UX Glossary — Brian Price

Browse

Discipline

The filters and pivots need JavaScript. Here is the whole glossary as a plain list.

A/B Test also: Split test

A controlled experiment comparing variants against a metric on live traffic. Excellent at picking between known options, useless at generating ones nobody proposed. Marketing & Growth · User Research · Product & Strategy · Method

Acquisition

The funnel stage where a person first arrives — via search, referral, campaign, or word of mouth. Cheap acquisition into a leaky product is the most common growth mistake. Marketing & Growth · Phase

Activation

The stage where a new user first experiences real value. The highest-leverage point for UX work in the entire funnel. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Phase

Adaptive Design

Serving distinct fixed layouts based on detected device class, rather than fluidly reflowing one. More control, more maintenance, and less forgiving of devices you didn't anticipate. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Concept

Affinity Mapping also: Affinity diagramming · KJ method

Clustering individual observations into emergent themes, usually on a wall or a board. The step where raw data becomes something a team can reason about together. User Research · Method

Affordance also: Perceived affordance

A property of an object that suggests how it can be used. A handle affords pulling; a flat plate affords pushing. In interfaces, affordances are mostly learned conventions rather than physical truths. UX & Interaction · Principle

Agentic UI

Interface patterns for systems that take multi-step action on a user's behalf. The open problems are oversight, interruption, undo, and communicating what happened while you weren't watching. AI & Emerging · UX & Interaction · Concept · Pattern

Agile also: Scrum

A family of iterative delivery approaches emphasizing short cycles and responsiveness to change. Frequently implemented as fixed ceremonies around unchanged waterfall assumptions. Product & Strategy · Engineering · Concept

Alt Text also: Alternative text

A text equivalent for an image, conveying its function or meaning in context. Decorative images take empty alt; the judgment call is which is which. Accessibility · Content & Writing · Artifact

API also: Application Programming Interface

The defined contract by which systems exchange data and capability. Shapes what a design can plausibly ask for, and how quickly. Engineering · Concept

ARIA also: Accessible Rich Internet Applications

A set of attributes conveying roles, states, and properties to assistive technology when native semantics fall short. First rule of ARIA: don't use ARIA if a native element will do. Accessibility · Engineering · Concept

Art Direction

Deciding and defending the visual argument a piece makes — imagery, type, color, mood — so a hundred small choices add up to one voice. What keeps a system from looking merely correct. Visual & Brand · Concept · Method

Asset Library

The managed, versioned store of approved visual assets. Prevents the slow entropy where six slightly different logos circulate simultaneously. Visual & Brand · DesignOps · Artifact

Assistive Technology also: AT

Any tool that helps a person interact with a system — screen readers, switch devices, magnifiers, voice control. Interfaces that assume a mouse and a screen quietly exclude their users. Accessibility · Concept

Atomic Design

Brad Frost's model organizing interfaces as atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages. Influential as a mental model even where teams don't adopt the vocabulary. Engineering · UX & Interaction · Concept

Backlog

The ordered list of work not yet done. Health is measured by how ruthlessly it's pruned, not by how much it contains. Product & Strategy · Artifact

Baseline Grid

A horizontal rhythm that aligns text baselines across columns and elements. Rarely noticed when present, always felt when absent. Visual & Brand · Concept

Brand Guidelines also: Brand book · Style guide

The governing document defining correct use of identity assets across contexts. Its usefulness is proportional to how clearly it handles the awkward cases, not the flattering ones. Visual & Brand · DesignOps · Artifact

Brand Identity

The designed system of signals — mark, type, color, imagery, voice, motion — that makes an organization recognizable and consistent. The visible layer of a brand, not the brand itself. Visual & Brand · Marketing & Growth · Concept

Breakpoint

A viewport width at which layout rules change. Best derived from where the content actually breaks rather than from a list of last year's device sizes. Engineering · UX & Interaction · Concept

Buy-In also: Alignment

Genuine agreement to support a direction, as distinct from the absence of objection in a meeting. Earned through involvement earlier than the reveal. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Concept

Call to Action also: CTA

The element prompting a specific next step. Clarity about what happens after the click matters more than the color of the button, whatever the last redesign argued. Marketing & Growth · Content & Writing · UX & Interaction · Pattern

Card Sorting also: Open sort · Closed sort

A method where participants group labeled items to reveal how they naturally categorize a domain. Directly informs navigation and taxonomy. User Research · UX & Interaction · Method

Churn also: Attrition

The rate at which customers stop using or paying. The inverse of retention and usually a lagging indicator of a problem that showed up in behavior much earlier. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · Metric

Cognitive Load

The total mental effort a task demands. Design reduces extraneous load — decoration, ambiguity, unnecessary choice — so working memory stays available for the actual job. UX & Interaction · User Research · Concept

Color Contrast also: Contrast ratio · Color contrast ratio

The measurable luminance difference between foreground and background. WCAG sets minimums (4.5:1 for normal text) that are legal requirements in a growing number of jurisdictions. Visual & Brand · Accessibility · Metric · Principle

Color Palette

The defined set of colors a product may use, with roles assigned — primary, surface, semantic, state. A palette without roles is just a collection of swatches. Visual & Brand · DesignOps · Artifact

Component

A reusable, self-contained interface element with defined states and props, existing in both design and code. The contract between the two disciplines. Engineering · UX & Interaction · DesignOps · Artifact

Component Adoption

The proportion of a product built from system components rather than one-off implementations. The most honest measure of whether a design system is actually working. DesignOps · Engineering · Metric

Conceptual Model

The model of a system that the design deliberately communicates — the story the interface tells about how things work. Good design makes the conceptual model and the user's mental model converge. UX & Interaction · Concept

Confirmation Bias

The tendency to notice and weight evidence that supports what you already believe. The reason research needs stated hypotheses, neutral protocols, and someone empowered to disagree. User Research · Concept

Content Audit

A systematic inventory and assessment of existing content against accuracy, performance, and need. Almost always finds that the answer is deletion. Content & Writing · Marketing & Growth · Method

Content Design

Determining what information a user needs and in what form — which may turn out not to be prose at all. Broader than writing: it decides the shape of the answer. Content & Writing · UX & Interaction · Concept

Contextual Inquiry also: Field study

Observing and interviewing people in the environment where the work actually happens. Reveals workarounds, interruptions, and constraints that never come up in a conference room. User Research · Method

Convergent Thinking

Narrowing options toward a decision using stated criteria. Its quality depends entirely on whether the criteria were agreed before the options were seen. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Concept

Conversation Design

Designing dialogue-based interaction: turn-taking, repair, disclosure, and closure. Draws on linguistics and scriptwriting more than on screen layout. AI & Emerging · Content & Writing · UX & Interaction · Method

Conversion Rate

The proportion of people completing a desired action. Improvable by making something genuinely easier or by making it manipulatively hard to avoid — the metric itself doesn't distinguish. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · Metric

Core Web Vitals also: CWV · LCP · CLS · INP

Google's page-experience measures for loading, interactivity, and visual stability. Worth knowing because they turn 'it feels slow' into a number with a published threshold and a ranking consequence. Engineering · Marketing & Growth · Metric

Dark Pattern also: Deceptive pattern

An interface deliberately designed to trick people into decisions against their interest — hidden costs, forced continuity, confirmshaming. The clearest test of whether a designer serves the user or only the business. UX & Interaction · Marketing & Growth · Pattern · Concept

Define

The second Double Diamond stage: converging research into a sharply stated problem worth solving. The stage most often skipped, and the reason many teams build competent answers to vague questions. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Phase

Define (Design Thinking) also: Point of view

The design thinking mode where research becomes a specific, human-centered problem statement. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Phase

Definition

The lifecycle phase where a validated problem becomes scoped, prioritized, agreed work. Product & Strategy · Phase

Deliver

The fourth Double Diamond stage: converging on one solution and refining it to shippable quality. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Phase

Delivery

The lifecycle phase where designed and specified work is built, tested, and readied to ship. Product & Strategy · Engineering · Phase

Design Critique also: Crit

A structured session where work is examined against stated goals rather than personal taste. Runs on a clear question from the presenter and specific, non-prescriptive feedback from the room. UX & Interaction · DesignOps · Method

Design Debt also: UX debt

Accumulated inconsistency and unresolved compromise in the experience layer — divergent patterns, orphaned states, styling that drifted from the system. Compounds like technical debt but is harder to ticket. UX & Interaction · DesignOps · Concept

Design Handoff also: Handoff

The transfer of design intent to engineering. Treated as a moment in weak teams and as an ongoing conversation in strong ones — the artifact matters less than the shared understanding. UX & Interaction · Engineering · DesignOps · Phase

Design Language

The shared visual and interaction vocabulary of a product family — what makes Material feel like Material and Fluent feel like Fluent. Broader than a component library and harder to write down. Visual & Brand · UX & Interaction · DesignOps · Concept

Design Rationale

The articulated reasoning behind a decision — what was considered, what was rejected, and why. The thing that separates a defensible recommendation from a preference. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Concept

Design Review

A decision-oriented session where work is approved, redirected, or blocked against defined criteria. Distinct from critique, which is exploratory and carries no verdict. DesignOps · UX & Interaction · Method

Design System

The governed whole: tokens, components, patterns, documentation, principles, and the process maintaining them. A product with its own users, roadmap, and adoption problem — not a Figma file. DesignOps · Engineering · UX & Interaction · Artifact · Concept

Design Thinking

A five-mode framework — Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test — that popularized human-centered methods far beyond design teams. Credited with broad adoption and criticized for flattening craft into a workshop format. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Concept

Design Token also: Token

A named, platform-agnostic variable holding a design decision — a color, spacing step, radius, or duration. The atomic unit that lets one change propagate everywhere at once. Engineering · DesignOps · Visual & Brand · Artifact

DesignOps

The practice of improving how design gets done — tooling, process, hiring, governance, and rituals. Infrastructure work that becomes visible mainly when it's missing. DesignOps · Concept

Develop

The third Double Diamond stage: generating and testing multiple candidate solutions to the defined problem. Divergent again — the point is options, not the first plausible answer. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Phase

Diary Study also: Longitudinal study

Participants self-report experiences over days or weeks. The right instrument for behavior that unfolds over time or is too routine to recall accurately in an interview. User Research · Method

Discover

The first Double Diamond stage: widening understanding of the problem space without committing to a solution. Divergent by design. Product & Strategy · User Research · Phase

Discovery also: Product discovery

The lifecycle phase for validating that a problem is real and worth solving before committing build capacity. Product & Strategy · Phase

Divergent Thinking

Deliberately expanding the option space before narrowing. Under-practiced, because it looks unproductive and feels uncomfortable. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Concept

Double Diamond

A four-stage model — Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver — alternating divergent exploration with convergent decision. The most widely taught map of the design process. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Concept

Easing also: Timing function

The acceleration curve governing how an animation progresses. Linear motion reads as mechanical; eased motion reads as physical and intentional. Visual & Brand · Engineering · Concept

Edge Case

A situation at the boundary of expected use: the longest name, the empty list, the expired token, the offline moment. Unhandled edge cases are where trust is lost. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Concept

Empathize

The first design thinking mode: building genuine understanding of the people affected, through observation and conversation rather than assumption. User Research · UX & Interaction · Phase

Empty State also: Zero state · Blank slate

What a screen shows before there's any content. A wasted empty state shows nothing; a designed one teaches the feature and gives the first action. UX & Interaction · Content & Writing · Pattern

Error State

What the interface does when something goes wrong. Good error states say what happened, why, and what to do next — in that order, in plain language. UX & Interaction · Content & Writing · Pattern

Ethical Design also: Responsible design

Practice that treats user wellbeing as a duty rather than a preference — asking whether something should be built, not only whether it can be. Carries real weight when systems can personalize persuasion at scale. UX & Interaction · AI & Emerging · Principle

Ethnography

Extended immersion in a community or setting to understand behavior in its own cultural terms. Rare in product timelines, disproportionately valuable when the domain is unfamiliar. User Research · Method

Evaluative Research

Research that assesses an existing or proposed solution. Answers did we build it right, which is a different question from whether it was the right thing. User Research · Concept

Explainability also: Interpretability

Making a system's reasoning legible enough that a person can judge whether to accept the output. Distinct from showing the raw mechanism, which usually explains nothing to anyone. AI & Emerging · UX & Interaction · Principle

Feature Flag also: Feature toggle

A switch allowing functionality to be enabled for specific users without redeploying. Enables staged rollout, A/B testing, and fast rollback. Engineering · Product & Strategy · Concept

Fitts's Law

The time to acquire a target depends on its distance and size. Why primary actions are large and close, and why a 4px close button next to a destructive action is a design defect. UX & Interaction · Accessibility · Principle

Focus Order also: Tab order

The sequence in which interactive elements receive keyboard focus. Should follow visual and logical reading order; when it doesn't, keyboard users experience a different product than everyone else. Accessibility · Engineering · Principle

Funnel also: Conversion funnel

A model of sequential stages people pass through, with measurable drop-off at each. Useful and reductive — real behavior loops and re-enters rather than descending neatly. Marketing & Growth · Concept

Generative Research also: Discovery research · Foundational research

Research conducted to understand a problem space before a solution exists. Answers what should we build; the expensive mistake is skipping it and testing the wrong thing beautifully. User Research · Concept

Gestalt Principles

Perceptual rules describing how people group visual elements — proximity, similarity, closure, continuity, common region. The underlying physics of why a layout reads as organized or as noise. Visual & Brand · UX & Interaction · Principle

Governance also: Design system governance

The rules and process determining how a shared system changes: who proposes, who decides, how contributions are reviewed. Without it, a design system decays into a suggestion. DesignOps · Concept

Graceful Degradation

Building for the richest environment and ensuring reduced capability in lesser ones. The inverse posture to progressive enhancement, with a worse floor and a faster start. Engineering · Principle

Graceful Failure

Designing the failure case as deliberately as the success case — saying what went wrong, preserving work, and offering a path forward. Essential when failure is statistically guaranteed rather than exceptional. AI & Emerging · UX & Interaction · Engineering · Principle

Grid System also: Layout grid

A structure of columns, gutters, and margins that governs placement. Constrains arbitrary decisions and makes multi-surface consistency achievable. Visual & Brand · UX & Interaction · Concept · Artifact

Hallucination also: Confabulation

Model output that is fluent, confident, and wrong. A design problem as much as a technical one: the interface decides whether users can tell. AI & Emerging · Concept

Happy Path also: Golden path

The ideal sequence where everything works and the user does what's expected. Necessary to design first and dangerous to design only. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Concept

Heuristic Evaluation also: Expert review

A structured inspection where evaluators judge an interface against established usability principles, typically Nielsen's ten. Fast and cheap, but it finds violations of convention, not evidence of user need. UX & Interaction · User Research · Method

Hi-Fi Mockup also: High-fidelity comp · Comp

A pixel-accurate, fully styled static representation of a screen. Shows exactly what will be built, but doesn't move — which is why it can hide interaction problems. UX & Interaction · Visual & Brand · Artifact

Hick's Law

Decision time increases logarithmically with the number and complexity of choices. An argument for reducing and grouping options, not for removing capability. UX & Interaction · Principle

Human in the Loop also: HITL

An architecture where a person reviews, approves, or corrects system output before it takes effect. The design question is where to place the checkpoint so it's meaningful rather than rubber-stamped. AI & Emerging · UX & Interaction · Principle · Pattern

Iconography also: Icon set

A coherent system of pictorial symbols sharing grid, weight, corner treatment, and metaphor logic. Coherence across the set matters more than the brilliance of any single icon. Visual & Brand · Artifact

Ideate also: Ideation

Generating a wide range of possible solutions before evaluating any. Judgment deferred deliberately, because early evaluation kills the unusual options first. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Phase · Method

Incentive also: Honorarium

Compensation offered to research participants for their time. Set too low it biases the sample toward the unusually available; set too high it biases toward the performatively agreeable. User Research · Concept

Inclusive Design

Designing for the full range of human diversity — ability, language, context, situation — rather than retrofitting for a minority afterward. Situational and temporary constraints are included by definition. Accessibility · UX & Interaction · Principle

Information Architecture also: IA

The structural design of shared information: how content is organized, labeled, and related so people can find things and understand where they are. UX & Interaction · Content & Writing · Concept · Method

Insight

A non-obvious, actionable statement about why people behave as they do. An observation says what happened; an insight explains it in a way that changes a decision. User Research · Product & Strategy · Artifact

Interactive Prototype also: Clickable prototype

A simulated version of the product that responds to input, used for usability testing and stakeholder alignment. The last chance to find interaction problems before code. UX & Interaction · Artifact

Iteration

Refining based on evidence from real use. Where most of a product's actual quality accrues, and where most roadmaps allocate the least time. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Phase

Jakob's Law

People spend most of their time on other sites, so they expect yours to work the same way. Convention is a usability asset; novelty for its own sake spends a budget you may not have. UX & Interaction · Principle

Jobs to Be Done also: JTBD

A framing that defines users by the progress they're trying to make rather than by their attributes. Explains why people 'hire' a product and what they'd fire it for. User Research · Product & Strategy · Concept

Journey Map also: Customer journey map

A visualization of a person's end-to-end experience across touchpoints and time, including what they do, think, and feel. Wider than a user flow and usually cross-channel. User Research · UX & Interaction · Marketing & Growth · Artifact

Kerning

Adjusting space between specific letter pairs. Distinct from tracking, which adjusts spacing uniformly across a run of text. Visual & Brand · Concept

KPI also: Key Performance Indicator

A metric designated as a primary measure of whether something is working. The designation is the decision — a KPI is just a number until a team agrees to be judged by it. Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Metric

Landing Page

A page built for a single conversion goal, usually as the destination of a specific campaign. Judged by one number, which makes it the most measurable design work in most organizations. Marketing & Growth · Visual & Brand · Artifact

Latency

The delay between an action and a system's response. In AI-backed interfaces it becomes a first-class design constraint rather than an engineering footnote. Engineering · AI & Emerging · Metric

Launch also: Ship · Release

Making the work available to users, whether all at once or through staged rollout. The start of learning, not the end of the project. Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Phase

Leading also: Line height

The vertical space between baselines of type. Too tight and lines collide; too loose and a paragraph stops reading as a unit. Visual & Brand · Concept

Leading Question

A question phrased to suggest its own answer. Corrupts data quietly, because participants are cooperative and will happily confirm whatever the researcher seems to want. User Research · Concept

Lo-Fi Prototype also: Low-fidelity prototype

A rough, clickable or paper-based simulation used to test flow and comprehension before investing in craft. Cheap enough to be wrong. UX & Interaction · Artifact

Lockup

A fixed arrangement of identity elements — mark plus wordmark, with defined spacing — that must not be recomposed. Exists so the identity survives contact with other people's slide decks. Visual & Brand · Artifact

Mental Model

The internal picture a person holds of how a system works. Friction usually comes from a mismatch between the user's mental model and the system's actual model, not from a lack of features. UX & Interaction · User Research · Concept

Microcopy

The small strings that guide, reassure, or explain at the moment of action. Disproportionate impact per character. Content & Writing · UX & Interaction · Artifact

Microinteraction

A small, contained moment of feedback around a single task — a toggle animating, a field validating, a like registering. Where a product's craft and personality actually live. UX & Interaction · Visual & Brand · Pattern

Miller's Law also: Seven plus or minus two

Working memory holds roughly seven items — though the finding is routinely overstated. The durable lesson is chunking: group information so it can be held as fewer units. UX & Interaction · Principle

Minimum Viable Product also: MVP

The smallest release that produces validated learning about a hypothesis. Widely misused to mean an underfunded version one. Product & Strategy · Concept

Model Latency

The delay between a request and a model's response — often seconds rather than milliseconds. Forces streaming, progressive rendering, and honest waiting states into the core design. AI & Emerging · Engineering · Metric

Moderated Interview also: Depth interview · IDI

A researcher-led conversation with one participant, following a guide while staying open to unexpected directions. The workhorse of generative research. User Research · Method

Mood Board also: Style tile

A collected set of references used to agree a direction before anything is made. The cheapest available way to discover that the client meant a different 'clean'. Visual & Brand · Artifact

Motion Design also: UI animation

Using movement to communicate causality, continuity, and hierarchy. Functional motion orients; decorative motion delays. Visual & Brand · UX & Interaction · Concept

Net Promoter Score also: NPS

A single-question loyalty measure based on likelihood to recommend. Ubiquitous in boardrooms, widely criticized methodologically, and best treated as a trend line rather than a truth. Marketing & Growth · User Research · Metric

Non-Determinism

The property that identical input can produce different output. Breaks the core UX assumption that a given action yields a predictable result, and reshapes everything downstream of it. AI & Emerging · UX & Interaction · Concept

North Star Metric

The single measure that best captures delivered customer value and predicts sustainable growth. Chosen badly, it becomes the thing a whole organization optimizes at the user's expense. Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Metric

OKRs also: Objectives and Key Results

A goal-setting structure pairing a qualitative objective with measurable key results. Fails predictably when key results are outputs the team controls rather than outcomes it influences. Product & Strategy · Concept

Omnichannel

An approach where every channel shares state and context, so a task begun in one can continue in another. Distinct from multichannel, which merely means being present in several places. UX & Interaction · Marketing & Growth · Concept

Onboarding

The designed path from first contact to first value. Judged by time-to-value rather than by how thoroughly features were explained. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Pattern · Phase

Participant Recruiting also: Recruiting

Sourcing and scheduling qualified people for a study. Usually the slowest and most underestimated part of the research timeline. User Research · Method

Pattern Library

A documented collection of recurring solutions showing components in real combinations. Answers how to use the parts, which a component inventory alone never does. Engineering · UX & Interaction · DesignOps · Artifact

Perceived Performance

How fast something feels, as opposed to how fast it measures. Feedback, progress, and optimistic UI can make a slow system feel responsive — and their absence makes a fast one feel broken. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Concept · Metric

Persona also: User archetype

A composite character representing a research-grounded behavioral pattern, used to keep teams designing for someone specific. Worthless when invented rather than derived. User Research · UX & Interaction · Marketing & Growth · Artifact

Plain Language

Writing so the intended reader understands on first read. A legal requirement in some public-sector contexts and a competitive advantage nearly everywhere else. Content & Writing · Accessibility · Principle

Positioning

The deliberate place a product occupies in a customer's mind relative to alternatives. Determined by what you decline to be as much as by what you claim. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · Concept

Prioritization also: RICE · MoSCoW

Deciding sequence under constraint, using frameworks like RICE or MoSCoW to make trade-offs explicit and arguable. The framework's real function is forcing the conversation, not producing the number. Product & Strategy · Method

Problem Statement also: POV statement

A concise articulation of whose problem is being solved, in what context, and why it matters. Constrains solution space productively; a vague one licenses anything. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Artifact

Product Requirements Document also: PRD · Spec

The document defining what a feature must do and why, and how success will be judged. Increasingly a shared living doc rather than a thrown-over-the-wall artifact. Product & Strategy · Artifact

Product-Market Fit also: PMF

The condition where a product satisfies strong demand in a defined market — usually recognized by pull rather than measured by a threshold. Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Concept

Progressive Disclosure

Showing only what's needed now, revealing complexity on demand. Keeps the common path simple without amputating advanced capability. UX & Interaction · Pattern · Principle

Progressive Enhancement

Building a working baseline first, then layering on capability for environments that support it. Fails gracefully by construction rather than by exception handling. Engineering · Accessibility · Principle

Prompt Design also: Prompt engineering

Crafting the instructions that shape model behavior — structure, context, constraints, and examples. In products, largely invisible design work that determines output quality for every user. AI & Emerging · Content & Writing · Method

Prototype

Building the cheapest artifact that can answer the open question. The fidelity should match the question, not the calendar. UX & Interaction · Phase · Artifact

Qualitative Research also: Qual

Research producing non-numerical understanding — reasons, motivations, and meaning. Small samples, deep signal, and the source of most genuinely new ideas. User Research · Concept

Quantitative Research also: Quant

Research producing numerical, statistically analyzable data. Tells you how many and how much, and almost never why. User Research · Product & Strategy · Concept

Readability also: Reading level

How easily text can be understood, often scored by formulas like Flesch-Kincaid. A proxy measure — useful directionally, not as a target to optimize blindly. Content & Writing · Accessibility · Metric

Redlines also: Specs · Design specs

Annotated measurements and behavioral notes that translate a design into buildable instruction: spacing, states, breakpoints, and edge cases. Increasingly generated by tooling rather than drawn by hand. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Artifact

Reduced Motion also: prefers-reduced-motion

A user preference signaling that animation should be minimized, often because motion triggers vestibular symptoms. Respecting it is a single media query and a genuine harm avoided. Accessibility · Engineering · Visual & Brand · Principle

Referral

The stage where existing users bring new ones. Only works honestly when the product is genuinely worth recommending. Marketing & Growth · Phase

Research Plan also: Study plan

The document defining the research question, method, participants, timeline, and how findings will be used. Its real job is preventing a study that answers a question no one will act on. User Research · Artifact

Responsive Design

A single flexible implementation that reflows to fit any viewport, using fluid grids and breakpoints. Now the baseline expectation rather than a differentiator. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Concept

Retention

The stage measuring whether people keep coming back. The truest signal of value delivered, and the hardest to fake with marketing spend. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · Phase · Metric

Revenue

The stage where user value converts to business value. The final funnel stage, and the one whose pressure most often produces dark patterns upstream. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · Phase · Metric

Roadmap

A communicated plan of intended work over time. Most useful when framed around outcomes and confidence levels rather than dated feature promises. Product & Strategy · Artifact

Sample Size also: n

The number of participants in a study. Qualitative work needs enough for saturation; quantitative work needs enough for statistical power — conflating the two produces confident nonsense. User Research · Concept

Sampling Bias

Systematic distortion introduced when participants aren't representative of the population you intend to serve. Often invisible until the product ships to everyone else. User Research · Concept

Saturation also: Thematic saturation

The point where additional participants stop producing new themes. The honest answer to how many people is enough, and the reason five users is a heuristic rather than a law. User Research · Concept

Scope Creep

Uncontrolled expansion of what was agreed, usually through a sequence of individually reasonable additions. Managed by an explicit change process, not by willpower. Product & Strategy · Concept

Screen Reader

Software that renders interface content as speech or braille. Designing well for it requires understanding structure and order, not just adding labels. Accessibility · Concept

Screener also: Screening questionnaire

A short survey used to qualify participants against study criteria. Badly written screeners are the most common cause of research that produces confident, useless findings. User Research · Artifact

Segmentation

Dividing an audience into groups by shared attributes or behaviors. Behavioral segments generally outperform demographic ones for product decisions. Marketing & Growth · User Research · Method

Semantic HTML

Using elements for their meaning rather than their default appearance. The cheapest accessibility win available, and the one most often traded away for styling convenience. Engineering · Accessibility · Principle

SEO also: Search Engine Optimization

Structuring content and markup so search engines can find, understand, and rank it. Overlaps heavily with accessibility and information architecture — semantic structure serves both. Marketing & Growth · Engineering · Content & Writing · Concept · Method

Service Blueprint

A journey map extended downward to show the backstage systems, staff, and processes that make each frontstage moment possible. Where operational causes of experience problems become visible. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Artifact

Signifier

The perceptible cue that communicates an affordance — the underline on a link, the shadow under a button. Norman's distinction: the affordance is the possibility, the signifier is the advertisement of it. UX & Interaction · Principle

Single Source of Truth also: SSOT

One authoritative location for a given decision or asset, referenced everywhere else. The organizing principle behind tokens, component libraries, and content systems alike. DesignOps · Engineering · Principle

Skeleton Screen also: Content placeholder

A structural preview shown while content loads, standing in for the shape of what's coming. Reads as faster than a spinner even at identical load times. UX & Interaction · Engineering · Pattern

Sketch also: Thumbnail · Crazy 8s

Fast, low-commitment drawing used to think rather than to communicate. Its value is volume and disposability — the point is to generate options cheaply enough to throw most of them away. UX & Interaction · Visual & Brand · Artifact

Sprint

A fixed-length delivery cycle, commonly one to three weeks. Note the collision: a design sprint is a different, five-day problem-solving format. Product & Strategy · Engineering · Phase

Stakeholder

Anyone with a legitimate interest in an outcome — including, though often forgotten in the list, the end user. Product & Strategy · UX & Interaction · Role

Statistical Significance also: p-value

The likelihood that an observed difference isn't attributable to chance. Significance is not the same as importance — a real effect can still be too small to matter. User Research · Product & Strategy · Metric

Storyboard

A sequence of frames showing how something unfolds over time. Borrowed from film, and the right tool whenever motion, narrative, or a multi-step moment is the thing being designed. Visual & Brand · UX & Interaction · Artifact

Storytelling also: Design narrative

Structuring a presentation so the audience arrives at the conclusion with you rather than being handed it. The primary instrument of influence for designers without formal authority. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Method

Synthesis

The analytical work of turning scattered observations into patterns and explanations. The least visible and most skill-dependent stage of research. User Research · Method

System Prompt

The persistent instruction defining a model's role, constraints, and voice across a session. Product-level design decisions expressed as text. AI & Emerging · Content & Writing · Artifact

System Usability Scale also: SUS

A ten-item questionnaire producing a single 0–100 usability score, benchmarkable across products. Roughly 68 is average — useful precisely because it's comparable. User Research · Metric

Systems Thinking

Reasoning about wholes, feedback loops, and second-order effects rather than isolated parts. What separates designing a screen from designing a service. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Concept

Target Size also: Touch target

The minimum interactive area required for reliable activation — WCAG 2.2 sets 24×24 CSS pixels as a floor, with platform guidance often larger. A Fitts's Law consequence codified as a requirement. Accessibility · UX & Interaction · Principle

Task Analysis

Breaking a goal into the sequence of steps, decisions, and knowledge a person needs to complete it. Exposes the steps a system forces that the goal never required. User Research · UX & Interaction · Method

Task Success Rate also: Completion rate

The percentage of participants who complete a task correctly and unaided. The plainest usability number there is, and the one stakeholders argue with least. User Research · UX & Interaction · Metric

Taxonomy also: Controlled vocabulary

The classification scheme behind content — the categories, tags, and the relationships between them. What search, filtering, and navigation silently depend on, and what decays quietly when nobody owns it. Content & Writing · UX & Interaction · Artifact

Technical Debt also: Tech debt

Future cost incurred by choosing an expedient implementation now. Sometimes a deliberate loan, often an unacknowledged overdraft. Engineering · Product & Strategy · Concept

Template also: Page template

A defined page-level composition of patterns for a recurring context. Where a system stops constraining details and starts guaranteeing coherence at full-page scale. Engineering · UX & Interaction · DesignOps · Artifact

Test

Putting the prototype in front of real users to learn what's wrong while it's still cheap to change. User Research · UX & Interaction · Phase

Thematic Analysis also: Coding · Qualitative coding

Systematically coding qualitative data into recurring themes so a finding can be stated with evidence behind it rather than a memorable quote. The rigorous sibling of affinity mapping. User Research · Method

Think-Aloud Protocol

Asking participants to narrate their thinking as they work through a task. Surfaces reasoning and confusion that observation alone would miss, at the cost of slightly altering behavior. User Research · Method

Time to Value also: TTV

How long it takes a new user to experience the benefit they came for. One of the few metrics that aligns UX quality and business outcome without argument. Product & Strategy · Marketing & Growth · Metric

Touchpoint

Any point of contact between a person and an organization — an email, a screen, a support call, a package. Brand consistency is judged across touchpoints, not within one. UX & Interaction · Marketing & Growth · Concept

Trade-off

An explicit acknowledgment that gaining one property costs another — speed against flexibility, simplicity against power. Naming trade-offs openly is a marker of design seniority. UX & Interaction · Product & Strategy · Concept

Tree Testing also: Reverse card sort

Testing whether people can find things in a proposed structure, stripped of visual design. Isolates navigation problems from styling problems. User Research · UX & Interaction · Method

Triangulation

Corroborating a finding across multiple methods or data sources before acting on it. The practical defense against a compelling result that happens to be an artifact of one method. User Research · Method

Trust Calibration

Designing so a user's confidence in a system matches its actual reliability. Both failure modes are costly — over-trust produces unchecked errors, under-trust wastes the capability entirely. AI & Emerging · UX & Interaction · Concept · Principle

Type Scale also: Modular scale

A defined set of type sizes in ratio to one another, giving hierarchy a system instead of a series of one-off decisions. The typographic backbone of any design system. Visual & Brand · DesignOps · Artifact · Principle

Typeface vs. Font

A typeface is the design (Helvetica); a font is a specific instance of it (Helvetica Bold, 12pt). The distinction matters most when licensing and when specifying. Visual & Brand · Concept

Typography

The craft of arranging type for legibility, hierarchy, and voice. The largest single lever on whether an interface feels considered or assembled. Visual & Brand · Concept

Unmoderated Test

A study participants complete on their own, usually via a platform that records screen and voice. Scales cheaply and loses the ability to ask why. User Research · Method

Usability Test also: Usability study · Usability testing

Watching representative users attempt realistic tasks to find where the design fails. Evaluative rather than generative — it tests a solution, it doesn't discover a problem. User Research · UX & Interaction · Method

User Flow also: Flow diagram

A diagram of the path a user takes through a system to complete a task, including decision points and branches. The map that shows whether a design holds together across screens. UX & Interaction · Artifact

UX Writing

Writing the words inside an interface — labels, buttons, errors, empty states. In many products the words are the interface, and this work is done by whoever happens to be nearest. Content & Writing · UX & Interaction · Concept · Method

Value Proposition also: Value prop

A clear statement of the benefit delivered, to whom, and why it beats the alternative. If it survives being read aloud to a skeptical stranger, it's probably real. Marketing & Growth · Product & Strategy · Concept

Vertical Rhythm

Consistent vertical spacing derived from a base unit, so a page reads as evenly paced rather than arbitrarily stacked. Visual & Brand · Principle

Visual Hierarchy

The deliberate ordering of elements so the eye moves in the intended sequence, built from size, weight, color, contrast, and space. The difference between a page that's read and a page that's scanned past. Visual & Brand · UX & Interaction · Principle

Visual Saliency

How much a given element stands out from its surroundings before any conscious attention is applied. Measurable, and frequently at odds with what a stakeholder insists is 'prominent enough.' Visual & Brand · User Research · Concept · Metric

Voice and Tone also: Tone of voice

Voice is the consistent personality of a product; tone is how that voice adapts to context. The same product should sound like itself in a celebration and in an outage — but not identical. Content & Writing · Marketing & Growth · Concept

Wayfinding

Helping people know where they are, where they can go, and how to get back. Borrowed from environmental design; expressed digitally as navigation, breadcrumbs, and orientation cues. UX & Interaction · Concept

WCAG also: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The international standard defining accessibility requirements across levels A, AA, and AA A. Referenced directly by legislation including the European Accessibility Act and ADA case law. Accessibility · Concept

White Space also: Negative space

The unoccupied area in a composition. Not emptiness but an active element — it creates grouping, emphasis, and pace, and it is the first thing sacrificed under stakeholder pressure. Visual & Brand · Principle

Wireframe also: Wire

A structural layout showing hierarchy, content placement, and functionality without visual styling. Deliberately unfinished so conversation stays on structure rather than color. UX & Interaction · Artifact

UX Glossary.