Less Is Better Effect
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 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.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a comprehensive management approach focused on continuous improvement in all aspects of an organization. Essential for ensuring high-quality products and services and achieving customer satisfaction.
A clear and concise list of criteria that a product or task must meet to be considered complete, ensuring alignment and understanding within a team. Essential for maintaining quality and consistency in agile project management.
A senior technical role responsible for guiding the development team and ensuring the technical quality of projects. Important for maintaining technical standards and mentoring team members.
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a formal contract between a service provider and a customer that defines the level of service expected. Essential for setting clear expectations and responsibilities, ensuring quality and reliability.
The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is a comprehensive set of guidelines, best practices, and standards for project management. Essential for ensuring consistency and excellence in managing projects across various industries.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
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 set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape marketing practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality marketing outcomes.
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.
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 testing method that examines the code, documentation, and requirements without executing the program. Important for identifying defects early in the development lifecycle, improving the quality and reducing the cost of digital products.
A data-driven methodology aimed at improving processes by identifying and removing defects, and reducing variability. Crucial for enhancing the quality and efficiency of digital product development processes.
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.
The use of software tools to run tests on code automatically, ensuring functionality and identifying defects without manual intervention. Crucial for maintaining high code quality and efficiency in the development process.
A preliminary testing phase conducted by internal staff to identify bugs before releasing the product to external testers or customers. Crucial for ensuring product quality and functionality before broader release.
Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is an iterative four-step management method used for continuous improvement of processes and products. Essential for quality control and operational efficiency.
A collection of design patterns that provides solutions to common design problems. Useful for standardizing design solutions and promoting best practices across projects.
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.
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 bringing a product from development to market, ensuring it meets quality standards and customer needs. Crucial for the successful launch and adoption of a product.
An environment used for testing software to identify issues and ensure quality before production deployment. Important for detecting and fixing bugs to ensure the software's reliability and performance.
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.
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.
Plan, Do, Check, and Act (PDCA) is a four-step management method used for continuous improvement of processes and products. Essential for implementing and maintaining continuous improvement in business and design processes.
A non-production environment used for development and testing before deployment to production. Important for ensuring that changes are thoroughly tested before going live.
Goal-Question-Metrics (GQM) is a framework for defining and interpreting software metrics by identifying goals, formulating questions to determine if the goals are met, and applying metrics to answer those questions. This framework is essential for measuring and improving software quality and performance.
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.
A software development practice where code changes are frequently integrated into a shared repository, with each change being verified by automated tests. Essential for catching errors early and improving the quality of software.
The process of overseeing and coordinating the development, testing, and deployment of software releases to ensure they are delivered efficiently and effectively. Essential for managing software development cycles and ensuring successful product releases.
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.
Specific conditions that must be met for a product or feature to be considered complete and satisfactory. Essential for product managers and developers to ensure clarity and alignment on what constitutes "done".
The ability to deliver products or services in the most cost-effective manner without sacrificing quality. Key to reducing costs and improving profitability.
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.
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 structure or framework used to create effective prompts for AI systems, ensuring clarity and context. Important for standardizing and improving AI prompt design.
A testing method that examines the internal structure, design, and coding of a software application to verify its functionality. Essential for ensuring the correctness and efficiency of the code in digital product development.
Also known as Expert Review, a method where experts assess a product or system against established criteria to identify usability issues and areas for improvement. Essential for leveraging expert insights to enhance product quality and usability.
A team focused on designing and improving the user experience across products and services. Essential for ensuring cohesive and high-quality user experiences.
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.
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.
An environment that replicates the production environment, used for final testing before deployment. Crucial for ensuring that digital products are thoroughly tested and perform as expected before going live.
The quality of being uniform and coherent across different elements and touchpoints in design. Crucial for creating predictable and reliable user experiences.
The condition in which two or more versions of a product or system offer the same features and functionalities, ensuring consistency and uniformity across different platforms or updates. Important for providing a consistent user experience, reducing confusion, and ensuring all users have access to the same capabilities regardless of the platform they use.
A statistical measure that quantifies the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of data values. Essential for understanding data spread and variability, which helps in making informed decisions in product design and analysis.
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 Japanese word meaning inconsistency or variability in processes. Helps in recognizing and addressing workflow imbalances to improve efficiency.
Also known as the 68-95-99.7 Rule, it states that for a normal distribution, nearly all data will fall within three standard deviations of the mean. Important for understanding the distribution of data and making predictions about data behavior in digital product design.
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 type of testing conducted to determine if the requirements of a specification are met, often the final step before delivery to the customer. Important for ensuring that a product meets the defined criteria and is ready for release.
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 development environment where software is created and modified. Crucial for allowing developers to build and experiment with new features.
The use of HTML tags to convey the meaning of content on web pages, improving accessibility and search engine optimization. Essential for creating accessible and SEO-friendly web content.
Rich Internet Application (RIA) is a web application that offers interactive and engaging user experiences similar to desktop applications. Essential for providing enhanced functionality and better user interfaces on the web.
Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a framework for improving and optimizing processes within an organization. Essential for assessing and enhancing the maturity and efficiency of processes in product design and development.
A server dedicated to automating the process of building and compiling code, running tests, and generating software artifacts. Crucial for ensuring continuous integration and maintaining the integrity of the codebase in digital product development.
A testing phase where a product is released to a limited audience outside the development team to identify issues and gather feedback before the final release. Essential for refining a product based on real user feedback and ensuring it meets user needs.
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.
Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is a detailed document that outlines the functional and non-functional requirements of a software system. Crucial for ensuring clear communication and understanding between stakeholders and the development team.
A performance testing method that evaluates the system's behavior and stability over an extended period under a high load. Essential for identifying memory leaks and ensuring the reliability and performance of digital products under prolonged use.