Anti-Pattern
A common solution to a recurring problem that is ineffective and counterproductive, often resulting in negative consequences. Important for recognizing and avoiding poor design practices and improving overall design quality.
A common solution to a recurring problem that is ineffective and counterproductive, often resulting in negative consequences. Important for recognizing and avoiding poor design practices and improving overall design quality.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
A collection of design patterns that provides solutions to common design problems. Useful for standardizing design solutions and promoting best practices across projects.
A set of ten general principles for user interface design created by Jakob Nielsen to improve usability. Essential for evaluating and improving user interface designs.
A reusable solution to common design problems that provides a standard way of addressing recurring issues in design. Essential for creating consistent and efficient design solutions.
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.
Crit (Design Critique) is a structured feedback session where designers present their work and receive constructive feedback from peers. Essential for refining design quality through collaborative input.
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with each other. Crucial for creating a cohesive and intuitive user experience.
The design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities or specific needs. Crucial for creating inclusive products that can be used by everyone, including those with disabilities.
A methodology for building software-as-a-service apps that emphasizes best practices for development, deployment, and scalability. Important for creating scalable, maintainable, and efficient digital products.
A dark pattern where the design focuses the user's attention on one thing to distract them from another. Designers should avoid this deceptive tactic and ensure user attention is not unfairly diverted.
A dark pattern where users are unknowingly signed up for a recurring subscription. Awareness of this tactic is important to ensure transparent subscription services and prevent deceptive charges.
A broader, more informal community of interest that spans across the entire organization, focusing on shared topics such as agile practices or UX design. Valuable for cross-functional learning, knowledge sharing, and promoting a unified approach to common challenges.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape user research practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality user insights.
A dark pattern where users are shown a preview of content that is then gated behind a paywall or sign-up. It's crucial to avoid this misleading practice and be transparent about access requirements.
A dark pattern where options that benefit the service provider are pre-selected for the user. Designers should avoid default selections and ensure users make active choices that are in their best interest.
Design strategies aimed at preventing user errors before they occur. Crucial for enhancing usability and ensuring a smooth user experience.
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.
A group of individuals with similar skills or expertise, spread across different squads, who come together to share knowledge and best practices. Crucial for maintaining technical excellence and fostering professional development within specific disciplines.
A common pattern of eye movement where users scan web content in an "F" shape, focusing on the top and left side of the page. Crucial for designing web content that aligns with natural reading patterns to improve engagement.
The practice of comparing one's performance, processes, or practices to those of peers or competitors to identify areas for improvement. Important for understanding relative performance and identifying best practices for improvement.
A pop-up dialog that appears when a user attempts to leave a page or application, which can be used to prevent loss of progress or data, or to confirm user intent. While it can be used ethically to prevent data loss or confirm actions, designers must avoid using it to deceive, delay, block, or interfere with the user's intent, thus ensuring it does not become a dark pattern.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape marketing practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality marketing outcomes.
The study of how people acquire knowledge, skills, and behaviors through experience, practice, and instruction. Useful for creating educational content and interactive tutorials that enhance user learning.
Tell, Don't Ask (TDA) is a design principle in software engineering that promotes encapsulation by having objects handle their own data and actions. Essential for maintaining object-oriented integrity and reducing dependencies in the code.
Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) is a software development principle for reducing repetition and redundancy. Essential for creating efficient, maintainable, and scalable code in digital product design.
Specific roles assigned to HTML elements to define their purpose and behavior in an accessible manner. Crucial for improving the accessibility and usability of web applications.
The percentage of times a keyword appears in a text relative to the total number of words, used to evaluate the relevance and optimization of a webpage for specific search terms. Important for optimizing content for search engines without overstuffing keywords.
The process of optimizing a website for the crawling and indexing phase, focusing on technical aspects like site speed, structure, and security. Crucial for ensuring a website is search engine-friendly and performs well in search rankings.
The process of comparing design metrics to historical performance, competitive standards, or industry best practices to identify areas for improvement. Crucial for measuring progress, improving practice maturity, and evaluating competitive differentiation.
A dark pattern where additional costs are only revealed at the last step of the checkout process. It's essential to avoid this tactic and promote transparent pricing to build user trust.
A usability inspection method where experts review a user interface against a set of heuristics to identify usability issues. Crucial for identifying usability problems early in the design process.
A dark pattern where the cancellation process is intentionally complicated to discourage users from canceling. Designers must avoid complicating cancellations and respect user decisions with a straightforward process.
A cognitive process where ideas are brought together to find a single, best solution to a problem. Important for problem-solving and decision-making in design processes.
UI patterns that excessively demand user attention, often interrupting the user experience. Important for identifying and avoiding practices that can frustrate or annoy users.
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with external standards or other products. Important for ensuring compatibility and user familiarity across different systems.
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.
Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for designing networked applications based on stateless, client-server communication. Essential for building scalable and efficient web services.
The Principle of Front Doors is an information architecture guideline that acknowledges multiple entry points into a website or system. Crucial for ensuring that all entry points provide a coherent and navigable experience.
Specific attributes used to enhance the accessibility of web content and applications by providing additional information to assistive technologies. Crucial for making dynamic web content more accessible to users with disabilities.
A squeeze page is a type of landing page designed to capture a visitor's email address or other contact information. Highly effective for building an email list by offering a valuable incentive in exchange for the user's details.
A team that supports other teams by providing specialized expertise and tools to improve their performance. Crucial for enhancing overall team effectiveness and efficiency.
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) is an agile project delivery framework focused on delivering business value early and continuously. Essential for ensuring that projects align with business goals and user needs through iterative processes.
A method of categorizing information in more than one way to enhance findability and user experience. Crucial for improving navigation, search, and overall usability of complex information systems.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is a program developed by W3C to improve web accessibility. Essential for creating guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
A programming paradigm that uses objects and classes to structure software design, promoting reusability and scalability. Crucial for developing maintainable and scalable software systems.
A structured routine for continuous improvement based on a scientific approach to problem-solving and process optimization. Crucial for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within product design teams.
ModelOps (Model Operations) is a set of practices for deploying, monitoring, and maintaining machine learning models in production environments. Crucial for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of AI systems throughout their lifecycle, bridging the gap between model development and operational implementation.
A principle stating that as investment in a single area increases, the rate of return on that investment eventually decreases. Important for understanding and optimizing resource allocation in product design and development.
Redundant, outdated, or unnecessary code or design elements that accumulate over time in a system. Important for identifying and removing to maintain clean, efficient, and maintainable systems and interfaces.
Trust, Risk, and Security Management (TRiSM) is a framework for managing the trust, risk, and security of AI systems to ensure they are safe, reliable, and ethical. Essential for ensuring the responsible deployment and management of AI technologies.
A URL that is structured in a way that is easily readable by both users and search engines, often including keywords to improve search engine optimization. Essential for improving a website's visibility and ranking in search engine results.
The SEO value or authority passed from one website to another through hyperlinks, influencing the search engine ranking of the linked site. Important for understanding and leveraging the impact of links on SEO performance.
The process of combining different systems or components in a way that ensures they work together smoothly and efficiently without disruptions. Essential for providing a cohesive user experience and ensuring the reliability of complex systems.
Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing (CALMS) is a framework for guiding the implementation of DevOps practices. Important for fostering a DevOps culture and improving collaboration, efficiency, and continuous improvement in product design teams.
The process of optimizing content and website structure to improve visibility and ranking in voice search results. Important for adapting to the growing use of voice search and ensuring content is accessible to voice queries.
A strategic research process that involves evaluating competitors' products, services, and market positions to identify opportunities and threats. Essential for informing product strategy, differentiating offerings, and gaining a competitive advantage in the market.
The final interaction a customer has with a brand before making a purchase. Important for understanding which touchpoints drive conversions.
An SEO issue that occurs when multiple pages on the same website target the same keyword, causing them to compete against each other and potentially harming search rankings. Important for optimizing SEO strategy and ensuring that each page targets unique keywords effectively.
A statement that explains the unique value a product or service provides to its customers, differentiating it from competitors. Essential for communicating the benefits and advantages of a product to attract and retain customers.