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UX design is the intentional shaping of how people experience a product, service, system or interface. It includes research, information architecture, interaction, content, accessibility, visual design and evaluation—not just making screens attractive. ISO describes user experience as people’s perceptions and responses resulting from actual or anticipated use, while UserTesting emphasizes products that are useful, usable and rewarding (UserTesting; ISO 9241-110).
Use this glossary in three ways: look up a word alphabetically, understand how related concepts fit into a UX workflow, and choose a method, artifact or metric for a practical decision. Definitions marked as standards-based reflect ISO or W3C language; many job titles and deliverable names remain common industry usage and vary by organization.
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Experience, design and disciplines
- User experience (UX)
- A person’s perceptions, responses and behavior before, during and after using a product or service. It includes practical, emotional and contextual aspects.
- UX design
- The cross-functional activity of researching needs and shaping structure, interaction, content and appearance so an experience supports user and business goals.
- User interface (UI)
- The controls, visual language and interaction surfaces through which people use a system. UI is part of UX, not a synonym for it.
- Interaction design
- Designing how people and systems act and respond to one another, including states, feedback, timing and behavior—not merely animation.
- Product design
- A usually broader role combining UX, UI, interaction, product strategy and delivery. Responsibilities and titles differ by company.
- Human-computer interaction (HCI)
- The interdisciplinary study and design of interaction between people and computing systems.
- Human-centered design (HCD)
- An approach that understands people, tasks and context, involves them throughout design, and iterates on evidence.
- User-centered design (UCD)
- Design organized around specified users, goals and contexts. Calling work “user-centered” does not prove that research occurred.
- Customer experience (CX)
- The customer’s relationship with an organization across marketing, sales, support, product and other touchpoints.
- Service design
- Designing the coordinated frontstage and backstage people, processes, technology and touchpoints that make a service work.
Value and context
- Usability: effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction for specified users, goals and contexts; ISO treats it as an outcome of use, not simply a visual property (ISO 9241-11).
- Usefulness: whether a product helps someone achieve a needed outcome.
- Desirability: how appealing or emotionally valuable an experience is.
- Feasibility: whether a solution can be built and operated with available technology and resources.
- Viability: whether it can support sustainable business or organizational goals.
- Context of use: users, goals, tasks, equipment and physical, social or organizational environment.
- User need: an outcome or condition a person requires, distinct from a requested feature.
- User goal: what a person is trying to accomplish.
- Pain point: a difficulty experienced by a user, not merely a stakeholder complaint.
- Friction: effort, uncertainty or delay that makes progress harder.
- User benefit: the value a person receives from a feature or service.
- Value proposition: the clear promise of who is helped, how and why this solution is preferable.
| Term | Practical meaning | Common confusion |
|---|---|---|
| UX design | Shapes the whole product or service experience | Equating it with visual styling |
| UI design | Shapes visual and interactive controls | Assuming UI is the entire experience |
| Product design | Often combines UX, UI, strategy and delivery | Assuming a standardized job boundary |
| CX | Relationship with the organization across touchpoints | Limiting it to an app or website |
| Service design | Coordinates frontstage and backstage service parts | Confusing it with interface design |
Principles and heuristics
These are useful lenses, not universal laws. ISO 9241-110 says priorities depend on users, tasks, environment, technology and consequences (ISO guidance).
- Affordance
- What an object appears physically or digitally able to do; a raised control may suggest pressing.
- Signifier
- A perceivable cue that indicates where and how to act, such as an underlined link or “Drag” label.
- Feedback
- Information returned after an action, such as a saved confirmation or inline validation.
- Visibility of system status
- Keeping users informed about loading, progress, selection and completion.
- Discoverability
- How easily people can find available actions or information.
- Mapping
- The relationship between controls and their effects; stove controls aligned with burners use natural mapping.
- Consistency
- Using familiar patterns, terms and behavior across a product and with platform conventions.
- Constraints
- Limits that prevent invalid action, such as disabling unavailable dates.
- Error prevention and recovery
- Design that avoids mistakes and offers clear correction, undo, retry or an escape hatch.
- Learnability and memorability
- How quickly newcomers learn a system and how easily returning users resume competence.
- Flexibility and efficiency
- Supporting both novice guidance and expert shortcuts.
- Mental model
- A user’s belief about how a system works; mismatches cause surprise.
- Conceptual model
- The explanation of system structure that the interface communicates.
- Recognition versus recall
- Showing choices is generally easier than requiring users to remember commands.
- Progressive disclosure
- Revealing advanced detail when it becomes relevant instead of overwhelming the initial view.
- Forgiveness
- Making reversible actions and tolerant input possible.
- Aesthetic-usability effect
- People may perceive an attractive interface as easier to use; appearance cannot substitute for successful task performance.
- Fitts’s law
- Targets are generally faster to acquire when they are larger and closer; apply with device and motor context in mind.
- Hick’s law
- More or more complex choices generally increase decision time; remove irrelevant options.
- Jakob’s law
- People transfer expectations from familiar products.
- Tesler’s law
- Every system has irreducible complexity; design should place it where it causes least harm.
- Doherty threshold
- Responsiveness affects productivity and engagement; the exact threshold is context-dependent rather than a guarantee.
- Serial-position effect
- People often remember early and late items better than middle items.
- Von Restorff effect
- A distinctive item is more likely to be noticed or remembered.
- Peak-end rule
- Retrospective evaluations are strongly influenced by intense moments and the ending.
- Zeigarnik effect
- Incomplete tasks can remain mentally salient; progress and clear completion can reduce uncertainty.
- Miller’s law
- The popular “7±2” claim is often overgeneralized. Treat working-memory capacity as variable and avoid using the number as a rigid screen limit.
UX process and approaches
- Discovery
- Learning about users, problems, market and constraints before committing to solutions.
- Definition
- Framing a problem, audience, evidence and success criteria.
- Ideation
- Generating and selecting possible approaches.
- Prototyping
- Representing an idea at an appropriate fidelity to learn before production.
- Iteration
- Repeatedly improving a design using evidence and feedback.
- Continuous discovery
- Regular, small research activities integrated with product decisions.
- Design thinking
- A family of human-centered problem-solving practices; its stages and terminology vary.
- Lean UX
- Collaborative, hypothesis-driven design with minimal documentation and rapid learning.
- Agile UX
- UX activities coordinated with iterative software delivery.
- Double Diamond
- A popular model of alternating divergent and convergent exploration; it is a framing device, not a mandatory process.
User research terms
Approaches and data
- Generative/exploratory research: discovers needs, language and opportunities.
- Evaluative/formative research: identifies problems while a design can still change.
- Summative research: assesses an outcome against defined criteria.
- Descriptive research: characterizes what happens.
- Qualitative research: explores behavior, meaning and motivation; it is not automatically statistically representative.
- Quantitative research: measures frequency, magnitude or relationships.
- Attitudinal data: what people say, believe or prefer.
- Behavioral data: what people do.
- Primary research: data collected directly for the question.
- Secondary research: analysis of existing reports, literature, analytics or support records.
- Mixed methods: deliberate combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence.
- Longitudinal: follows change over time; cross-sectional: examines a point in time.
Methods
Interview asks participants about experience; contextual inquiry combines questions with observation in the work setting; a field study examines real-world use; ethnographic research studies practices and culture over time; a diary study captures events as they occur. A survey gathers structured responses, while a focus group explores group discussion (not individual behavior).
Usability testing asks participants to perform tasks while a researcher observes behavior and feedback. Qualitative sessions find problems; quantitative sessions collect metrics (NN/g research glossary). Moderated studies have a facilitator; unmoderated studies run without one. Think-aloud asks participants to verbalize their thoughts. Wizard of Oz simulates a system manually behind the scenes.
Card sorting studies how people group and label content: open sorting lets participants create categories, closed sorting supplies them, and hybrid sorting combines both. Tree testing tests whether users can find items in a hierarchy (NN/g). First-click testing examines the first place users choose; five-second and preference/desirability tests capture quick impressions. Competitive analysis, expert review, analytics review, search-log and support analysis use existing evidence. A/B testing compares variants under an experimental design; it is not the same as observing a usability session.
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- Research question/objective: what the study must learn and why.
- Hypothesis: a testable expectation; an assumption is an unverified belief.
- Screener: recruitment questions for eligibility; participant/sample: the people and subset studied.
- Protocol/discussion guide: standardized study plan; task scenario: realistic prompt.
- Moderator/observer: facilitator and non-intervening note-taker.
- Consent/incentive: permission and compensation arrangements.
- Saturation: a point where additional qualitative sessions yield little new information; it is not a universal participant count.
- Triangulation: comparing different methods or sources.
- Affinity mapping: grouping observations to reveal patterns; thematic analysis: systematically coding themes.
- Observation: recorded behavior or statement. Finding: what was observed. Insight: what it means. Recommendation: an action the team should consider. A quote is evidence, not automatically an insight; an inference should be labeled as such.
- Research repository/readout: an organized evidence store and a presentation of implications.
Information architecture and navigation
- Information architecture (IA)
- Organizing, labeling and structuring information so people can find and understand it.
- Content inventory/audit
- A list of existing content; an audit evaluates quality, relevance, duplication and gaps.
- Taxonomy and ontology
- A taxonomy classifies items; an ontology models richer relationships among concepts.
- Metadata
- Descriptive information about content, such as author, date or topic.
- Label, category and facet
- A label names an item; a category groups it; a facet filters across dimensions.
- Global, local and utility navigation
- Global navigation spans the product, local navigation covers a section, and utility navigation provides secondary actions such as account or help.
- Breadcrumbs
- A path showing location in a hierarchy; it is not a replacement for primary navigation.
- Sitemap
- A human-facing map of pages or structure. An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file for search engines.
- Search and faceted navigation
- Search retrieves directly; facets narrow a result set by attributes.
- Mega menu and hamburger menu
- A mega menu exposes many grouped links; a hamburger icon conceals navigation and should be tested with the target audience.
- Information scent and findability
- Scent is the cue that a path will lead to the desired information; findability is the practical ability to locate it.
- Wayfinding
- Helping people understand where they are, where they can go and how to return.
- User flow, task flow and journey map
- A user flow shows a person’s path through an interface; a task flow concentrates on steps for one task; a journey map covers a broader end-to-end experience, often including emotions, channels and backstage factors. Usage varies by team.
- Hierarchy, flat and deep structure
- Hierarchy expresses levels; a flat structure has few levels, while a deep structure has many.
People and behavioral models
- User, end user, customer, buyer and stakeholder
- A user operates the product; an end user is the person at the point of use; a customer has the commercial relationship; a buyer pays or procures; a stakeholder affects or is affected by decisions. One person may fill several roles.
- Target audience and user segment
- A target audience is the intended population; a segment is a meaningful subgroup sharing characteristics or behavior.
- Persona
- A fictional but realistic description of a typical or target user, used for communication and decisions—not a substitute for current research (NN/g deliverables glossary).
- Proto-persona, research-based persona and anti-persona
- A proto-persona records assumptions; a research-based persona synthesizes evidence; an anti-persona describes a group the product deliberately does not serve.
- Primary/secondary persona and archetype
- Primary personas drive priorities; secondary personas have significant needs; an archetype is a recurring behavioral pattern rather than a demographic portrait.
- Jobs to be done (JTBD) and job story
- JTBD frames the progress someone hires a product to make; a job story states the situation, motivation and expected outcome.
- Scenario, use case and user story
- A scenario narrates context; a use case specifies actor-system interactions; a user story expresses a need in a delivery-oriented format.
- Empathy map and behavioral variable
- An empathy map organizes what people say, think, do and feel; behavioral variables describe observable differences such as frequency or confidence.
- Accessibility need and assistive-technology user
- These identify barriers and tools such as screen readers, keyboards, magnification or switch access without reducing a person to a diagnosis.
UX deliverables and artifacts
Discovery and strategy artifacts include a business or user-requirements document, design brief, problem or opportunity statement, research plan, competitive analysis, assumption map, CSD (certainty–supposition–doubt) matrix, stakeholder or ecosystem map, relationship map, value-proposition canvas, lean canvas and opportunity-solution tree.
Experience artifacts include an experience map, customer journey map, scenario map and service blueprint. A blueprint connects visible touchpoints to backstage processes, people and systems.
Structure and design artifacts include a sitemap, content model, concept map, affinity diagram, mind map, user or task flow, flowchart, sketch, storyboard, wireframe, mockup, prototype, design specification and redline.
Planning and decision artifacts include a product, UX or feature roadmap; impact–effort matrix; MoSCoW, RICE and Kano prioritization; RACI responsibility matrix; usability or research report; decision log; experiment brief; and accessibility statement.
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| Artifact | Typical fidelity | Main purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Sketch | Very low | Explore many ideas quickly |
| Wireframe | Low to medium | Define layout, hierarchy and content placement |
| Mockup | High visual, usually static | Show visual appearance |
| Prototype | Any fidelity | Simulate interaction and test behavior |
| Production UI | Implemented | Operate in the real product |
A wireframe is a structural screen sketch. A mockup is generally a static, visually detailed simulation. A prototype is an early representation used to validate ideas, interactions or functionality; it may be paper, clickable, interactive or functional (NN/g). Low- and high-fidelity, disposable, vertical and horizontal prototypes describe scope or depth, not a single tool or style. Prototype bias is the risk that a polished representation makes people judge visual finish instead of the question being tested. Handoff transfers decisions, behavior, assets and acceptance criteria to delivery.
UI and interaction vocabulary
Interface types include graphical (GUI), command-line, voice, conversational, touch and multimodal interfaces. A control is an interactive input; a component is a reusable implementation; a pattern is a repeatable solution to a recurring problem.
Common controls are button, link, text field, textarea, checkbox, radio button, toggle, select, dropdown, combobox, date picker, slider and stepper. Supporting elements include tooltip, popover, modal/dialog, drawer, toast, banner, alert, notification, badge, avatar, tab, accordion, breadcrumb, pagination, progress indicator, spinner and skeleton screen.
Design every meaningful state: loading, empty, error, success, disabled, hover, focus, active, pressed and selected. An event or trigger causes a response; a microinteraction is a small task-oriented interaction. Motion, transitions and gestures should clarify change rather than add distraction. A touch target or hit area is the tappable region. Focus order and tab order determine keyboard navigation. Interaction cost is the effort required; cognitive load is the mental effort required to understand or act. Undo, redo, confirmation, shortcuts and escape hatches preserve user control.
Accessibility and inclusive design
Accessibility concerns whether people with diverse abilities can perceive, operate, understand and interact with a product. Usability concerns effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction for specified users, goals and contexts. They overlap but are not interchangeable. W3C recommends combining accessibility standards with usability processes and involving people with disabilities early and throughout evaluation (W3C WAI).
- Inclusive design, universal design and design for all
- Approaches that anticipate human diversity rather than designing for an assumed average. They do not eliminate the need for individual accommodations.
- Assistive technology
- Hardware or software such as screen readers, magnification, switch controls and speech input.
- Semantic HTML
- Meaningful structural markup that communicates roles and relationships to browsers and assistive technology.
- Keyboard accessibility and focus indicator
- All functions can be operated without a pointer, with visible indication of the current focus.
- Alternative text
- A concise text equivalent for meaningful images; decorative images should not add noise.
- Color contrast and color-vision deficiency
- Ensure text and controls remain distinguishable without relying on color alone.
- Captions, transcripts and audio description
- Text and narrated alternatives for audiovisual information.
- Reduced motion
- A preference and design mode that limits animation that can cause discomfort.
- Cognitive, motor, visual and auditory accessibility
- Designing for differences in memory, attention, movement, sight and hearing.
- WCAG and POUR
- WCAG is W3C’s international web-accessibility standard (also identified as ISO/IEC 40500); POUR means perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.
- Conformance, audit and testing
- Conformance checks requirements; an audit identifies issues; testing with disabled users reveals real-world barriers. Passing WCAG alone does not prove excellent UX.
- Accommodation, disability, temporary and situational disability
- An accommodation adjusts access for a person; disability can be permanent, temporary (for example, an injury) or situational (such as glare or noise).
Content design and UX writing
Content design plans information to help people complete goals. UX writing uses product language to guide navigation, action and error recovery (UserTesting glossary). Microcopy includes labels, helper text, instructions, validation and empty-state messages; “copy” in a product is not limited to marketing.
- Content strategy and information design
- Strategy governs content purpose, production and lifecycle; information design makes complex information understandable.
- Plain language, readability and scannability
- Use familiar words and structure. Shorter is not automatically clearer if it removes necessary context.
- Voice, tone and content hierarchy
- Voice is the consistent character; tone adapts to situation; hierarchy signals what matters first.
- Call to action and confirmation copy
- Action text states the outcome; confirmation explains what happened and what comes next.
- Localization, internationalization, translation and transcreation
- Localization adapts language and conventions; internationalization prepares the product; translation transfers meaning; transcreation adapts creative intent. Layout, reading direction, dates and currencies may change.
- Content governance and terminology management
- Rules, ownership and controlled vocabulary keep language accurate and consistent over time.
Design systems and developer handoff
A design system is more than screenshots: it combines reusable components and patterns with tokens, rules, documentation, governance and accessibility behavior (NN/g). A component library stores reusable UI parts; a pattern library documents recurring solutions; a style guide records visual and content rules.
Best Value
- Design token
- A named value for color, type, spacing or motion. Primitive tokens hold raw values; semantic tokens express purpose such as “surface-danger.”
- Variant, theme and responsive behavior
- Variants represent supported component options; themes swap visual values; responsive behavior defines adaptation across sizes.
- Breakpoint, grid, spacing and type scale
- Rules governing layout changes, alignment, rhythm and typography.
- Auto layout and constraints
- Tool or implementation rules that preserve relationships as content or viewport changes.
- Versioning, governance, contribution and deprecation
- Processes for releases, ownership, proposed changes and retiring obsolete assets.
- Source of truth and parity
- The agreed canonical specification; design-development parity means the implemented behavior matches it.
- Handoff, inspect mode and acceptance criteria
- Handoff communicates behavior and assets; inspect mode exposes measurements in a design tool; acceptance criteria define testable completion.
- Storybook and UI inventory
- Storybook documents coded components; a UI inventory records what exists across a product.
UX metrics and experimentation
Usability measures
- Task success/completion rate: proportion completing a defined task.
- Time on task: elapsed time, interpreted with task complexity.
- Error rate and critical error: frequency and severity of mistakes.
- Assistance and abandonment rate: requests for help and tasks left unfinished.
- Learnability, confidence and satisfaction: change with experience, perceived certainty and reported experience.
- SEQ: a post-task ease rating; SUS: a standardized perceived-usability questionnaire; NPS: recommendation likelihood; CES: perceived effort. None alone proves task success.
Product and customer metrics
Conversion is completion of a business-defined outcome; activation is reaching an early value milestone; retention is returning, while churn is leaving. Engagement, feature adoption, funnel drop-off, bounce rate, session duration, click-through rate, scroll depth, rage clicks and dead clicks describe behavior. Time to value, frequency and cohorts add temporal context. A North Star metric represents sustained value; leading indicators move earlier, lagging indicators confirm later.
Experiment terms
- A/B test, control and variant
- Different versions are exposed to groups and compared against predetermined metrics (Figma dictionary).
- Hypothesis and primary/guardrail metric
- The hypothesis predicts an outcome; the primary metric evaluates it, while guardrails watch for harm elsewhere.
- Statistical significance, power, sample size and confidence interval
- These describe uncertainty and sensitivity; valid decisions require suitable traffic, instrumentation and analysis.
- Selection bias and novelty effect
- Systematic group differences or temporary excitement can distort results.
- Instrumentation, event tracking and feature flag
- Instrumentation records events; a feature flag controls exposure.
More clicks do not automatically mean better UX: interpret metrics against user goals, task success, business outcomes and unintended effects.
Quick Recap
Choose the right term for the job
| If you need to… | Consider… |
|---|---|
| Understand behavior in context | Contextual inquiry or field study |
| Learn how users describe a problem | User interviews |
| Test task completion | Usability testing |
| Test a navigation hierarchy | Tree testing |
| Learn how people group content | Card sorting |
| Compare two live or prototype versions | A/B testing or preference testing |
| Explore layout quickly | Sketch or wireframe |
| Test interaction before development | Prototype |
| Map an end-to-end experience | Journey map |
| Connect visible service steps to backstage work | Service blueprint |
| Standardize reusable UI | Design system |
| Prioritize opportunities | Impact–effort, RICE, Kano or MoSCoW |
High-value distinctions
| Often confused | Difference |
|---|---|
| UX vs UI | UX covers the whole experience; UI covers interface presentation and interaction. |
| Usability vs accessibility | Usability addresses effective, efficient, satisfying use in context; accessibility addresses access for diverse abilities. They overlap but neither guarantees the other. |
| Qualitative vs quantitative research | Qualitative explains behavior and meaning; quantitative measures amount or frequency. |
| Finding vs insight vs recommendation | Finding is observed evidence; insight is interpretation; recommendation is a proposed action. |
| Persona vs segment | A segment is a population grouping; a persona is a representative communication model. |
| Wireframe vs mockup vs prototype | Structure, visual appearance and simulated behavior respectively; a prototype can have any fidelity. |
| User flow vs journey map | Interface path versus broader cross-channel experience. |
| Card sorting vs affinity mapping | Card sorting is a participant research method; affinity mapping is team synthesis. |
| Analytics vs research | Analytics shows what happened at scale; research helps explain why and what to change. |
| Accessibility compliance vs accessible UX | Conformance checks requirements; inclusive evaluation also tests whether people can actually complete goals. |
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