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 decoration technique used primarily on paper, metal, and some plastics in which ink or another printing medium is pressed into the material's surface to create a three-dimensional effect.
A UX design technique in which you divide your users into groups, show them cards with different names for unrelated objects and ask them to categorise them.
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.
A generic term for adding colour to an image. A tint can be applied by darkening a colour to create different shades or lightening the saturation, creating a washed-out look.
A theory in psychology that discusses the general idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's based on a human need to search for stability and meaning, which leads to organic movements towards wholeness. Gestalt Theory assumes there are inherent flaws in how we perceive forms and patterns, and it holds that this innate tendency transforms into an active process of looking for order in reality.
The process of applying a thin layer of foil to paper coated with adhesive on one side.
A pixel, or a picture element, is the smallest addressable element in a display device.
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.
The act of gathering qualitative data about a person's thoughts and feelings related to a product.
A concept used in systems design to describe the negative consequences of making seemingly innocuous design changes. Shorthand for a product's delayed but inevitable need to be reworked due to earlier, seemingly trivial decisions not having been fully thought through in the original release.
Designers incur this "debt" by making quick and easy choices that save time in the present but cause more complex problems later on down the road when it becomes necessary to change or add something.