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.
The level of sophistication and integration of design practices within an organization's processes and culture. Essential for assessing and improving the effectiveness of design in driving business value and innovation.
The understanding and proficiency in the principles, practices, and processes of design. Essential for empowering individuals to effectively participate in and critique design processes.
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 orchestration and optimization of design operations to improve efficiency, quality, and impact of the design function within an organization. Crucial for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of design teams.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The process of addressing surrounding environmental parameters when devising plans, programs, policies, buildings, or products. Important for creating designs that are sustainable and contextually appropriate.
A cognitive bias where people prefer a smaller set of higher-quality options over a larger set with lower overall quality. Useful for designing product offerings and experiences that emphasize quality over quantity for users.
A collection of design patterns that provides solutions to common design problems. Useful for standardizing design solutions and promoting best practices across projects.
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.
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.
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.
A type of usability testing conducted at the end of the design process to evaluate the effectiveness and overall user experience. Important for assessing the final design's usability and identifying any remaining issues.
A team focused on designing and improving the user experience across products and services. Essential for ensuring cohesive and high-quality user experiences.
The study of the nature of beauty, art, and taste and the creation and appreciation of beauty. Essential for creating visually appealing and engaging user interfaces.
Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a method used to transform customer needs into engineering characteristics for a product or service. Essential for ensuring that customer requirements are systematically incorporated into the design and development process.
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.
The practice of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication, and material components of a service to improve its quality and the interaction between service providers and customers. Essential for creating effective and user-centered service experiences.
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.
The phenomenon where users perceive aesthetically pleasing designs as more usable, regardless of the actual usability. Important for designers to understand the impact of aesthetics on user perception and usability.
A type of usability testing conducted during the design process to identify issues and improve the design iteratively. Crucial for refining designs and ensuring usability before final release.
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.
A Japanese term for "mistake-proofing," referring to any mechanism or process that helps prevent errors by design. Crucial for designing systems and processes that minimize the risk of human error.
The number of pixels per inch (PPI) on a display, affecting the sharpness and clarity of visual elements. Crucial for optimizing visual content for different devices.
The quality of being uniform and coherent across different elements and touchpoints in design. Crucial for creating predictable and reliable user experiences.
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.
The study of the interplay between individuals and their surroundings, including built environments and natural settings. Essential for designing spaces that enhance well-being and productivity.
A phenomenon where users perceive greater value in a service or product if they believe more effort was involved in its creation or delivery. Important for enhancing perceived value and user satisfaction.
The process of designing and refining prompts to elicit accurate and relevant responses from AI models. Crucial for optimizing the performance of AI applications.
In AI and machine learning, a prompt that specifies what should be avoided or excluded in the generated output, guiding the system to produce more accurate and relevant results. Crucial for refining AI-generated content by providing clear instructions on undesired elements, improving output quality and relevance.
The process of working together with others to generate creative ideas and solutions, leveraging diverse perspectives and skills. Essential for producing innovative and well-rounded design solutions.
A collection of pre-written code and tools that provide a foundation for building the front end of websites and applications, such as Bootstrap or React. Crucial for streamlining the development process and ensuring consistency.
Content designed to attract clicks by using sensational or misleading headlines. Important for recognizing and avoiding practices that can harm user trust and content quality.
The process of testing and evaluating a design to ensure it meets user needs and business goals before final implementation. Crucial for ensuring that designs are effective and meet intended objectives.
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.
The process of arranging related objects in parallel or at 90-degree angles for visual organization and efficiency. Useful for designers to maintain an organized workspace, enhance visual clarity, and streamline their workflow.
A structured evaluation process where a product's design, functionality, and user experience are assessed, often by peers or experts. Essential for identifying areas for improvement and fostering a culture of continuous enhancement.
A visual representation of a sequence of events or user interactions, used to plan and communicate the flow of a narrative or process. Important for visualizing and communicating design concepts and user journeys.
Garbage In-Garbage Out (GIGO) is a principle stating that the quality of output is determined by the quality of the input, especially in computing and data processing. Crucial for ensuring accurate and reliable data inputs in design and decision-making processes.
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.
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.
Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is a methodology that uses visual modeling to support system requirements, design, analysis, and validation activities throughout the development lifecycle. Essential for managing complex systems, improving communication among stakeholders, and enhancing the overall quality and efficiency of systems engineering processes.
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.
The deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making, due to mental exhaustion. Important for designing interfaces that minimize cognitive load and simplify decision processes.
A statistical rule stating that nearly all values in a normal distribution (99.7%) lie within three standard deviations (sigma) of the mean. Important for identifying outliers and understanding variability in data, aiding in quality control and performance assessment in digital product design.
A term used to describe an organization focused on continuously shipping new features, often at the expense of quality, user experience, or business value. Crucial for recognizing and addressing the pitfalls of prioritizing quantity over quality in feature development.
The phenomenon where higher-priced products are perceived to be of higher quality, regardless of the actual quality. Useful for understanding consumer perceptions and designing effective pricing strategies.
The process of evaluating a product by testing it with real users to gather feedback and identify usability issues. Essential for validating design decisions and ensuring the product meets user needs.
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.
A practice of performing testing activities earlier in the software development lifecycle to identify and address issues sooner. Essential for improving software quality, reducing defects, and accelerating development cycles in digital product design.
A detailed diagram that visualizes the processes, touchpoints, and interactions involved in delivering a service, helping to identify areas for improvement. Crucial for optimizing service delivery and ensuring a seamless user experience.
The default scaling factor applied by a device to render content at its optimal size and resolution. Crucial for ensuring visual clarity and consistency on various devices.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape user research practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality user insights.