Serif

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

More terms you might want to know

Sketching

A basic design tool that helps designers create and communicate ideas.

Hard Return

When you need to break a line of text and start on a new line in a text box.

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).

Tone

The feeling or mood created by a design.

Usability Testing

A process in which subjects use a product or service under test conditions and report their experience.

Hick's Law

A well-known cognitive psychologist's principle that says that the time it takes to make a decision varies logarithmically according to the number of choices. As more options are presented, more decision time is required due to the mental work of comparing and contrasting each potential option.

Balance

The principle of both sides of an object having a sense of symmetry. It ensures that the weight and visual mass are distributed evenly on both sides of a surface. Balance is more important than symmetry because people don't often notice when something is asymmetrical, but they will always see if something is unbalanced.

Placeholder Text

Text that is used to fill in a gap in a document.

Point Size

A unit for defining the size of a font. It's not a distance; this unit's measurement is only relative to the typeface's design.

Close-Crop

Framing consisting of cutting off or obscuring most of the surrounding of a subject, removing distractions from the background and emphasising the subject.

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