A set of symbols or "characters" including letters, numbers and various other symbols.
A type of typographical contrast used to convey emphasis. Italics were initially developed for the printing press and are now widely used in print, web design, public signs and labelling systems.
Colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel to warm colours. Typically bluish in tone, such as blue or green.
A pixel, or a picture element, is the smallest addressable element in a display device.
The process of developing a product or design system that can be altered to fit different device and interaction contexts.
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.
A brief snippet taken from the text of an article.
The design of the interaction between users and products. Interaction design is focused on creating products that enable the user to achieve their objective(s) in the best way possible.
A prediction model used in human-computer interaction. It states that the time required to move to a target area rapidly increases as the distance to the target increases. The law was proposed by Paul Fitts, an American psychologist, in 1954 as a mathematical model of movement with limited cognitive capacity.
Fitts hypothesized that one would quickly select its first apparent target when reaching for an object before considering alternatives — a phenomenon called "target fixation." This tendency would increase progressively with increased distance between the subject and object until it eventually became exponential (i.e., too far away).
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.
A term that means the smallest amount of work that can be done to move a project forward.