Function Allocation
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.
73 topics found for:
“system usability”
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.
Usability
The degree to which a product or system can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use. Essential for creating products that are easy to use and meet user needs effectively.
Postel’s Law
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.
Human Factors
The study of how humans interact with systems and products, focusing on improving usability and performance. Crucial for designing user-friendly systems and products.
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.
Taxonomy
The practice and science of classification, often used to organize content and information. Essential for improving findability and usability in information systems.
Information Ecology
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.
Information Architecture
The structural design of information environments, organizing and labeling content to support usability and findability. Essential for creating intuitive and navigable digital products.
State Persistence
The ability of a system to maintain its state and data across sessions, ensuring continuity and consistency in user experience. Crucial for designing reliable and user-friendly systems that retain data and settings across interactions.
Error Prevention
Design strategies aimed at preventing user errors before they occur. Crucial for enhancing usability and ensuring a smooth user experience.
Performance Load
The mental and physical effort required to complete a task, influencing user experience and performance. Crucial for designing systems that minimize cognitive and physical load, enhancing usability and efficiency.
Interactive Design
The design of interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. Crucial for creating engaging and user-friendly digital experiences.
External Consistency
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.
Usability Testing
A technique used to evaluate a product or system by testing it with real users to identify any usability issues and gather qualitative and quantitative data on their interactions. Crucial for identifying and resolving usability issues to improve user satisfaction and performance.
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.
Nielsen’s Heuristics
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.
Expert Evaluation
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.
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.
Tree Testing
A usability technique used to evaluate the findability and labeling of topics in a website's structure by having participants find specific items in a simplified text version of the site. Crucial for improving information architecture and ensuring users can navigate a website effectively.
Wizard of Oz Testing
A usability testing method where users interact with a system they believe to be autonomous, but which is actually operated by a human. Essential for testing concepts and interactions before full development.
Interaction Cost
The effort required for users to complete a task or interaction within a system. Essential for optimizing usability and minimizing user effort.
Enrichments
Features or elements added to enhance the functionality or user experience of a system. Crucial for improving user engagement and satisfaction by adding valuable enhancements.
Seven Stages of Action
A model by Don Norman outlining the cognitive steps users take when interacting with a system: goal formation, planning, specifying, performing, perceiving, interpreting, and comparing. Important for designing user-friendly and effective products by understanding and supporting user behavior at each stage.
Doherty Threshold
A principle stating that productivity increases when the computer and its user interact at a pace that ensures neither has to wait on the other. Important for designing responsive systems that enhance user productivity.
Instrumentation
The process of designing, developing, and managing tools and techniques for measuring performance and collecting data. Essential for monitoring and improving system performance and user experience.
Principle of Growth
The Principle of Growth is an information architecture guideline that plans for the future expansion and evolution of a system. Crucial for ensuring that information structures can scale and adapt over time.
Principle of Choices
The Principle of Choices is an information architecture guideline that emphasizes providing users with meaningful options to navigate and interact with a system. Crucial for enhancing user experience by ensuring users can easily find what they need without being overwhelmed.
Native App Design
The practice of designing applications specifically for a particular operating system or platform, leveraging its unique features and capabilities. Important for delivering high-performance and responsive user experiences.
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.
Breakpoint
A specific viewport dimension at which a website's layout adjusts to provide an optimal viewing experience across different screen sizes. Crucial for responsive web design to ensure usability on various devices.
Visual Hierarchy
The arrangement of visual elements in a way that signifies their importance, guiding users' attention to the most critical parts of a design. Essential for creating effective and intuitive user interfaces that enhance usability and user experience.
Interaction Modeling
The process of creating representations of how users will interact with a system, including the flow of interactions and the overall experience. Crucial for planning and optimizing user interactions and experience.
Fitts’s Law
A predictive model of human movement that describes the time required to move to a target area, used to design user interfaces that enhance usability. Important for designing efficient and user-friendly interfaces.
Iconography
The visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a subject, often used in design to communicate ideas quickly and effectively. Important for creating cohesive and meaningful visual systems.
IA Research Study
Research focused on understanding and improving information architecture (IA), ensuring that information is logically and intuitively organized for users. Crucial for optimizing the organization and accessibility of information.
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.
UX
User Experience (UX) refers to the overall experience of a person using a product, system, or service, encompassing all aspects of the end-user's interaction. Crucial for creating products that are not only functional but also enjoyable, efficient, and satisfying to use.
User Control
The ability of users to influence the behavior and outcomes of a system or product, allowing them to interact with it according to their preferences. Essential for creating user-friendly interfaces that allow for flexibility and customization.
HCI
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is the study of designing interfaces and interactions between humans and computers. It ensures that digital products are user-friendly, efficient, and satisfying.
POUR
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.
System One
A mode of thinking, derived from Dual Process Theory, that is fast, automatic, and intuitive, often relying on heuristics and immediate impressions. Important for understanding how users make quick decisions and respond to design elements instinctively, aiding in the creation of intuitive and user-friendly interfaces.
Multiple Classification
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.
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.
Biometric Inputs
The use of biological data (e.g., fingerprints, facial recognition) for user authentication and interaction with digital systems. Crucial for enhancing security and user experience through advanced authentication methods.
Focused Navigation
Providing clear, concise, and relevant navigation options to help users find what they need quickly. Crucial for improving user experience and efficiency in digital products.
Semantic Web Technology
Technologies that enable machines to understand and interpret data on the web in a human-like manner, enhancing connectivity and usability of information. Essential for improving data interoperability and accessibility on the web.
Cluster Navigation
A navigation system that groups related links or content into clusters for easier access. Important for enhancing user experience by simplifying access to related information.
Bounded Rationality
A concept that humans make decisions within the limits of their knowledge, cognitive capacity, and available time, leading to satisficing rather than optimal solutions. Crucial for designing systems and processes that account for human cognitive limitations and decision-making processes.
Wayfinding
The process of designing intuitive navigation systems within a digital product that help users easily understand their current location, navigate to desired destinations, and efficiently complete tasks. Crucial for enhancing user experience, reducing cognitive load, and ensuring users can achieve their goals seamlessly.
Metadata
Data that provides information about other data, such as its content, format, and structure. Essential for organizing, managing, and retrieving digital assets and information efficiently in product design and development.
Internal Consistency
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with each other. Crucial for creating a cohesive and intuitive user experience.
Smart Defaults
Pre-set options in a system that are designed to benefit users by simplifying decisions and guiding them towards the best choices. Essential for improving user experience and ensuring that users make optimal decisions with minimal effort.
Semantic Barriers
Obstacles to effective communication that arise from differences in understanding the meanings of words and symbols used by the communicators. Crucial for designing clear and effective communication systems and avoiding misunderstandings.
RAG
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) is an AI approach that combines retrieval of relevant documents with generative models to produce accurate and contextually relevant responses. Essential for improving the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated content.
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.
UAT
User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the final phase of the software testing process where actual users test the software to ensure it meets their requirements. Crucial for validating that the software functions correctly in real-world scenarios before its release.
Information Foraging
The theory that users search for information in a manner similar to animals foraging for food, aiming to maximize value while minimizing effort. Important for designing efficient and user-centered information retrieval systems.
Top-Down IA
An approach to information architecture that begins with high-level structures and breaks them down into detailed components. Helps in creating a clear and organized framework from the outset, ensuring consistency and coherence.
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.