A fictional representation of a user segment, created based on user research to guide design decisions and ensure the product meets the needs of its target audience. Crucial for keeping design efforts focused on user needs and preferences.
An approach that places the user's needs, preferences, and behaviors at the forefront of all design and development activities. Important for fostering a design culture that prioritizes user satisfaction and engagement.
The practice of promoting and representing the needs, interests, and rights of users in the design and development process. Important for ensuring that user needs and perspectives are prioritized in product design and development.
An iterative design process that focuses on the users and their needs at every phase of the design process. Crucial for creating products that are effective, efficient, and satisfying for the end users.
A collaborative tool used to visualize what a user thinks, feels, says, and does to better understand their experiences and needs. Essential for gaining deep insights into user behavior and guiding design decisions.
A behavior where users repeatedly bounce back and forth between a search engine results page and individual search results. Important for identifying issues in search result relevancy and user satisfaction.
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.
A dark pattern where repetitive notifications or prompts are used to wear down user resistance. Recognizing the annoyance of this tactic is important to maintain respectful user interactions and avoid interruptions.
A marketing strategy that delivers targeted advertising and content based on the context of the user, such as their behavior or environment. Crucial for improving user engagement and relevance of marketing efforts in digital products.
The cues and hints that users follow to find information online, based on perceived relevance and usefulness. Important for designing intuitive navigation and content structures that align with user expectations.
A field research method where researchers observe and interview users in their natural environment to understand their tasks and challenges. Crucial for gaining authentic insights into user behavior and needs.
A psychological phenomenon where people develop a preference for things simply because they are familiar with them. Crucial for designing user experiences that leverage familiarity to increase user comfort and satisfaction.
A reading pattern where users skip over certain sections of content, often due to a lack of perceived relevance. Crucial for designing content that is engaging and relevant to prevent users from bypassing important information.
The psychological phenomenon where humorous content is more easily remembered and perceived positively by users. Useful for creating engaging and memorable user experiences.
A qualitative research method where a small group of people discuss a product, service, or concept to gather diverse insights and opinions. Important for gaining in-depth understanding of user perceptions and needs.
The ability of a product or service to keep users engaged and returning over time, often measured by metrics such as retention rate. Crucial for evaluating user loyalty and the long-term success of a product.
A cognitive bias where people assume others share the same beliefs, values, or preferences as themselves. Important for helping designers avoid projecting their own biases and assumptions onto users during research and design.
A simple description of a feature from the perspective of the user, typically used in Agile development to capture requirements and guide development. Crucial for ensuring that development efforts are aligned with user needs and priorities.
The process of understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through various qualitative and quantitative methods. Essential for designing user-centered products and ensuring they meet actual user needs.
A framework inspired by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, applied to user experience design, prioritizing basic functionality and reliability before enhancing usability and delight. Essential for creating well-rounded and satisfying user experiences.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape user research practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality user insights.
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.
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.
In-product assistance provided within the context of a specific task or screen, tailored to the user's current needs. Important for enhancing user experience by providing timely and relevant assistance.
The practice of deeply understanding and sharing the feelings of users to create products and services that truly meet their needs. Crucial for creating user-centered designs that resonate with users' emotions and experiences.
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.
A research technique that explores the context in which users interact with a product, service, or environment to understand their needs and behaviors. Crucial for gaining deep insights into user contexts and designing more relevant solutions.
A dark pattern where the design focuses the user's attention on one thing to distract them from another. Designers should avoid this deceptive tactic and ensure user attention is not unfairly diverted.
The process of tailoring a product or experience to meet the individual needs and preferences of users. Essential for enhancing user engagement and satisfaction by delivering relevant experiences.
A user-centered design process that involves understanding users' needs and workflows through field research and applying these insights to design. Essential for creating designs that are deeply informed by user contexts and behaviors.
A technique that visualizes the process users go through to achieve a goal with a product or service. Essential for identifying pain points and optimizing user interactions to improve overall experience.
A fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way, guiding design decisions. Essential for user-centered design, ensuring that products meet the needs of target users.
UI patterns that excessively demand user attention, often interrupting the user experience. Important for identifying and avoiding practices that can frustrate or annoy users.
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.
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.
An ongoing process of learning about user needs and validating assumptions through continuous research and experimentation. Crucial for staying responsive to user needs and improving products iteratively.
A pop-up dialog that appears when a user attempts to leave a page or application, which can be used to prevent loss of progress or data, or to confirm user intent. While it can be used ethically to prevent data loss or confirm actions, designers must avoid using it to deceive, delay, block, or interfere with the user's intent, thus ensuring it does not become a dark pattern.
The path or sequence of actions users follow based on information scent to find their desired information. Crucial for understanding user behavior and optimizing content discovery paths.
A prompt or cue that initiates a behavior or response, often used in behavior design to encourage specific actions. Crucial for designing systems that effectively prompt desired user behaviors.
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.
A data visualization technique that shows the intensity of data points with varying colors, often used to represent user interactions on a website. Essential for understanding user behavior and identifying areas of interest or concern in digital product interfaces.
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 dark pattern where the user is required to do something in order to access certain functionality or information. Designers must avoid compulsory actions and provide optional choices to respect user autonomy.
The design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. Essential for ensuring that digital products are intuitive and easy to use.
A strategy where engaging, preferred activities are used to motivate users to complete less engaging, necessary tasks. Useful for designing user interfaces and experiences that encourage desired behaviors by leveraging more enjoyable activities as rewards.
The tendency for people's perception to be affected by their recurring thoughts at the time. Important for understanding how current thoughts influence user perception and decision-making.
A recommendation system technique that makes predictions about user interests based on preferences from many users. Essential for personalizing user experiences and improving recommendation accuracy.
The tendency to perceive and interpret information based on prior experiences and expectations, influencing how different users perceive design differently. Important for designing interfaces that meet user expectations, improving usability and intuitive navigation.
The use of AI and advanced analytics to divide users into meaningful segments based on behavior and characteristics. Crucial for personalized marketing and improving user experience.
A phenomenon where users consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information or advertisements on websites. Important for designing effective web content that captures user attention.
A theory of motivation that explains behavior as driven by a desire for rewards or incentives. Crucial for designing systems that effectively motivate and engage users.
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.
A research method where participants take photographs of their activities, environments, or interactions to provide insights into their behaviors and experiences. Important for gaining in-depth, visual insights into user contexts and behaviors.
A metric that measures how engaged users are with a product, often based on usage frequency, feature adoption, and user feedback. Crucial for assessing user satisfaction and identifying areas for improvement in the product experience.
The tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. Important for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that manage expectations.
A research method where participants record their activities, experiences, and thoughts over a period of time, providing insights into their behaviors and needs. Important for gaining in-depth, longitudinal insights into user experiences.
A recommendation system technique that suggests items similar to those a user has shown interest in, based on item features. Important for providing personalized recommendations and improving user satisfaction.
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.
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 percentage of users who take a specific action that signifies they are engaging with a product or service. Important for measuring user engagement and the effectiveness of onboarding processes.