Paper Prototyping
A method of creating and testing user interfaces using hand-drawn sketches and mockups on paper. Essential for early-stage design validation and gathering user feedback.
A method of creating and testing user interfaces using hand-drawn sketches and mockups on paper. Essential for early-stage design validation and gathering user feedback.
The high-level structure of a software application, defining its components and their interactions. Essential for designing robust, scalable, and maintainable digital products.
An experimental design where different groups of participants are exposed to different conditions, allowing for comparison between groups. Important for understanding and applying different experimental designs in user research.
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.
A research design where the same participants are used in all conditions of an experiment, allowing for the comparison of different conditions within the same group. Essential for reducing variability and improving the reliability of experimental results.
A principle stating that a system should be liberal in what it accepts and conservative in what it sends, meaning it should handle user input flexibly while providing clear, consistent output, similar to the principle of fault tolerance. Essential for designing robust and user-friendly interfaces that accommodate a wide range of user inputs and behaviors while maintaining reliability and clarity in responses.
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.
A dark pattern where users are forced to sign up for an account to complete a basic task. Designers should avoid this practice and provide optional account creation to respect user preferences.
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.
Ensuring that color choices in design are inclusive and usable by people with color vision deficiencies. Crucial for creating accessible and inclusive designs.
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.
The study of the relationships between people, practices, values, and technologies within an information environment. Helps in understanding and designing systems that are sustainable and adaptive to human and environmental changes.
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.
A professional responsible for designing and managing data structures, storage solutions, and data flows within an organization. Important for ensuring efficient data management and supporting data-driven decision-making in digital product design.
The capability of a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of some of its components, ensuring that user experience is not significantly affected by errors or issues, similar to Postel's Law. Essential for designing reliable and resilient systems, such as a form that normalizes user input for compatibility rather than returning an error (e.g., unconstrained phone number format).
Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) is a language used for modeling business processes, enabling the design and implementation of process-based applications. Important for defining complex business processes and ensuring their effective implementation in digital products.
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.
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.
Designing systems and processes to effectively respond to and manage crises, ensuring resilience and quick recovery. Crucial for preparing for unexpected events and minimizing their impact.
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.
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.
A design approach that focuses on building a robust core experience first, then adding more advanced features and capabilities for users with more capable browsers or devices. Essential for ensuring a consistent and accessible user experience across different devices and browsers.
A method used in AI and machine learning to ensure prompts and inputs are designed to produce the desired outcomes. Essential for improving the accuracy and relevance of AI responses.
A logical fallacy that occurs when one assumes that what is true for a part is also true for the whole. Important for avoiding incorrect assumptions in design and decision-making.
Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR) are the four main principles of web accessibility. These principles are essential for creating inclusive digital experiences that can be accessed and used by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities.
A bias that occurs when researchers' expectations influence the outcome of a study. Crucial for designing research methods that ensure objectivity and reliability.
Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) is a visual representation of the relationships between entities in a database. Essential for designing and understanding the data structure and relationships within digital products.
A cognitive bias where people underestimate the complexity and challenges involved in scaling systems, processes, or businesses. Important for understanding the difficulties of scaling and designing systems that address these challenges.
A dark pattern where practices are used to make it hard for users to compare prices with other options. It's essential to avoid this tactic and promote fair competition by allowing users to make informed decisions.
A phenomenon where the success or failure of a design or business outcome is influenced by external factors beyond the control of the decision-makers, akin to serendipity. Important for recognizing and accounting for external influences in performance evaluations to ensure fair assessments and informed decisions.
Numeronym for the word "Modularization" (M + 12 letters + N), dividing a system into separate, interchangeable modules that can be developed, tested, and maintained independently. Important for improving maintainability and scalability of systems.
A psychological model that outlines the stages individuals go through to change behavior, including precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Crucial for designing interventions and experiences that support users at different stages of behavior change.
A professional who designs, builds, and maintains systems for processing large-scale data sets. Essential for enabling data-driven decision-making and supporting advanced analytics in organizations.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of attributes that enhance the accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. Essential for making web applications more usable and inclusive.
The practice of preserving a user's data and settings between sessions in an application. Crucial for enhancing user experience by providing continuity and personalization.
A range of values, derived from sample statistics, that is likely to contain the value of an unknown population parameter. Essential for making inferences about population parameters and understanding the precision of estimates in product design analysis.
The process of training an AI model on a large dataset before fine-tuning it for a specific task. Crucial for building robust AI models that perform well on various tasks.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of guidelines developed by WAI to make web content more accessible. Essential for ensuring that websites are usable by individuals with disabilities, thereby promoting inclusivity and compliance with accessibility standards.
Data points that differ significantly from other observations and may indicate variability in a measurement, experimental errors, or novelty. Crucial for identifying anomalies and ensuring the accuracy and reliability of data in digital product design.
Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a system that stores, organizes, and manages digital assets, such as images, videos, and documents. Essential for maintaining and leveraging digital content efficiently in product design and marketing.
Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, and Ethical (STEEPLE) is an analysis tool that examines the factors influencing an organization. Crucial for comprehensive strategic planning and risk management in product design.
Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is a language for specifying business process behaviors based on web services. Important for defining and automating complex business processes in digital product workflows.
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.
The process of anticipating, detecting, and resolving errors in software or systems to ensure smooth operation. Important for creating reliable and user-friendly software applications.
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.
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.
The process of defining and creating algorithms to solve problems and perform tasks efficiently. Fundamental for software development and creating efficient solutions.
The practice of developing artificial intelligence systems that are fair, transparent, and respect user privacy and rights. Crucial for ensuring that AI technologies are developed responsibly and ethically.
A programming paradigm that uses objects and classes to structure software design, promoting reusability and scalability. Crucial for developing maintainable and scalable software systems.
The ability of a system, product, or process to handle increased loads or expand without compromising performance or efficiency. Essential for ensuring that products and systems can grow and adapt to increasing demands.
A method used to create detailed narratives of potential future events to explore and understand possible outcomes and inform decision-making. Essential for strategic planning and anticipating the impact of different decisions or changes.
Practical applications of behavioral science to understand and influence human behavior in various contexts. Crucial for applying scientific insights to design and improve user experiences and outcomes.
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.
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.
In AI, the generation of incorrect or nonsensical information by a model, particularly in natural language processing. Important for understanding and mitigating errors in AI systems.
A dark pattern where the product asks for the user's social media or email credentials and then spams all the user's contacts. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to protect user trust and avoid spamming their contacts.
A cognitive bias where people ignore the relevance of sample size in making judgments, often leading to erroneous conclusions. Crucial for designers to account for appropriate sample sizes in research and analysis.
A risk management model that illustrates how multiple layers of defense (like slices of Swiss cheese) can prevent failures, despite each layer having its own weaknesses. Crucial for understanding and mitigating risks in complex systems.
The practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks, unauthorized access, and data breaches. Essential for safeguarding sensitive information, maintaining user trust, and ensuring the integrity and functionality of digital products and services.
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.