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

System Font

A type of font that comes pre-installed in an operating system.

Contrast

Contrast in design can be accomplished by placing two opposite colours adjacent to one another, creating a focal point within the design that dominates the composition.

Crop

A portion of an image where the remainder is discarded.

Eye-Tracking

A tool that allows user experience designers, or people who design products and websites with consumers in mind, to track where users look on the screen. Eye-tracking can measure users’ attention and the duration of time they spend on different areas of a website. With this information, websites can create user experience solutions such as buttons with varying colours designed to catch the eye.

Zeigarnik Effect

A psychological phenomenon that states that people tend to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

Saturation

The intensity of a color relative to its own brightness. Colours are said to be saturated when they have a strong hue and high intensity.

Customer Experience

The sum of all experiences an individual has with a company or its delivery channels during their journey. From handling and registering a complaint to ordering new products, these interactions are monitored and analyzed at every touchpoint by frontline employees, developers, designers, and product managers for improvement opportunities.

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.

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.

Quick Keys or Shortcuts

A Shortcut is a computer function that performs a set of commands to save time. A Quick Key is a keyboard shortcut used to trigger an action.

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