Baseline

An imaginary line on which most letters "sit". As such, it equals the height of an em square. The expected result of a baseline is to reference the height with which text is aligned. The alignment ranges from ascenders, which are the upper strokes in b, d, and h, down to descenders like j or y.

More terms you might want to know

Responsive Design

The process of developing a product or design system that can be altered to fit different device and interaction contexts.

PDF File

An abbreviation for Portable Document Format. The PDF format was originally developed to share documents between different operating systems in the late 1980s. Any text document, image or page layout can be saved as a PDF file that includes all of the font information needed to display it without losing quality.

Placeholder Text

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

Design Sprint

A way to create and test designs. Designers use design sprints as a time-intensive method of quickly testing ideas and then pivoting into designing for user needs. A designer may then take the prototype they created on the first day of the design sprint and fix any usability issues with it, which is a quick way to get feedback on their work before continuing development.

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).

Link

A prominent design feature of web applications. Links can be used to navigate websites, provide shortcuts to content, or change views within a web application. These links allow for ease of access and save time when users need to find information or use services from other domain names.

Resolution

The measure of a device or computer system's ability to capture fine detail. A higher number of pixels can provide more details and finer images on the screen.

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.

Texture

The surface quality of an element.

Persona

A sample of the target audience for which a product or service is intended.

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