A type of understanding that is achieved by taking the perspective of another individual. Different people's perspectives often have different needs and values, so empathy can help you understand those differences.
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.
The primary graphic that appears at the top of a webpage, designed to grab people's attention.
The width and height of a document, after having been cut down to size from a larger sheet.
A way of researching users and understanding their behaviour in the context of the product, helping designers in understanding users' needs and expectations and what motivates them to act.
Designers can use this type of research to understand better their users and what kinds of experiences they are looking for. And this will allow the designers better empathize with their users, making them a part of the learning cycle.
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).
CSS or Cascading Style Sheets are a language for describing the look and formatting of HTML elements in a webpage.
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.
Also known as the divine proportion, is a number, or a ratio, sometimes approximated by phi and widely considered aesthetically pleasing. The golden ratio has been featured in nature and art in many ways, including hexagonal honeycombs, the human body, and mathematics. More frequently, it is used in design and digital art to represent a path (or steps) one can take to achieve a particular look or result. In art, an artist may produce something (a painting or drawing, for example) using the golden ratio as a basis for its composition.
A way of developing new products or services using a process of repeated and regular refinement, in which prototypes are made, evaluated, revised, and re-evaluated until the desired result is achieved. High profile companies have successfully implemented iterative design to create effective and innovative products.
Also known as a suspension point, is a series of dots (…) that is used either as a substitute for some text that has been omitted from a sentence or when the author does not wish to pause in their writing.