The process of guiding new users through the initial stages of using a product or service, helping them become familiar with its features and benefits. Essential for enhancing user retention and satisfaction by ensuring a smooth introduction to the product.
A guided, interactive overlay that introduces users to features or tasks within an application. Crucial for onboarding new users and enhancing user understanding of complex features.
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is an approach to problem-solving that involves the human perspective in all steps of the process. It ensures designs are user-friendly and meet actual user needs.
A cognitive bias where individuals with low ability at a task overestimate their ability, while experts underestimate their competence. Crucial for designers to create educational content and user interfaces that accommodate varying levels of user expertise.
The tendency for people to feel more motivated and accelerate their efforts as they get closer to achieving a goal. Important for designing systems that motivate users effectively.
The study of how people acquire knowledge, skills, and behaviors through experience, practice, and instruction. Useful for creating educational content and interactive tutorials that enhance user learning.
A memory aid that helps individuals recall information through associations, patterns, or acronyms. Important for designing educational content and interfaces that enhance memory retention.
A type of long-term memory involving information that can be consciously recalled, such as facts and events. Important for understanding how users retain and recall information in design.
The drive to perform an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. Crucial for designing experiences that engage users through inherent enjoyment and interest.
The ability to perform actions or behaviors automatically due to learning, repetition, and practice. Important for understanding user habits and designing intuitive user interfaces.
A framework for understanding what drives individuals to act, involving theories such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Important for designing products and experiences that align with users' intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.
A theory suggesting that information processed at a deeper, more meaningful level is better remembered than information processed at a shallow level. Crucial for designing educational and informational content that enhances retention and understanding.
A cognitive bias where someone mistakenly assumes that others have the same background knowledge they do. Essential for designers to ensure communications and products are clear and accessible to all users, regardless of their background knowledge.
A theory that suggests people learn behaviors, skills, and attitudes through observing and imitating others, as well as through direct experiences. Crucial for understanding how users acquire new behaviors and designing educational or training programs.
The practice of presenting information in a way that is clear, accessible, and useful to the user. Essential for creating effective and user-friendly interfaces and communications.
A theory that explains how individuals determine the causes of behavior and events, including the distinction between internal and external attributions. Crucial for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that address both internal and external factors.
The series of actions or operations involved in the acquisition, interpretation, storage, and retrieval of information. Crucial for understanding how users handle information and designing systems that align with cognitive processes.
The drive to perform an activity due to external rewards or pressures rather than for the inherent enjoyment of the activity itself. Important for designing systems that effectively use external incentives to motivate user behavior.
A cognitive approach that involves meaningful analysis of information, leading to better understanding and retention. Crucial for designing educational and informational content that promotes deep engagement and learning.
The belief in one's ability to succeed in specific situations or accomplish a task, influencing motivation and behavior. Crucial for designing systems that enhance user confidence and encourage goal achievement.
Readability is a design principle that emphasizes making text easy to read and understand. Crucial for enhancing user comprehension and engagement in digital and print media.
The study of the principles that govern human behavior, including how people respond to stimuli and learn from their environment. Crucial for designing user experiences that anticipate and influence user behavior.
A temporary increase in the frequency and intensity of a behavior when reinforcement is first removed. Useful for understanding user behavior changes in response to modifications in design or system features.
A theory that suggests the depth of processing (shallow to deep) affects how well information is remembered. Important for designing educational content and user interfaces that enhance memory retention.
A theory of emotion suggesting that physical and emotional responses to stimuli occur simultaneously and independently. Important for understanding user emotions and designing empathetic user experiences.
A cognitive bias where individuals strengthen their beliefs when presented with evidence that contradicts them. Important for understanding user resistance to change and designing strategies to address and mitigate this bias.
A systematic process for determining and addressing needs or gaps between current conditions and desired outcomes. Important for identifying user requirements and guiding the development of digital products that meet those needs.
The understanding and proficiency in the principles, practices, and processes of design. Essential for empowering individuals to effectively participate in and critique design processes.
The application of game-design elements and principles in non-game contexts to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. Crucial for enhancing user engagement and motivation in various contexts.
A phenomenon where information is better remembered if it is generated from one's own mind rather than simply read. Useful for designing educational and interactive content that enhances memory retention.
A cognitive architecture model that explains how humans can learn and adapt to new tasks. Useful for understanding user learning and behavior adaptation, informing better user experience design.
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 user-centered approach to problem-solving that involves empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Crucial for developing innovative and effective solutions that meet user needs.
A schedule of reinforcement where a desired behavior is reinforced every time it occurs, promoting quick learning and behavior maintenance. Important for designing systems that encourage consistent user behavior.
A psychological phenomenon where people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Crucial for designing engaging experiences that leverage task incompletion to maintain user interest.
A learning phenomenon where information is better retained when study sessions are spaced out over time rather than crammed in a short period. Crucial for designing educational tools and content that optimize long-term retention.
A phenomenon where learning is improved when study sessions are spaced out over time rather than crammed together. Crucial for designing educational and training programs that enhance long-term retention.
A cognitive bias where people tend to remember the first and last items in a series better than those in the middle, impacting recall and memory. Crucial for designing information presentation to optimize user memory and recall.
A framework that combines multiple theories to explain and predict behavior, focusing on intention, knowledge, skills, environmental constraints, and habits. Crucial for designing interventions that effectively change user behavior.
The process of encoding sensory input that has particular meaning or can be applied to a context, enabling deeper processing and memory retention. Important for understanding how information is processed and stored, enhancing design of educational content.
Also known as Self Relevance Effect, the tendency for individuals to better remember information that is personally relevant or related to themselves. Important for designing personalized user experiences and enhancing memory retention.
A cognitive bias where people remember scenes as being more expansive than they actually were. Important for understanding how users perceive and recall visual information, aiding in better visual design decisions.
Technology designed to change attitudes or behaviors of users through persuasion and social influence, but not coercion. Crucial for designing systems that effectively influence user behavior while maintaining ethical standards.
Elements in a design that draw the viewer's attention and create a visual hierarchy. Essential for guiding user attention and improving the effectiveness of visual communication.
A set of cognitive processes that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control, crucial for planning, decision-making, and behavior regulation. Crucial for designing interfaces and experiences that support users' cognitive abilities.
A theory that explains how information is processed through different sensory modalities, such as visual, auditory, and tactile. Important for designing user experiences that engage multiple senses for better interaction and understanding.
A cognitive bias where people attribute greater value to outcomes that required significant effort to achieve. Useful for designing experiences that recognize and reward user effort and persistence.
A logical fallacy where people assume that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one. Important for understanding and addressing cognitive biases in user behavior.
The study of mental processes such as perception, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving. Important for designing interfaces that align with how users process information and make decisions.
A cognitive bias where repeated statements are more likely to be perceived as true, regardless of their actual accuracy. Crucial for understanding how repetition influences beliefs and designing communication strategies for users.
A phenomenon where people are more likely to remember information when they are in the same state of consciousness as when they learned it. Important for understanding how context affects memory recall and designing experiences that facilitate better retention.
A model that explains behavior change through the interaction of three elements: motivation, ability, and triggers. Crucial for designing interventions and experiences that effectively change user behavior.
A phenomenon where the probability of recalling an item from a list depends on the length of the list. Important for understanding memory processes and designing effective information presentation.
A cognitive approach where information is processed at a surface level, focusing on basic features rather than deeper meaning, often leading to poorer memory retention. Important for designing educational and informational content that encourages deeper processing and understanding.
A framework that explores the structure and function of stories and how they influence human cognition and behavior. Important for creating compelling and meaningful user experiences through storytelling.
The phenomenon where people have a reduced ability to recall the last items in a list when additional, unrelated information is added at the end. Crucial for designing information presentation to optimize memory retention.
Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy (LATCH) is a framework for categorizing information. Useful for creating clear and intuitive information structures in digital products.
A theory of motivation that emphasizes the importance of autonomy, competence, and relatedness in fostering intrinsic motivation and psychological well-being. Important for understanding how to design experiences that support user motivation and well-being.
A strategy where less immediate or tangible rewards are substituted with more immediate or tangible ones to encourage desired behaviors. Important for designing systems that leverage immediate incentives to promote long-term goals.
A cognitive bias where bizarre or unusual information is better remembered than common information. Useful for designers to create memorable and engaging user experiences by incorporating unique elements.