Generative Design
An iterative design process that uses algorithms and computational tools to generate a wide range of design solutions based on defined constraints and goals. Crucial for exploring innovative and optimized design solutions.
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“design maintainability”
User Scenarios
Narrative descriptions of how users might interact with a product or system to achieve specific goals, used to inform design and development. Important for understanding user needs and ensuring the design supports their tasks and goals.
Art Theory
The study of the principles and techniques of art, including visual composition, aesthetics, and the role of art in society. Important for understanding visual design principles and enhancing the aesthetic quality of digital products.
Application Architecture
The high-level structure of a software application, defining its components and their interactions. Essential for designing robust, scalable, and maintainable digital products.
Design Canon
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
Atomic Design
A methodology for creating design systems by breaking down interfaces into their basic components (atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages). Essential for creating scalable and maintainable design systems.
Design System
A collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled to build any number of applications, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and efficiency across products.
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.
Design Debt
The accumulated consequences of poor design decisions, which can hinder future development and usability. Crucial for understanding and addressing the long-term impact of design choices.
Design Concept
An overarching idea or theme that guides the design process, providing direction and coherence to the final product. Essential for ensuring that all design elements align with a central vision and purpose.
Contextual Design
A user-centered design process that involves understanding users' needs and workflows through field research and applying these insights to design. Essential for creating designs that are deeply informed by user contexts and behaviors.
Commodification of Design
The process where design services and outputs become standardized and interchangeable, often leading to competition based primarily on price rather than quality or creativity. Important for understanding market trends and pressures that reduce the perceived value and uniqueness of design work, impacting pricing and differentiation strategies.
Interactive Design
The design of interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. Crucial for creating engaging and user-friendly digital experiences.
Experience Design
The practice of designing products, services, and environments with a focus on the overall user experience. Essential for creating holistic and meaningful interactions.
Pattern Library
A collection of design patterns that provides solutions to common design problems. Useful for standardizing design solutions and promoting best practices across projects.
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.
Principle of Repetition
A design principle that involves repeating elements to create consistency and unity, making the design more cohesive and understandable. Crucial for creating visually appealing and user-friendly designs that enhance readability and usability.
Wall Walk
An activity during a design audit where printed screens representing customer journeys are reviewed collaboratively with stakeholders to assess design quality and identify areas for improvement. Essential for ensuring design consistency, gathering feedback, and making informed decisions on design enhancements.
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.
Breakpoint System
A structured set of breakpoints used to create responsive designs that work seamlessly across multiple devices. Important for maintaining consistency and usability in responsive design.
Product Architecture
The structural design of a product, defining its components, their relationships, and how they interact to fulfill the product's purpose. Important for ensuring that a product is well-organized, scalable, and maintainable.
Modularity
The degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often used in the context of software or hardware design. Important for enhancing flexibility, reusability, and ease of maintenance 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.
Roach Motel
A dark pattern where it's easy to get into a situation but hard to get out of it, such as signing up for a service but finding it difficult to cancel. Awareness of this tactic is crucial to design fair user experiences with straightforward entry and exit points.
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.
Internal Consistency
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with each other. Crucial for creating a cohesive and intuitive user experience.
POLA
Principle of Least Astonishment (POLA) is a design guideline stating that interfaces should behave in a way that users expect to avoid confusion. Crucial for enhancing user experience and reducing the learning curve in digital products.
3-Tiered Architecture
3-Tiered Architecture is a software design pattern that separates an application into three layers: presentation, logic, and data. Crucial for improving scalability, maintainability, and flexibility in software development.
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.
MVC
Model-View-Controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern that separates an application into three main logical components: the Model (data), the View (user interface), and the Controller (processes that handle input). Essential for creating modular, maintainable, and scalable software applications by promoting separation of concerns.
Design Tokens
A system of design variables used to maintain consistency in a design system, such as colors, fonts, and spacing. Crucial for ensuring uniformity and scalability in design across different platforms and products.
Modular Design
A design approach that divides a system into smaller parts or modules that can be independently created, modified, replaced, or exchanged. Crucial for creating flexible, scalable, and maintainable systems.
Design Language
A cohesive system of visual and interaction design principles and guidelines that ensure consistency and coherence across a product or brand's interfaces and experiences. Essential for creating a unified and recognizable user experience, ensuring consistency, usability, and brand identity across all platforms and touchpoints.
Design Audit
A comprehensive review of a brand's design assets and practices to ensure consistency and effectiveness. Important for maintaining a cohesive and effective brand identity.
Design Excursions
Short, exploratory design activities or exercises that encourage creative thinking and experimentation. Important for fostering creativity and innovation in the design process.
Product Designer
A professional responsible for the creation and development of products, ensuring they meet user needs and are visually appealing and functional. Important for translating user needs and business goals into tangible product solutions.
Privacy by Design
A framework that incorporates privacy considerations into the design and development of products and services from the outset. Crucial for ensuring user privacy and compliance with data protection regulations.
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.
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.
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.
Uniform Connectedness
A Gestalt principle stating that elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection. Essential for creating designs that effectively group related elements.
Sneak Into Basket
A dark pattern where a product sneaks an additional item into the user's shopping cart, often through a pre-selected checkbox. Designers should avoid this practice and ensure users have full control over their purchases to maintain trust.
Interface Interference
A dark pattern where the user interface is manipulated in a way that prioritizes certain actions over others to benefit the company. It's crucial to avoid this tactic and design fair interfaces without manipulating user actions.
Component Library
A collection of reusable UI components that can be used to build applications. Helps in maintaining consistency and efficiency in the design and development process.
User Centric Mindset
An approach that places the user's needs, preferences, and behaviors at the forefront of all design and development activities. Important for fostering a design culture that prioritizes user satisfaction and engagement.
Forced Action
A dark pattern where the user is required to do something in order to access certain functionality or information. Designers must avoid compulsory actions and provide optional choices to respect user autonomy.
Graceful Degradation
A design principle that ensures a system continues to function at a reduced level rather than completely failing when some part of it goes wrong. Crucial for enhancing system reliability and user experience in adverse conditions.
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.
Dark Patterns
UI/UX design tactics that intentionally manipulate users into taking actions they might not otherwise take. Important for recognizing and avoiding unethical design practices.
Screen Physical Width
The actual width of a screen, typically measured in inches or millimeters, impacting the layout and design of user interfaces. Important for designing interfaces that fit different screen sizes.
Confirming Subscription
A dark pattern where users are tricked into confirming a subscription through misleading language or design. It's crucial to avoid misleading users and ensure clear communication about subscription terms and conditions.
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.
Continuity
A Gestalt principle that describes the tendency of the human visual system to perceive lines or patterns that follow a smooth, continuous path rather than a disjointed or abrupt one. Essential for creating designs that guide the user's eye smoothly and logically.
Bait and Switch
A dark pattern where users think they are going to take one action, but a different, undesirable action happens instead. Designers must avoid this deceptive practice and be aware of its impact to ensure transparent user interactions.
Theming
The process of applying a consistent style, motif, or brand identity across a piece of work, design, or user experience to create coherence and enhance the overall aesthetic. Essential for ensuring visual consistency, reinforcing brand identity, and providing users with a unified and engaging experience.
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.
Sustainability
The practice of designing and implementing processes, systems, or business solutions in a way that ensures their long-term viability, efficiency, and maintainability. Crucial for creating durable and efficient designs that remain practical and effective over time, ensuring the ongoing success and feasibility of digital products and operations.
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.
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.