Diary Study

A technique for understanding people’s experience of a product or service. Participants are asked to keep daily records of their experience using the product, and these records are taken into consideration when designing the design.

More terms you might want to know

Uppercase

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

AI File

An Adobe Illustrator vector format file. Files with the extension .ai are often used for artwork and illustrations as users can resize them without distortion. It is composed of several layers with objects and text on each layer. Users can import Illustrator files into many other programs like InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop etc. If you design or print your t-shirts, you can create your designs in Illustrator and apply them to your t-shirt using a heat press.

Lettermark

A symbol that is used in the design industry to give a more personal touch. Lettermarks can be an individual's name or initials that are cleverly designed and incorporated into a company's logo.

Soft Return

Also called a line break, when you want to keep the text in one paragraph and not follow it with an airy space.

Bowl

In typography, a bowl is a curved shape used to control the area of white space.

PPI

PPI stands for Point Per Inch. PPI is the number of dots per inch in a printer's resolution or the number of pixels per inch in a monitor's screen resolution. The more PPI, the higher your image quality will be as it becomes sharper and clearer. The lower your PPI, the lower your image quality will be, and the more likely you'll see individual pixels in an image.

Affordance

Affordances describe a relationship between the environment and an animate object, classified as either positive or negative.

Items, such as a car that leads to movement, have a positive affordance. Things like stairs that lead upwards have a negative affordance because they will not allow for any other form of movement other than up or down if used accordingly.

Pull Quote

A brief snippet taken from the text of an article.

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.

Prototype

Usually the first functional form of a new product, created to test a concept or prove out some aspects of design.

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