Microcopy

The small, non-essential text that appears on an interface. It has been set up specifically to be short and concise to draw attention to an essential user experience.

More terms you might want to know

Pilcrow

Also called a paragraph mark, a paragraph sign or section marker, is a typographical character for separating paragraphs. It looks like a "ΒΆ".

Bracket

The word "bracket" is often used to refer to parentheses and is written as either [] or () and used to delimit blocks of text, e.g. a set of instructions. Within brackets, items are arranged from left to right in order of precedence.

Miller's Law

An observation in Psychology that suggests that the number of mental objects the average person can keep track of is seven (plus or minus two).

Information Architecture

The art and science of arranging information so that it's intuitive to find, easy to navigate, presents a cohesive design, meets accessibility guidelines, looks attractive on any device or screen size and ultimately drives behaviour change.

Full-stack Developer

A software developer who designs, develops, maintains and supports the entire end-to-end product. These developers are capable of developing and implementing modern solutions to any industry problem. They typically work with different technologies such as mobile application development, web application development, back-end software development and front-end software development.

Serif

The small decorative stroke at the end of a stroke in a letter, or a typeface.

Alignment

The process of arranging objects in a consistent and even spatial relationship. It can refer to how text is aligned with respect to its margins or how any two or more things are aligned in general.

Composition

An organised arrangement of elements used for a particular purpose, such as to create striking visual effects or to convey information effectively. Good composition is achieved through different methods, such as placing figures or objects in a scene, revising and simplifying lines and shapes that make up a figure, and arranging multiple figures or objects into meaningful relationships.

Palette

A set of colors which can be used to create a particular visual effect. It is usually composed of multiple primary, secondary, and tertiary colours.

Affinity Diagram

A data visualisation tool that can be used to explore and group people's thoughts or reactions to a set of concepts. Affinity diagrams are often used in user research and design thinking as an experimental technique for generating new ideas or solutions.

The emergent patterns in these visual representations can help identify which aspects your audience will respond well to, thus enabling decisions on the information architecture and next steps in the process.

It is important to note that affinity diagrams were initially developed for qualitative research but have since been adapted for quantitative research (though they are not typically used with statistical data).

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