Ascenders

The part of lowercase letters that goes above the baseline when used in running text. As such, ascenders are considered less condensed than those used for numerals and other capital letters. Some examples of ascenders include b, d, h, k, and l. The opposite of an ascender is a descender.

More terms you might want to know

Lean UX

A philosophy that companies should take a user-centred approach to design, making sure they focus on the customer's needs and not on their company's needs. UX designers need to figure out what users want before building something and not after. They must also ask themselves if including "features" will provide any value to the product or service.

Greyscale / Grayscale

Black, white, and all the values of shades in between.

Uppercase

Also known as caps, a type property that specifies that all letters in a body of text are capitalised.

Flat Design

A design style first introduced by Microsoft Design Language based on minimalism and simplicity. This newer trend focuses on reducing nonsensical designs and makes the content more accessible for all users.

In this way of designing, fewer elements are used to create shapes and less emphasis on gradients and textures. This modern trend moves away from skeuomorphism. Instead, it focuses on a realistic view or illustration with buttons and icons appearing flat with no shadows.

Widow

The last line of a paragraph following the rest, or a single line in a paragraph that is out of place with the rest.

Hamburger Menu

A well-known UI element in computer applications. It's an expandable menu of context-specific commands typically launched from the application's main menu.

Isolation Effect

A psychological principle which predicts that when multiple homogeneous stimuli are presented, the stimulus which differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. In other words, people tend to remember items in isolation more than those of a similar nature or objects in clusters. This phenomenon has been applied in designing websites and software with various levels of success.

Onboarding Flow

The process of a new user being brought in to a new product. The design for this process aims to have an effective, efficient, and engaging user experience.

Type Size

The height of a font, measured in points or pixels.

Pantone (PMS)

The Pantone Matching System is a colour-matching system for printing inks. It is a proprietary colour-matching system that was developed so that when an artist picks PMS colour or swatch, they can be confident in knowing what colours would be produced no matter the application.

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