User Research Canon
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape user research practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality user insights.
155 topics found for:
“user research principles”
Focus Groups
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.
Assumed Similarity Bias
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.
User Centric Mindset
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.
User Centered Design
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.
User Autonomy
The degree to which users feel they have control over their actions and decisions when interacting with a product or system. Crucial for designing systems that empower users and enhance their sense of control and satisfaction.
User Research
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.
UCD
User-Centered Design (UCD) is an iterative design approach that focuses on understanding users' needs, preferences, and limitations throughout the design process. Crucial for creating products that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying for the intended users.
Card Sorting
A user research technique where participants organize information into categories to inform information architecture and design. Essential for creating intuitive information architectures and improving user experience.
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.
Speed Dating
A research method in which participants interact with a series of potential product concepts in quick succession, providing rapid feedback on multiple ideas. Useful for quickly gathering user feedback on various concepts and iterating based on their preferences.
HCD
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.
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.
Mere Exposure Effect
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.
Between Subjects Design
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.
Behavioral Theory
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.
Hierarchy of 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.
Premack Principle
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.
Behavioral User Experience
The application of behavioral science principles to improve the design and usability of digital products, focusing on user behavior and interactions. Important for creating user experiences that are intuitive and engaging by leveraging behavioral insights.
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.
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.
Jakob’s Law
A principle stating that users spend most of their time on other websites and prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. Crucial for designing user-friendly and familiar interfaces.
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.
Empathy in Design
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.
Behavioral Design
The application of behavioral science principles to design products that influence user behavior in a desired way. Crucial for creating products that effectively guide user behavior and improve outcomes.
Journey Mapping
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.
UI Design
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.
Bait and Switch
A dark pattern where users think they are going to take one action, but a different, undesirable action happens instead. Designers must avoid this deceptive practice and be aware of its impact to ensure transparent user interactions.
IxD
Interaction Design (IxD) focuses on creating engaging interfaces with well-thought-out behaviors. Crucial for ensuring intuitive and effective user interactions.
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.
Banner Blindness
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.
Scent Trail
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.
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.
Trick Questions
A dark pattern where questions are worded in a way that tricks the user into giving an answer they didn't intend. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to maintain clarity and honesty in user interactions.
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.
Behavioral Product Design
Designing products that leverage behavioral science to influence user behavior in positive ways. Crucial for creating products that are effective in shaping user behavior and improving engagement.
Attention Bias
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.
Directed Cognition
The process by which attention is guided by internal goals and external stimuli, affecting how information is processed and remembered. Useful for designing user interfaces that direct user attention effectively.
Behavioral Product Management
Managing product development with a focus on understanding and influencing user behavior through behavioral science principles. Essential for product managers to create user-centric products that drive desired behaviors.
Focal Point
A Gestalt principle stating that elements with a distinct visual feature (e.g., a unique color, size, or shape) capture attention and are perceived as a focal point. Crucial for designing interfaces that direct attention toward visual elements that signal and enable forward progress.
Behavioral Product Critique
The evaluation of products based on their ability to influence and shape user behavior. Useful for assessing how well a product guides and influences user actions and decisions.
Illusion of Control
The tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. Important for understanding user behavior and designing experiences that manage expectations.
Interface Interference
A dark pattern where the user interface is manipulated in a way that prioritizes certain actions over others to benefit the company. It's crucial to avoid this tactic and design fair interfaces without manipulating user actions.
Sludge
Any process or administrative barrier that unnecessarily complicates transactions and creates friction, discouraging beneficial behaviors. Important for identifying and eliminating unnecessary obstacles that hinder user experiences.
Mental Accounting
A behavioral economics concept where people categorize and treat money differently depending on its source or intended use. Crucial for understanding financial behavior and designing systems that align with users' mental accounting practices.
Bypassing Pattern
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.
First Click Testing
A usability testing method that measures the first click users make on a webpage to determine if they can successfully navigate to their goal. Essential for evaluating and improving the navigational structure of a website.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
A psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow that outlines a five-tier model of human needs, ranging from basic physiological needs to self-actualization. Crucial for designing products and services that address various levels of user needs.
Identity Priming
The process of triggering particular aspects of a person's identity to influence their behavior or decisions. Important for designing personalized and effective user experiences.
Miller’s Law
Also known as Magical Number 7 +/- 2, a theory in cognitive psychology that states the average number of objects an individual can hold in working memory is about seven. Crucial for designing user interfaces that align with human cognitive limitations.
Decision Theory
The study of how individuals make choices among alternatives and the principles that guide these choices. Important for designing decision-making processes and interfaces that help users make informed choices.
CTA
Call to Action (CTA) is a prompt that encourages users to take a specific action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. Crucial for guiding user behavior and increasing engagement or conversions on digital platforms.
Goldilocks Effect
The psychological phenomenon where people prefer options that are not too extreme, but just right. Crucial for designing products and experiences that cater to the majority preference.
Information Processing
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.
Heuristic
A rule-of-thumb or shortcut that simplifies decision-making and problem-solving processes. Essential for designing user-friendly interfaces that facilitate quick and efficient decision-making.
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.
Nudging
The act of designing and implementing subtle interventions to influence behavior in a predictable way. Crucial for guiding user behavior effectively without limiting freedom of choice.
Invariance
A key aspect of Gestalt psychology in which simple geometrical objects are recognized independent of rotation, translation, and scale. Crucial for understanding how users perceive and recognize patterns in design.
Availability Heuristic
A mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method, or decision. Crucial for understanding how people make decisions and the biases that influence their choices.
Social Foraging
The behavior of seeking information or resources based on social interactions and cues. Important for understanding how users gather information in social contexts and designing systems that support collaborative information seeking.