Topics

Agile: Generally describes an iterative product development process most often found in teams working on software, sometimes applied elsewhere.
Benchmarking: See Competitive Analysis
Card Sorting: Method used to identify how people organize and look for information, helpful for making navigation decisions.
Color: Use color to add personality, meaning, and dimension to designs, while maintaining legibility and accessibility.
Competitive Analysis: Desk research done to gather information about strengths and weaknesses of competitors, to aid in making better product decisions.
Composition: The arrangement of elements on the screen (or page).
Content Audit: A detailed process for identifying and cataloging pages in a content-heavy website.
Content Strategy: Organizing, planning, and scheduling content.
Content: The raw material of a digital product, generally what someone is there to find.
CSS Grid: A CSS specification for grid-based layouts in web browsers.
CSS: Cascading StyleSheets are used to provide suggestions to web browsers about how content should be presented visually.
Customization: When the user can modify their experience or interface in some way.
Design Process: A general way of planning and executing design work.
Design Systems: An overarching set of high- to low-level design decisions documented in some way to maintain coherency and ease ongoing design decisions.
Design Thinking: Describes a mindset and way of approaching problem-solving, generally in a human-centered way.
Double Diamond: A useful way of thinking about design as a series of divergent and convergent processes.
Flexbox: A CSS specification for simple layouts in web browsers.
Forms: At some point, most interfaces need to gather information from a user. Generally this is done with a form.
Heuristics: “Rules of thumb” used to guide analysis of existing systems and the evaluation of new ones. Best practice not to think of these as “best practices”—different heuristics may serve you better in different contexts.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language, used to write, uh, web pages.
Information Architecture: Organize the structure of digital products to improve navigation and management of content.
Inspiration: Steal like an artist.
Interview: Conversations with people to surface evidence about their needs.
Jobs To Be Done: A way of thinking about products from the perspective of user goals. What does someone hire the product to do?
Lean: See Agile
Microcopy: Bits of text used in interfaces to guide, support, and inform.
Moodboard: Collection of visual inspiration to help establish look and feel for a brand or product.
Motion: Use motion to clarify interactions.
Native App: An application built to run on a specific platform, such as iOS, Android, Windows, or Mac. The term is used to differentiate from a web-based app, or “web app”.
Navigation: How a user gets around in an app or website.
Observation: Observe users to gather behavioral evidence.
Persona: A distillation of findings from user research into an fictional individual representing a realistic user of a product.
Personalization: Adapting the interface or content of a product based on information about the user.
Portfolio: A collection of work samples showcasing work product, skills, services offered, and often process.
Prioritization: Ranking according to some criteria, commonly to determine relative value of various features in a system.
Problem Definition: Gaining clarity over what problem(s) to address lends focus to our work and gives us criteria by which to make and evaluate decisions.
Progressive Disclosure: A strategy for hiding lower priority elements in an interface, which can be revealed when needed, in an effort to reduce clutter.
Prototyping: Make cheap drafts of products and features to determine quickly what ideas are worth pursuing.
Responsive: Generally used to describe websites which adapt their layouts based on available screen size.
Scenario: A context and situation in which someone would use a product. Typically paired with a persona.
Sitemap: An overview of all the pages in a website, typically organized in a tree diagram.
Staged Disclosure: In a longer process, it may be useful to break things up into steps to reduce clutter and overwhelm.
Style Tile: A collection of type, color, texture, and interface styles used to explore visual options early in a digital project. Especially helpful when working with clients.
Survey: Use surveys to understand some basic information about users and their needs, as well as gather preferences and attitudinal data.
Task Analysis: Break down how people currently accomplish certain tasks to thoroughly understand needs and identify opportunities to simplify workflows.
Testing: Testing products and designs can be useful at many stages of the design process to generate ideas, evaluate options, and identify pain points.
Typography: Use type to lay out information and interfaces, with a focus on clarity.
UI State: Interfaces often convey some type of state, such as active or inactive, empty or full, successful or not, etc.
User Interface: The point of contact between the user and the technology.
Usability: Is the user able to figure out what it does and how to use it?
Use Case: When planning a product or feature, a use case outlines a particular goal users should be able to accomplish, usually broken down into steps.
User Journey: Maps a person’s experience with a service, typically across multiple touchpoints, usually visualizing their level of happiness and frustration.
User Research: Who are our users? What do they need? How can we serve them better?
User Story: “As a [type of user], I want to [do something] so I can [motivation].”
Writing: Brevity is the soul of wit.