A group of rules, guidelines, and/or standards designers use when producing artwork or branded projects ensuring that they have the desired appearance and are compliant with usage guidelines.
A small picture or design that represents an idea, function, or some other type of visual concept. For example, in computer graphics and web development, an icon is a pictorial representation of a program or file type.
A graphic element that has a definite length and direction. Examples of vectors would be straight lines, edges, or curves.
A diagram that reflects the processes and steps a user would take when completing a certain task or goal. The User Journey Map also highlights the key activities, touchpoints, stakeholders, and benefits of an experience. In order to develop an effective strategy that helps guide users through the process of reaching their goals and objectives, the User Journey Map provides a comprehensive view of how your customers will navigate towards achieving their goals.
A phenomenon in psychology in which recalling items in a list imposes an order on the list, with the first and last items remembered best. That is, if given a list of words to remember like "dog apple tree", people will tend to recall "dog" as being at the beginning of the sentence and "tree" as being at the end of it.
The use of light or dark objects positioned over colourful backgrounds. Blurred backdrops allow bright colours to come through and convey a sense of frosted glass.
The distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Nearby descenders (such as j) and ascenders (such as q) usually extend slightly below or above this height.
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).
A technique for understanding people’s experience of a product or service. Participants are asked to keep daily records of their experience using the product, and these records are taken into consideration when designing the design.
A low-fidelity representation of a user interface design.
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.