Learn to speak the language of UX/UI designers
My profession is filled with technical terms and anglicisms.
When explaining it to my friends or people I meet in a professional context, I realize that few people understand my vocabulary.
I spend my time trying to explain what I do using simple words and simplifying as much as possible!
I make sure not to use terms like wireframe, persona, or UX writing!
That’s why I wanted to create this lexicon and make my profession a bit more accessible.
Affordance: This is the ability of an object or element of your interface to suggest its own use. The example of a button is often used.
A/B Testing: This is a marketing technique. It involves presenting two or more versions of the same page by varying one or more elements. This allows you to identify the most effective version.
Brainstorming: This is a technique for generating ideas. This exercise is very often used in design thinking.
Breadcrumb Navigation: This is a secondary navigation system. It helps you find your way around a website. With a glance, you can see the path to the page you are on and return to a previous page with a single click.
Cognitive Bias: This is an unconscious and systematic thought reflex that is falsely logical. There are about 250 of them. They impact our perception of reality and influence our decision-making. Everyone is affected.
CTA (Call to Action): This is simply a button that encourages the user to take action.
Design System: This is a reference tool and guide for designing and developing a digital tool. It includes all the components needed to design a product and the documentation on how to use each component. This way, each team can use ready-to-use components written in a common language.
Design Thinking: This is a comprehensive, user-centered design method to create innovative services and products.
Gamification: This uses game mechanics in other areas, such as websites, learning situations, work situations, or social networks. Its goal is to increase the acceptability and usage of these applications by leveraging the human predisposition to play.
Glasmorphism: This is a transparency effect that gives the impression of « looking through a glass. » It creates a well-balanced effect between blur and clear transparency.
Hover: This is the effect that occurs when the user hovers over an element on a web page, such as a button.
Icebreaker: This is an activity, especially in team-building management, that helps break the ice, as the name suggests. This technique encourages people to overcome their shyness and be active during the workshop.
Ideation: This is one of the five phases of design thinking. During this phase, ideas are generated, particularly through brainstorming, before choosing one to prototype and test.
Iteration: This is the repetition of a process.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator): These are performance indicators. We look at KPIs that help us determine if we have achieved our goal. For example, in UX, we can look at page load time, the number of clicks to reach information, or the bounce rate.
Landing Page: This is a single-page website designed for a specific purpose, often marketing. This could be a sign-up, a purchase, a form, or the presentation of a mobile app, depending on the objectives.
Lean UX: This is a project management method and a design practice. It relies on successive experimentation and iteration, where teams quickly design a digital product that meets the end users’ expectations.
Moodboard: This is a tool that presents a graphic universe and helps you project yourself into it. It can include colors, typography, textures, or photos.
I use it a lot when designing apps or websites. This way, the client gets a preview of the design and can more easily project themselves.
Mind Map: This is a diagram that represents ideas and the links between them.
Onboarding: This is the process by which a new user of a web or mobile app is guided during their first use. These are the tutorial screens that explain the key features of an app.
Persona: This is a fictional representation of our target user. It is created after a research phase. It helps us understand our target user, know who they are, what they do, their needs, obstacles, and consumption habits. This aids in building the user experience of an app and/or website.
Responsive Design: This allows a website or mobile app to automatically adapt to the device, whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, or desktop. Content blocks rearrange and resize to fit the screen size. This improves the site’s ergonomics for the user.
Site Architecture: This is the representation of the structure and organization of the different pages of a website. It is presented in the form of a graph.
Site Map: This is a representation of a website’s architecture. It is usually found in the footer. It includes the different menu tabs and helps with navigation. Most importantly, it facilitates the indexing of the site and thus improves its SEO!
UI Kit: This is a library of components for designing the interface of a web and/or mobile app.
UI (User Interface): This corresponds to the design of your website and/or mobile app.
User Journey: This is the typical path a user follows to perform an action. Designers create an intuitive and ergonomic path so the user can achieve their goal.
User Testing: This allows you to gather feedback from target users. It helps determine if the site meets their needs and expectations, if it is easy to use, if any functionality is missing, or if there are any inconsistencies.
UX (User Experience): This is a user-centered design method. It includes various phases to identify target users, build user journeys, structure wireframes, and create mockups for a website and/or app.
UX Writing: This is user-centered writing.
Web Ergonomics: A website is considered ergonomic if it is:
- Useful (meets a need of our target user)
- Effective (the user performs an action)
- Efficient (the user quickly and easily performs an action)
- Satisfying (the user is satisfied with their visit)
Wireframe: This is a functional diagram or low-fidelity mockup. It is used during the design of different screens. With wireframes, the focus is on the structure of the screens, the content. Once the structure of the screens is defined, the designer can apply the graphic universe, and the wireframes become mockups.
What are the key steps?
- Desirability: Does it align with the desires and expectations of users/consumers/clients? (human and values sector)
- Feasibility: Is it useful and feasible given the context? (technological aspect)
- Viability: Is it likely to endure considering the economic model? (business domain)