address the questions that are important to you
- Serial Position Effect
Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series.
- System Usability Scale (SUS)
The SUS is a well-established 10-question survey administered at the end of a user test; it gives you a measure of the perceived usability of your product and enables you to compare it with others.
— T
- Task Analysis
Task analysis is the systematic study of how users complete tasks to achieve their goals. This knowledge ensures products and services are designed to efficiently and appropriately support those goals.
- Tesler’s Law
Tesler’s Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.
- Tree Testing
Follow these tips to effectively evaluate a site’s navigation hierarchy and to avoid common design mistakes.
- Tone of Voice
A product’s tone of voice communicates how an organization feels about its message. The tone of any piece of content can be analyzed along 4 dimensions: humor, formality, respectfulness, and enthusiasm.
— U
- Usability Testing
UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs.
- User-Centered Design
Most short explanations of “what is UX?” are quite internally-focused and rely on understanding the process for building digital products. Here are 3 steps to explain what you do that normal people can understand and will relate to.
— V
- Von Restorff Effect
The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.
- Visual Design
What every team member needs to know about creating user interfaces using essential principles, techniques, and methods of visual design
- Visual Attention Software
Visual Attention Software (VAS) is artificial intelligence that helps your creative win the first glance and helps get your creative approved.VAS simulates an early phase of human vision and predicts what people are likely to notice when they first glance at your creative before they’re aware of what they’re looking at.
— W
- Wizard of Oz Method
The Wizard of Oz is a UX research method that involves interaction with a mock interface controlled by a human. It is used to test costly concepts inexpensively and to narrow down the problem space.
- Within-Subjects Study Design
A study design in which the same participant tests all conditions corresponding to a variable. It is usually contrasted with between-subject designs. For example, you might recruit 40 participants for a quantitative usability study and have all 40 participants test both site A and site B. In this type of study, it’s important to randomize the order in which users will see the designs.
— X
— Y
— Z
- Zeigarnik Effect
People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
