Skeuomorphism

The use of design features that are shaped to resemble a familiar object or thing in order to facilitate user interaction.

More terms you might want to know

User Interviews

The act of gathering qualitative data about a person's thoughts and feelings related to a product.

Font Type

Most typefaces are classified into one of five basic classifications: serif, sans serif, script, monospaced, and display.

Right-aligned

Text that flows from right to left and is the default reading direction of a page with its content aligned on the right margin.

Fishbone Diagram

Also known as an Ishikawa diagram, is a widely used technique in project management. The diagram provides a means of evaluating the cause-and-effect relationship between the various activities necessary for completing a project by visualising all activities in the project as bones that interconnect on an anterior and posterior spine, with causality flowing from one to another.

Wireframe

A low-fidelity representation of a user interface design.

Isolation Effect

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.

Flat Design

A design style first introduced by Microsoft Design Language based on minimalism and simplicity. This newer trend focuses on reducing nonsensical designs and makes the content more accessible for all users.

In this way of designing, fewer elements are used to create shapes and less emphasis on gradients and textures. This modern trend moves away from skeuomorphism. Instead, it focuses on a realistic view or illustration with buttons and icons appearing flat with no shadows.

Design Debt

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.

ID

A selector that can be applied to any HTML element. ID should be used when designing for a single instance, such as using the id="main" attribute on an <h1> tag.

Lorem Ipsum

A type of text used as filler or placeholder text. Since the dawn of time, it has been around and is sometimes erroneously referred to as "a nonsense sentence used by printers who have run out of typesetting space".

Problem?

Got a suggestion or found an issue with the glossary?
Let me know!