Functionalism
A design approach that prioritizes the practical purpose and usability of digital products over purely aesthetic considerations. Important for creating efficient, user-centered designs that effectively fulfill their intended functions.
125 topics found for:
“design balance”
Rule of Odds
A design principle that suggests using an odd number of elements in a composition to create visual interest and balance. Crucial for creating aesthetically pleasing designs.
Rule of Thirds
A design principle that suggests dividing an image into nine equal parts using two equally spaced horizontal and vertical lines to create more engaging and balanced compositions. Important for creating visually appealing designs and improving aesthetic quality in visual compositions.
Flexibility-Usability Tradeoff
A principle stating that as the flexibility of a system increases, its usability often decreases, and vice versa. Crucial for balancing versatility and ease of use in design.
Golden Ratio
A mathematical ratio, approximately 1.618:1, often used in design and art to create aesthetically pleasing compositions. Important for designing visually balanced and appealing layouts, leveraging natural aesthetics to enhance user experience.
Design Principles
Fundamental guidelines that inform and shape the design process, ensuring consistency, usability, and effectiveness in product creation. Essential for creating coherent, user-centered designs that align with organizational goals and user needs.
UCD
User-Centered Design (UCD) is an iterative design approach that focuses on understanding users' needs, preferences, and limitations throughout the design process. Crucial for creating products that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying for the intended users.
Visual Weight
The perceived heaviness or importance of an element in a design, influenced by factors such as size, color, and contrast. Crucial for creating balanced and visually appealing designs.
Grid System
A framework used in graphic and web design to organize content in a structured and consistent manner. Essential for creating balanced and readable layouts.
Principles Over Processes
A design philosophy that emphasizes core design principles over rigid adherence to standardized processes. Essential for maintaining creativity and innovation in large-scale, process-driven environments.
Skeuomorphism
A design concept where digital interfaces incorporate elements that resemble their real-world counterparts to make them more intuitive and familiar to users. Important for creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces by leveraging familiar real-world cues.
Parallelism
The use of parallel structures in writing and design to create balance and rhythm, enhancing readability and aesthetic appeal. Crucial for creating clear, coherent, and visually appealing content and interfaces.
Digital Wellness
The pursuit of a healthy relationship with technology, balancing its use to enhance well-being without causing harm. Important for promoting healthy technology use and designing user experiences that support well-being.
Progressive Disclosure
A design technique that involves showing only essential information initially, revealing additional details as needed to prevent information overload. Crucial for creating user-friendly interfaces that enhance usability and reduce cognitive load.
Design Leadership
The practice of guiding and inspiring teams to create effective, user-centered design solutions that align with business goals. Crucial for fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence in design practices within organizations.
Design Tradeoffs
The compromises made between different design options, balancing various factors like usability, aesthetics, and functionality. Essential for making informed decisions that optimize overall design effectiveness.
Product Design
The process of creating and developing new products, focusing on form, function, usability, and aesthetics to meet user needs. Crucial for developing products that are both functional and appealing to users.
RWD
Responsive Web Design (RWD) is an approach to web design that makes web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes. Essential for creating flexible, adaptive web experiences that maintain functionality and aesthetics across different platforms and devices.
Vertical Rhythm
The consistent spacing of text and elements in a design to create a harmonious and readable layout. Crucial for improving readability and visual appeal in design.
Goldilocks Effect
The psychological phenomenon where people prefer options that are not too extreme, but just right. Crucial for designing products and experiences that cater to the majority preference.
Focal Point
A Gestalt principle stating that elements with a distinct visual feature (e.g., a unique color, size, or shape) capture attention and are perceived as a focal point. Crucial for designing interfaces that direct attention toward visual elements that signal and enable forward progress.
Tesler’s Law
The principle stating that there is a limit to the amount of complexity that users can handle, and if designers don't manage complexity, users will. Crucial for designing user-friendly systems that manage complexity effectively.
Scrolljacking
A design technique that overrides the default scrolling behavior, often to create a more controlled or immersive experience. Controversial; can enhance or hinder user experience depending on implementation.
Optimal Arousal Theory
A theory that suggests there is an optimal level of arousal for peak performance, and too much or too little arousal can negatively impact performance. Important for designing experiences that keep users engaged without overwhelming them.
Three-Legged Stool
A metaphor for a balanced approach to product development, considering three core aspects: business viability, technical feasibility, and user desirability. Crucial for ensuring comprehensive and balanced product decisions.
UX
User Experience (UX) refers to the overall experience of a person using a product, system, or service, encompassing all aspects of the end-user's interaction. Crucial for creating products that are not only functional but also enjoyable, efficient, and satisfying to use.
User Advocacy
The practice of promoting and representing the needs, interests, and rights of users in the design and development process. Important for ensuring that user needs and perspectives are prioritized in product design and development.
Fogg Behavior Model
A model that explains behavior change through the interaction of three elements: motivation, ability, and triggers. Crucial for designing interventions and experiences that effectively change user behavior.
Attention Ratio
The ratio of interactive elements (links, buttons) to the number of goals on a landing page. Important for optimizing landing page design to improve conversion rates.
Nagging
A dark pattern where repetitive notifications or prompts are used to wear down user resistance. Recognizing the annoyance of this tactic is important to maintain respectful user interactions and avoid interruptions.
Persuasion Architecture
A strategic framework that designs user experiences to guide behavior and decisions towards desired outcomes. Crucial for creating effective and ethical influence in digital interfaces.
Satisficing
A decision-making strategy that involves choosing an option that meets the minimum requirements rather than seeking the optimal solution, balancing effort and outcome. Important for designing user experiences that accommodate decision-making under constraints.
Salience Bias
A cognitive bias where people focus on the most noticeable or prominent information while ignoring less conspicuous details. Important for understanding user decision-making and ensuring balanced presentation of information.
Fibonacci Sequence
A series of numbers where each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, creating a pattern found in nature and various fields. Useful for understanding natural growth patterns, efficient estimation techniques, and its relationship to the aesthetically pleasing Golden Ratio.
Right Rail Blindness
A specific form of banner blindness where users ignore content placed in the right-hand rail of a web page. Important for optimizing web page layouts and placing critical information where it will be seen.
Feature Bloat
The excessive addition of features in a product, often leading to complexity and reduced usability. Crucial for maintaining simplicity and usability in product design.
Matched Pairs Design
An experimental design where subjects are paired based on certain characteristics, and then one is assigned to the treatment and the other to the control group. Important for reducing variability and improving the accuracy of experimental results.
JAD
Joint Application Development (JAD) is a collaborative approach to gathering requirements and designing solutions in software development projects. It facilitates rapid decision-making and consensus-building by bringing together key stakeholders, including users, developers, and project managers, in structured workshop sessions.
Illusory Truth Effect
A cognitive bias where repeated statements are more likely to be perceived as true, regardless of their actual accuracy. Crucial for understanding how repetition influences beliefs and designing communication strategies for users.
Negativity Bias
The tendency to give more weight to negative experiences or information than positive ones. Crucial for understanding user behavior and designing systems that balance positive and negative feedback.
Horn Effect
A cognitive bias where one negative trait of a person or thing influences the perception of other traits. Important for designing experiences that counteract or mitigate negative biases in user perception.
Hard-Easy Effect
A cognitive bias where people overestimate the probability of success for difficult tasks and underestimate it for easy tasks. Useful for designers to understand user confidence and design
MVE
Minimum Viable Experience (MVE) is the simplest version of a product that delivers a complete and satisfying user experience while meeting core user needs. Essential for rapidly validating product concepts and user experience designs while ensuring that even early versions of a product provide value and a positive impression to users.
Friction
Elements in a process that cause resistance or slow down user actions, which can lead to frustration or be used intentionally to prevent errors and encourage deliberate actions. Important for recognizing both the negative impact of unnecessary delays and the positive use of intentional friction to enhance user decision-making and reduce errors.
Illusory Superiority
A cognitive bias where individuals overestimate their own abilities, qualities, or performance relative to others. Important for understanding user self-perception and designing systems that account for inflated self-assessments.
Social Proof
A psychological phenomenon where people follow the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. Essential for designing interfaces and experiences that leverage social influence to guide user behavior and increase trust and engagement.
Scarcity Tactics
A dark pattern where availability is falsely limited to pressure users into making a purchase. Awareness of this deceptive practice is important to provide honest information about product availability.
Secondary Reinforcer
A stimulus that gains reinforcing properties through association with a primary reinforcer, such as money or tokens, which are associated with basic needs. Essential for understanding complex behavior reinforcement strategies and designing effective reward systems.
Framing Bias
A cognitive bias where people's decisions are influenced by how information is presented rather than just the information itself. Crucial for designers to minimize bias in how information is presented to users.
Focusing Effect
A cognitive bias where people place too much importance on one aspect of an event, causing errors in judgment. Important for understanding decision-making and designing interfaces that provide balanced information.
Confirmation Bias
The tendency to search for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. Crucial for understanding cognitive biases that affect user decision-making and designing interventions to mitigate them.
Omission Bias
A cognitive bias where people judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions). Important for understanding user decision-making and designing systems that mitigate this bias.
Needy Patterns
UI patterns that excessively demand user attention, often interrupting the user experience. Important for identifying and avoiding practices that can frustrate or annoy users.
Risk Compensation
The theory that people adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, often taking more risks when they feel more protected. Important for designing safety features and understanding behavior changes in response to risk perception.
Function Allocation
The process of determining which tasks should be performed by humans and which by machines in a system. Essential for optimizing system efficiency and usability.
Familiarity Bias
A cognitive bias where people prefer familiar things over unfamiliar ones, even if the unfamiliar options are objectively better. Useful for designing interfaces and products that leverage familiar elements to enhance user comfort.
Egocentric Bias
A cognitive bias where people rely too heavily on their own perspective and experiences when making decisions. Important for designers to recognize and mitigate their own perspectives influencing design decisions.
Paradox of Choice
The phenomenon where having too many options leads to anxiety and difficulty making a decision, reducing overall satisfaction. Important for designing user experiences that balance choice and simplicity to enhance satisfaction.
Crowding Out Effect
The phenomenon where external incentives diminish intrinsic motivation, leading to reduced performance or engagement. Important for designing motivational strategies that do not undermine intrinsic motivation.
Google Effect
The tendency to forget information that can be easily found online, also known as digital amnesia. Important for understanding how access to information impacts memory and designing experiences accordingly.