A/B Testing

A/B testing is a method used to test two different versions of a design to see which variation performs best. When running A/B tests, you only want to vary one element or aspect of the design—this allows you to pinpoint precisely which feature influenced the result.

Accessibility

Accessibility considers whether or not—and to what extent—everybody can use a product or service. Designing for accessibility means factoring in the needs of people with disabilities and how a person might interact with your product.

Accounting software

Accounting software is a computer program that maintains account books on computers, including recording transactions and account balances.

Affinity map (or affinity diagram)

UX designers use an affinity map (or affinity diagram) to organize their findings from qualitative user research. This entails data that can’t be counted or measured and therefore requires thematic analysis. For example, if you interviewed five users, you might create an affinity map to cluster similar themes and topics together.

Affordances

Affordance refers to all possible actions with a specific object or element, depending on the user’s capabilities. For example, a cupboard has the potential to be opened, but only if you can reach the handle. A car has the potential to be driven, but only if you are able to open the car door, start the engine, and so on. When designing digital products, the goal is to create elements whose affordances (i.e., possible actions) match the user’s expectations.

Agile UX

Agile UX is a practice that has evolved to integrate agile software development principles into the UX design process. Agile UX is all about designers and developers working collaboratively and iteratively to build and ship versions of a product in short cycles—improving and updating the product along the way. This contrasts the traditional approach of first preparing and researching at length before building anything.

Analytics

Analytics measure human behavior on a site. They help us better understand and interpret patterns of behavior on the products we use. 

API

An application programming interface is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface offering a service to other pieces of software. An API specification is a document or standard describing how to build or use such a connection or interface.

Back and front-end development

Back-end development refers to the server side of an application and everything that communicates between the database and the browser.

Front-end is what users see. Think buttons, text, beautiful colors, and the layer seen on the screen when interacting with a product.

Beta testing

Beta testing is when you launch an unfinished product to a select group of users in order to see how it performs in the real world. This allows you to identify bugs, pain points, and areas of improvement for your imperfect beta product before developing and releasing it fully.

BI tools (or BI software)

Business intelligence software is a type of application software designed to retrieve, analyze, transform, and report data for business intelligence.

Brainstorming

A key aspect of working in UX is coming up with ideas for how to solve user problems. Brainstorming is a popular ideation technique used by UX designers. It’s usually done in a group and essentially involves coming up with ideas and sharing them without too much thought. You can also brainstorm alone and map your ideas out on paper.

Breadcrumb

A breadcrumb is a navigation system that shows where a user is currently situated within a website.

Bug

Bugs are mistakes in software that can cause a product to glitch, behave in unintended ways, or even crash.

Bussines field

Business field means any business activity performed to produce goods or services in the economic sectors. For example, banking and finance, retail and e-commerce, health care and fitness, media and entertainment, marketing and advertising, travel and accommodation, insurance, automotive, education, etc.

CTA

For designers and content creators, the Call to Action (CTA) is the phrase that stimulates users to interact with a product as designed. CTA elements are interactive controls such as buttons, tabs, or links that enable users to perform the expected action.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a UX research method that gives insight into how users categorize information. In a card sorting session, participants are given notecards with different labels or topics written on them and asked to organize them in a way that feels logical. Card sorting helps you to design the information architecture (IA) of a website or app in line with user expectations. You’ll find an explanation of information architecture later on in our glossary.

Case study

Case studies are a crucial part of your UX portfolio. They outline the process you followed when working on a design project, showcasing the problem you set out to solve, the users you were solving it for, the methodology you used to reach the solution, and the final design outcome.

Chatbot

Chatbots are chat interfaces that allow the user to ask questions to the system and receive answers and guidance. They are a popular customer service tool made to mimic the experience of texting a friend.

Clickstream

Clickstream refers to the path of clicks taken by the user to accomplish a goal.

Clickstream analysis

UX designers use clickstream analysis to gain a deeper understanding of user behavior. Clickstream analysis records a user’s trail of activity as they interact with an app or website—i.e., the sequence of clicks they make or the pages they visit.

CMS

A content management system is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content.

Cognitive load

Cognitive load is the amount of mental effort required to complete a certain task. As a UX designer, you want to keep the user’s cognitive load to a minimum. This is all part of designing easy, enjoyable, efficient experiences.

Commits

Throughout the development process, developers create commits whenever they have reached a good point in their work. Commits are similar to drafts.

Competitor analysis

UX designers usually conduct competitor analysis during the research phase of a design project. With competitor analysis, you’re looking at competing products within your niche or market space to see what they do well, where their weaknesses lie, and to get a feel for what your end-users will expect from a similar product (i.e., the one you’re going to design). Competitor analysis helps you to make informed design decisions.

Consistency

Consistency is a key principle in UX design. It dictates that a user-friendly design always provides a consistent experience—once the user is familiar with your product, they can use it with ease; they don’t need to learn new ways of completing tasks or solving problems at every turn.

Contextual inquiry

Contextual inquiry is a user research method that involves observing and interviewing users while interacting with your product in their typical environment. So, rather than asking them about their experience of the product after using it, you watch them in action and ask questions directly at the source to fill in any gaps.

Conversion rate

The conversion rate of a product or site is the percentage of users who complete a desired action. Say we’re creating an e-comm site, and the desired action is a successful purchase. The Conversion Rate would tell us how many users bought an item.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management software systems help manage business processes, like sales, data, and customer interactions.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet programming language that defines how a website should be styled. It contains information on fonts, color, spacing, layouts, and graphics, among others, and how each should be applied to the website.

Customer support

Customer Support is a range of services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product.

CX

Customer experience encompasses a customer’s entire experience when they engage with a product, service, or brand. UX and CX are two distinct areas, but, as a UX designer, it’s important to know the concept and understand how UX contributes to the overall CX.

Dark UX

Dark UX is not a term you ever want to be associated with as a UX designer. It’s the practice of deliberately designed to trick the user or subtly push them towards an action they probably don’t want to take. A classic example of dark UX is making it confusing for users to cancel their subscription.

Data Science

Numbers can tell us much about our users and their needs and help us define how to meet them best. Data Science focuses on making sense of these numbers or data and uncovering valuable insights that help us make better product decisions.

Data-driven

This means using all the available data: analytics, tests, customer service logs, and social media sentiment to develop a better understanding of UX. Therefore, understanding how to collect and process data is a critical task you must face as a UX designer.

Decision matrix (or prioritization matrix)

A decision matrix (or prioritization matrix) is a framework used to evaluate and prioritize ideas based on a set of predetermined criteria. In UX, it can help you weigh up different design options and make informed decisions that balance available time and resources against the user’s needs.

Design debt (or UX debt)

Design debt (or UX debt) results from taking shortcuts in the design process to reach a solution or produce a deliverable quickly. This can lead to problems down the line and can ultimately result in a negative user experience. You might accumulate design debt if you skip user research or user testing if you, ignore style guidelines, or neglect to keep adequate documentation.

Design deliverables

Design deliverables are artifacts a UX designer produces throughout the design process. UX deliverables include things like personas, user journey maps, wireframes, and prototypes.

Design patterns

UX and UI design patterns are repeatable, reusable design components used to solve usability issues that users commonly experience. For example, the breadcrumb navigation system is a design pattern that shows the user their pathway from the homepage to the page they’re viewing.

Design sprint

Jake Knapp invented the design sprint, an increasingly popular practice that condenses and accelerates the product design process. The idea is to build and test a prototype in just five days rapidly, encouraging design teams to move from problem to solution quickly.

Design System

A design system is a universal source of truth for the design team—a collection of design assets, guidelines, constraints, and best practices to adhere to when embarking on a new design project.

Design Thinking

Design thinking has become a buzzword in the industry, so it’s a term worth getting to grips with. The design thinking process comprises five phases: Empathise (with the user), Define (the problem), Ideate (potential solutions), Prototype, and Test. In addition, design thinking is used to address particularly tricky UX problems.

Diary study

A diary study is a UX research method used to gain insight into how users behave in real-world situations and everyday contexts. When conducting a diary study, you’ll ask participants to keep a diary of their activities, thoughts, and feelings over a set period of time in relation to a specific problem or scenario. For example, if you were designing a grocery delivery app, you might ask participants to keep a diary about how they currently approach the task of ordering groceries online.

DPI

A way to measure the density of a print or video image. The number of differently colored dots that can fit into a one-inch space provides information about the resolution of an image. If an image is not of adequately high quality, it may not be able to be resized or printed without a loss of resolution.

Edge case

An edge case is a rare situation. In software design, edge cases often threaten to break a system and the user experience. Edge cases deal with the extreme maximums and minimums of parameters.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes metaphorically—and it’s the very foundation of good UX design. Empathy enables you to understand your user’s needs and pain points and to design solutions accordingly.

Empathy map

An empathy map is a visualization tool used by designers to depict and summarise what they know about a user (or group of users). It consists of four quadrants: “Says,” “Thinks,” “Does,” and “Feels,” which capture notes on what the user has said (e.g., during an interview), what they think about a product or experience, the actions they take in a given context and how they feel during the process. As the name suggests, an empathy map helps you to build empathy for your end users.

End-user

The end user is the person you’re designing for. It’s the person who will use your product or service, and it’s the person whose pain points you want to understand and solve.

Ethical design

Ethical design is about designing with the user’s well-being in mind. For example, an ethically designed social media app might contain features that encourage users to develop a healthy relationship with the app, such as a “time spent scrolling” warning to remind users to take a break.

ERP (or manufacturing software)

Enterprise resource planning is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology.

Eye tracking

Eye tracking is a method used to track users’ eye movements as they look at a website. For UX designers, this provides valuable insight into which areas and elements of the design attract the most attention.

F-shaped pattern

Users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. In a few seconds, their eyes will move at amazing speed across your website’s words in a one-of-a-kind pattern.

Fidelity

Fidelity is used to describing the quality of wireframes and prototypes—in other words, how closely the wireframe or prototype resembles what the live product will look like. Low-fidelity wireframes are bare-bones outlines, whereas high-fidelity prototypes include visuals and interactive properties, closely mimicking a live website or app’s look, feel, and behavior.

Fishbone diagram

A diagram designed to identify cause-and-effect relationships between factors in a given situation. In short, it consists of a “head,” which states a problem, and bones along the spine that represent factors and categories of factors.

Flat design

Flat design is a style or language that favors simple 2D elements and bright colors. While the skeuomorphic design is all about creating a 3D, life-like feel, the flat design keeps things plain and simple.

Floating action button

A floating action button represents the primary action in an application. A floating action button is used for a promoted action. Shaped like a circled icon floating above the UI, it changes color upon focus and lifts upon selection.

Focus group

Another UX research method, focus groups, bring together a handful of users to discuss issues and concerns about the features of a product. The researcher moderates focus groups, but the participants feel unstructured and free-flowing.

Full-stack designer

A full-stack designer is a designer who has the skills and know-how to take on all the “stacks” (or layers) of the product design and development process. While most designers will specialize in just one area, such as UX design or UI design, full-stack designers can take on UX design, UI design, interaction design, and front-end development.

Gamification

Gamification is the process of integrating game-design elements and principles into products in an effort to drive user engagement.

Gestalt principles

The Gestalt principles come from the field of psychology, and they’re essentially a set of laws that describe how our minds organize and interpret visual data. The Gestalt principles can be used to inform design decisions and shape the user experience. For example, the law of proximity states that elements that are positioned close together appear to be more related than elements that are spaced further apart. If you were designing a website based on the law of proximity, you’d group related elements closer together.

Golden Ratio

A mathematical ratio with origins in ancient Greece, also known as the Greek letter Phi. It is found in nature and has made its way into graphic and print design as people deem it to be the most visually appealing layout to the human eye.

Grid system

When designing a page on a website, designers can follow grid systems to help them organize the various elements on the page. A grid system is a series of rows and columns that gives you visibly marked-out areas (similar to a map) to place different elements. This makes it easier to design consistently across different pages.

HCI

Human-Computer Interaction is a field of study concerned with the design and use of computer technology. It studies how we interact with interfaces and computers today.

Heatmap

A heatmap is a data visualization that literally maps out how and where users have spent time on your website in different colors. Red areas of the heatmap indicate popular sections of the website, while blue areas are those which received less attention. Heatmaps are another tool UX designers use to understand how users behave and design accordingly.

Heuristics

Another term from the field of psychology, a heuristic, is a mental shortcut that enables people to solve problems and make decisions quickly based on what they’ve learned from previous experiences. In UX, we use heuristic evaluation to assess the usability of a digital interface.

HRM systems

Human resources management systems or human resources information systems are a type of human resources software that combines a number of processes to ensure the easy management of human resources, business processes, and data.

Hick’s law

According to Hick’s law, the more options or choices a user has, the longer it will take them to make a decision or choose a course of action. In UX, the goal is to keep the number of options available to the user to a minimum, making it quicker and easier for them to navigate through the experience without feeling overwhelmed.

HMW

If you’re in the process of solving a UX problem and trying to come up with ideas, you might frame the problem as a “How might we?” question. For example, if your problem statement is something like “Users struggle to fill out the application form and often fill it out wrong,” you could turn this into the following HMW: “How might we improve the application form to make it easier for users to fill it out correctly?” How Might We questions are a great way to progress from problem to solution while keeping the user at the forefront.

HTML

HTML is the standard language for creating web pages and applications. HTML specifies whether your web content should be recognized as a paragraph, list, heading, link, image, multimedia player, form, or one of many other available elements or even a new element you define.

Hybrid App

Hybrid mobile apps combine both native and web technologies. They’ll often use a combination of technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and will live inside a native container that lets them access device capabilities.

IA

Information architecture (or IA) focuses on organizing, structuring, and labeling content in an effective and sustainable way.

Ideation

Ideation is all about generating as many ideas and potential solutions as possible without considering or judging their feasibility. In the ideation phase, the focus is on the number of ideas rather than quality.

Inclusive design

The Nielsen Norman Group describes the inclusive design as a set of 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, etc.” Ultimately, inclusive design is about designing experiences that include and benefit everyone.

IMS

Inventory management systems are a type of application for tracking inventory levels, orders, sales, and deliveries.

IxD

Interaction design (or IxD) is a subset of UX. Very simply, interaction design considers the interaction between users and products (whereas UX considers the entire user experience, not just the moment of interaction). There are five dimensions of interaction design: words, visual representations, physical objects or space, time, and behavior.

Intuitive design

Intuitive design is what UX professionals strive for; it’s a design that the user can instantly understand and use without needing any tutorial or instruction.

Iterative design

Iterative design is the practice of continuously improving, refining, and updating your product. An iteration of a design is essentially a new, updated version, and designing iteratively enables you to keep improving the user experience on a regular and ongoing basis (rather than launching one version and never updating it again, regardless of how users receive it).

KPIs

Key Performance Indicators are measurable values that help us understand and track a product’s performance. As a UX designer, you’ll often work with KPIs like task success rate, user error rate, and time on task.

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.

Lean UX

It’s a collaborative approach to the UX design process that focuses on getting feedback as early as possible to make quick design decisions. While traditional UX focuses more heavily on setting out product requirements and producing deliverables, lean UX seeks to deliver and improve the product in ongoing, iterative cycles.

LMS

A learning management system is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, materials, or learning and development programs.

Material Design

Material Design is a design language for Android that was developed by Google in 2014. It’s an adaptable system of guidelines, components, and tools which designers and developers can use to quickly and collaboratively build digital products.

Medical software

Medical software is any software item or system used within a medical context, such as reducing paperwork and tracking patient activity.

Mental model

A mental model represents what we believe about how things work in the world around us. Mental models provide us with frameworks to help us solve problems and approach different situations. In UX, mental models relate to how our users expect a particular product or experience to work based on their experience with similar products. It’s important to design with the user’s mental models in mind so as not to throw the user.

Microcopy

As you navigate a website or app, you’ll encounter all kinds of messaging: the text on a button, error messages, the “Welcome” note as you log in… that’s all microcopy. Microcopy is the text which guides a user through a digital product.

Mindmap

A diagram is used to organize information visually. A mindmap is hierarchical and shows the relationships among the parts of the whole. It is often created around a single concept to which associated images, words, and parts of words are added. Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and others branch out from those.

Mobile web

The mobile web isn’t a separate section of the web or a special place. The term mobile web refers to jumping online on a mobile device.

Mockup

A term that gets thrown around often in work environments, mockups are static representations of a product. You can’t click through them or interact with them. They are essentially a picture of what the product will look like.

Modal window

A modal window is a box that pops up outside of the main screen when the user clicks something on the current screen. Modals are used to draw the user’s attention and to get them to focus on one specific thing. To close the modal, the user must complete a certain action or actively click to exit it. An example of a modal could be the window that pops up when you’re reading a blog, asking you to subscribe to their newsletter.

MVP

MVP stands for “minimum viable product.” It’s the most minimal version of a product you can launch, which has enough functionality for people to use but will need further development. Launching an MVP allows you to see how the initial product idea is received before investing too much time and money.

Navigation

Navigation is all about how a user navigates or moves through your product. As a designer, it’s important to think carefully about navigation to ensure that users don’t get lost, confused, and frustrated. Simplicity, consistency, good information architecture, labels, and menus are all key to user-friendly navigation.

OMS

Order management systems are computer software used in a number of industries for order entry and processing.

Onboarding

Onboarding, or user onboarding, is the process of getting new users familiar with your product. Designing an effective, enjoyable onboarding experience is a crucial aspect of designing a good user experience overall—and it’s especially important as it only happens once. That means you only have one shot at making a good impression and turning new users into long-term customers.

Open Source

Anything you stumble upon that is open source is free for public use. You can use it, modify it, and build with it without running into trouble.

Pain points

Pain points are any issues, problems, frustrations, or hiccups a user encounters during a given experience or interaction. As a UX designer, it’s your job to conduct research in order to uncover user pain points and to design experiences that seek to solve them.

Pairing development (or pairing programming)

Pairing development or pairing programming is the practice of working on code in twos. Two developers take turns writing and revising code.

Paradox of Specificity

The specificity paradox states that when we design with a very specific user group in mind, we create products that appeal to a mass audience beyond that target group.

Pareto principle

20% of the functionality and features in any environment will be responsible for 80% of the actions taken within that environment. This Pareto principle applies to any website, web app, or software environment.

Persona

A persona is a fictional character that represents the goals, needs, and characteristics of your target user(s). UX designers create personas based on their user research and refer back to them throughout the design process to ensure they’re keeping the user in mind.

Picker

A picker is a UI element that allows the user to choose, for example, a date, time, or color. Pickers tend to be used where there are many options, or the input is highly conceptual.

PIM systems

Product information management systems enable businesses supplying products being sold online to collect data required for effective marketing and sale of products across various sales channels.

Pixel

Pixels are literally tiny squares used to construct the images seen on device displays. They aren’t a specific color, but rather, they change to be able to show different images and graphics.

PMS (or HOS)

Property Management Systems or Hotel Operating Systems, under business, terms may be used in real estate, manufacturing, logistics, intellectual property, government, or hospitality accommodation management.

Portfolio

A UX portfolio is a collection of your best design work. It demonstrates your skills and abilities as a UX designer and shows employers and clients how you work. A UX portfolio is a staple for anyone looking to land a job in the field.

POS systems

Point-of-sale systems are a combination of hardware and software that enables you to make sales, accept payments, and check out customers.

Problem statement

UX is all about solving user problems. A problem statement is, quite simply, a statement that summarises and defines the problem that needs to be solved.

Product design

Product design as a verb is to create a new product to be sold by a business to its customers. A very broad coefficient and effective generation and development of ideas through a process that leads to new products.

Product roadmap

A product roadmap maps out the vision and strategy for a particular product and sets goals and priorities for the development of the product. UX design is a key part of the product development process, so it’s important to be familiar with the product roadmap.

Progressive enhancement

Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, whilst users with additional browser features or faster Internet access receive the enhanced version instead.

Prototype

A prototype is a simulation or sample version of a final product used for testing before launch. Its goal is to test products (and product ideas) before sinking lots of time and money into the final product. Examples of digital prototypes include interactive mockups of an app, website, or device.

Pull request

Pull requests let you tell others about changes you’ve pushed to a branch in a repository. Once a pull request is opened, you can discuss and review the potential changes with collaborators and add follow-up commits before your changes are merged into the base branch.

Qualitative User Research

Qualitative user research provides insight into your users’ thoughts, motivations, and behaviors. It gathers qualitative data that cannot be measured or counted but is extremely valuable nonetheless. An example of a qualitative user research method is a user interview, where your data comprises what the user said during the interview.

Quantitative User Research

UX designers and researchers conduct quantitative research to gather objective, measurable data about their users. An example of quantitative user data could be the number of people who visit a website in a given time frame or what percentage of users drop out of the checkout process at the last stage.

Refactoring

Refactoring is the process of restructuring code while not changing its original functionality. Refactoring aims to improve internal code by making many small changes without altering the code’s external behavior.

Responsive design

Responsive design ensures that your designs display accurately on different screen sizes. A website designed responsively will look great whether viewed on a desktop computer, a tablet, or a smartphone.

ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of several investments.

SaaP

Software as a product is a product software, which is made to be sold to users, and users pay for a license that allows them to use it.

SaaS

Software as a service is a software distribution model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and hosted on external servers. Subscribing users are able to access it through the web.

SDK

A software development kit, or SDK, is a software package that contains the tools required to develop products for a specific platform or operating system. They help expedite the development process by providing “parts” developers can use instead of having to write the code for them from scratch.

SEM

Search engine marketing is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results in pages primarily through paid advertising.

SEO

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.

Sitemap

A site map is a visual representation of a website’s pages and hierarchy.

Sprints

In agile software development, we call defined periods assigned to complete specific tasks “sprints.” Their length can vary but is usually around 1-3 weeks.

Stakeholder interview

Stakeholders are the people within a company or organization who are invested in the success of the product you design and who can offer insights and input to inform the design process.

Storyboard

In UX, a storyboard is a visual depiction of a user’s experience with a product. It’s a bit like a comic strip, allowing the designer to envision all the steps in the user’s journey and to gain a deeper understanding of how the user will relate to and experience the product.

Style guide

A style guide is a document created by UX designers to set the standards, conventions, and guidelines that should be followed throughout the design process. The goal of a style guide is to ensure consistency. This is especially useful when you have lots of different stakeholders involved in the product design and development process.

Surveys

Surveys are another popular user research method. You can gather both qualitative and quantitative data through user surveys, depending on how you frame the questions. Surveys offer a relatively low-cost and not-too-time-consuming way to obtain large volumes of user data.

SVG

A popular image format, scalable vector graphics, or SVGs, are scalable two-dimensional graphics that can be manipulated and animated with code.

Task analysis

UX designers use task analysis to study and understand how users perform a series of tasks in order to complete their goals. The output of a task analysis is simply a list of all the steps a user will go through to complete their task. Task analysis typically takes place early on in the design process.

Task flow

A series of steps that users complete for a specific task. Task flows are similar to user flows, except they’re generally linear without multiple branches or paths.

Taxonomy

The practice of classifying things and concepts.

Technical debt

Technical debt is similar to design debt, but instead of taking a toll on the design system, it takes it on the code.

Touchpoints

Specific pages within a product where an end-user interacts with a feature.

Tree testing

Tree testing is a UX research method that provides insight into how easily people can find information on your website or app and where they get lost. Tree testing is useful for evaluating how user-friendly your site structure is.

Typography

Typography refers to how text is arranged and styled. It’s more of a UI design term than a UX one, but it certainly plays a part in the overall user experience. Designers must choose typography that is easily legible and visually appealing for the user.

UCD

User-centered design (or UCD) places the end user front and center throughout the product design and development process. It’s based on a set of principles that prioritize the end user, such as involving users from the very beginning of the process (i.e., through user research), getting real user feedback along the way, and designing iteratively to keep improving the user experience.

UI

A user interface (or UI) is the point of interaction between humans and computers. It contains all the features a user needs to interact with a digital product: input controls that enable a user to input information, navigational elements which allow the user to move from one point to the next, informational components which provide the user with valuable information and containers which group the content into meaningful sections. Designers are responsible for creating interfaces that are user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing.

UI elements

UI elements are the building blocks used in the design of apps and websites. When you use a website or app, you encounter buttons, forms, menus, drop-down lists, image carousels, and more. These are all examples of UI elements.

UI patterns

UI patterns are reusable solutions to common usability problems in products or on the web expressed as a collection of UI elements. Think about a login screen. A common login UI pattern is made up of two input fields, one for a username and one for a password, and a button to submit these. We call this collection of elements a login pattern.

Unit testing

The process of testing parts of an application to ensure they’re working properly. It can be done manually or can be an automated process.

Usability

Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience.

Usability testing

Usability testing is the process of testing your designs or product on a sample of people who represent your target users. During a usability test, you’ll ask participants to complete certain tasks, observing them as they do so. This allows you to identify any usability issues which are hampering the user experience.

User experience

The user experience refers to a user’s emotions, attitudes, and perceptions about a product, system, or service. In other words, it is how you feel while interacting with an app or website. Good UX makes a product useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible.

User flow

A user flow describes the intended series of steps a user needs to take to complete a goal on a product. They often include a name, steps, and a description of what happens during each step.

User interface design

User interface design, or UI design, is the design of interfaces that focus on usability and efficiency for the user. This practice usually refers to the design of graphical user interfaces (or “GUI”) for software and machines, but it can also refer to other types of interaction, like voice user interfaces.

User Interview

A user interview is a common UX research method, and it pretty much does what it says on the tin: you ask your user (or representative user) questions in order to gain insight into their thoughts, expectations, goals, and pain points in relation to a particular problem, product or experience.

User journey map

A user journey map is a visualization that depicts all the touchpoints between a user and a product across a given time period. It also contains information about a person’s channels to interact with the product. User journey maps are useful as they allow designers to visualize and understand how the user experiences a product. It’s important to note that user journey maps are different from user flows.

User research

The goal of UX design is to solve real user problems. The only way to do this is to start by understanding your target users and the problems they face. To uncover such insights, UX designers conduct user research. User research takes place early in the process (in fact, it’s usually the very first step a designer will go through) and is absolutely critical to your work.

User stories

A user story is a brief, simple statement that defines the purpose (or one of the purposes) of creating a product. Writing user stories allows you to consider and capture what the user wants to achieve when they interact with your product. User stories are based on the following structure: As a [type of user], I need/want to [action] in order to achieve [goal or outcome].

User testing

User testing is testing your product, new feature, or prototype on real users to gain feedback and inform future product iterations. User testing is often used to determine if there’s a need for your proposed solution among your user group. In contrast, usability testing looks explicitly at how easy a design or product is to use.

UX audit

A UX audit reviews an existing product (or an aspect of the product) to identify issues in the overall user experience. You can think of a UX audit as a user experience health check, providing you with useful data to inform future design decisions. UX audits are typically conducted for quality assurance purposes after the release of a new product or a major redesign, but companies may schedule them periodically to keep a general pulse on the product.

UX design

User experience design (or UX) relates to how a user feels whenever they use or interact with a product or service. It captures how easy and enjoyable the product is to use overall. UX design is the process of creating these experiences, with a focus on solving a specific problem or pain point for the user.

UX documentation

UX documentation captures all the steps you follow throughout a given design project. It allows you to keep track of the project and create a source of truth for all stakeholders to refer back to. UX documentation can include anything from the design problem and the project timeline to a summary of user research findings, early concepts and sketches, and results from usability tests.

UX patterns

UX design patterns are reusable design components that are used to solve common usability problems that users experience.

UX strategy

UX strategy ties the day-to-day work of the design team to the overarching business goals. It defines a vision for the product or service—that is, what the product looks like in its final state and the value it brings. It sets out goals and milestones which should be achieved along the way in order to reach the ultimate vision, as well as measures for success. Finally, a UX strategy defines a plan of action for how these goals will be met.

UX writing

UX writing is a fast-growing field within UX. It’s the process of planning and writing all the text found on a digital product interface, with the goal of guiding the user through the experience. UX writing includes the creation of microcopy; things like error messages, welcome text, and menu labels.

Visual design

The visual design considers the aesthetics of an app or website. In the context of UX, the goal of visual design is to use text, images, color, and typography to enhance and aid the overall user experience.

Voice User Interface (or VUI)

Interfaces that enable users to use voice input to control computers and devices. Functional VUIs depend on speech recognition in order to translate voice input into commands a machine can understand.

Waterfall development

In software waterfall development, each phase must be completed before the next phase can begin. So, all the designs would have to be completed before developers could begin any work.

White space

White space is the empty space around and between different elements in your design. White space helps create elegant, clutter-free designs and directs the user’s attention to certain components. Note that white space doesn’t have to be white; the name refers to any blank space on the page.

Whiteboard challenge

If you aim to become a UX designer or switch jobs in the field, you must be familiar with the whiteboard challenge. The whiteboard challenge is a common part of the UX interview process, requiring candidates to solve a design challenge in real-time in front of the interview panel. When completing a whiteboard challenge, you’ll be asked to sketch out your thought process on a whiteboard.

Wireframes

Wireframing is an important part of the UX process as it allows you to test and validate initial concepts before developing them into high-fidelity designs and, ultimately, live products. Wireframes eventually evolve into prototypes, which are more life-like representations of how the product will look and behave.

WMS

Warehouse management systems are a set of policies and processes intended to organize the work of a warehouse or distribution center and ensure that such a facility can operate efficiently and meet its objectives.

WTF

What the fuck (or WTF) is the end-users’ typical reaction to a low-quality design solution/experience that has been provided based on designers’ personal opinions but not the research and investigation methods.