Glossary
| Abductive Thinking | A form of logic based on intuition and hypotheses, sometimes described as the “logic from best explanation.” This form of logic is the form employed by designers, who frequently have most but not all of the information required to make an informed and generative design decision. |
| Aesthetics | Usually used to describe visual beauty, aesthetics can be considered the analysis, study, or consideration of elements of pleasure or happiness as related to a stimulus. Aesthetics also has connections to ancient philosophy, as thinkers like Aristotle and Plato continually considered the role aesthetics plays on the soul. |
| Affinity Diagram | A diagram that is built from the bottom up to find patterns and groups in a large quantity of data. |
| Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) | Carnegie Mellon plays an important role in the evolution of Interaction Design. The university, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, offers graduate-level programming in Interaction Design, Linguistics, Cognitive Psychology, and Human--Computer Interaction. The school has played host to a number of figureheads who were instrumental in the development of Interaction Design as a discipline; these include John Rheinfrank, Richard Buchanan, Shelley Evenson, Jodi Forlizzi, Craig Vogel, Herb Simon, and Allen Newell. |
| Codesign | A philosophical approach to design that integrates end users into all aspects of the design process to ensure that their value structure is represented in the design solution. |
| Concept Map | A concept map is a diagram of the relationships between entities in a system. The visual style of the map may take many forms, but the content usually consists of nouns (entities) and verbs (relationships), with a literal connection between the two. Bubble diagrams and Web diagrams are forms of concept maps. |
| Contextual Inquiry | A traditional interview may ask a participant a set list of questions and rely on the participant to remember or recall the answers to these questions. Conversely, contextual inquiry is a process that involves watching participants as they go about a task or an activity. As memories can be inaccurate, the contextual inquiry process provides a strong understanding of what really happens as compared to what a user may think happens. |
| Convergent Thinking | Convergent thinking is the highly analytical process of narrowing down many choices toward the most logical and correct answer. This is an evaluative process, where ideas are judged and rejected or accepted based on some set criteria. |
| Critical Incident | A critical incident is an event that affects the usability of a system. Critical incidents are discovered using various forms of user testing, such as Think Aloud Protocol. A critical incident indicates that something of note—and usually unexpected—has occurred. This frequently illustrates a usability flaw. |
| Customer Journey Map | A diagram that visualizes the various touchpoints a user will have with the larger context of a product, service, or system. |
| Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom (DIKW) | The Data—Information—Knowledge—Wisdom chain is generally referred to in fields of Information Management or Library Sciences and illustrates the path toward enlightenment that occurs through experience. DIKW is commonly referenced by Information Architects, as they attempt to wade through large quantities of data and extract relevant information to provide to a user. |
| Dialogue | The idea of dialogue in Interaction Design indicates that humans have a relationship with designed artifacts that extends beyond the functional. Dialogue implies a sense of longevity and a sense of experience and serves to elevate the user to a peer level of both the artifact and of the designer. |
| Divergent Thinking | Divergent Thinking is a critical part of the process of Design; it requires the rapid generation of a large and diverse quantity of ideas. During the beginning of the Design process, rapid visualization sketching is often used to generate many different solutions to the design problem. These solutions are then narrowed down through a more constrained process of convergent thinking. |
| Ecosystem Diagram | A visual representation of a system or brand, commonly used to describe a set of user engagement points. |
| Ethnography | While ethnography has formally referred to a form of anthropology that examines culture, it has been integrated into the Design process as a method of understanding people and problems associated with work. Ethnographers study cultures, and so too do designers. |
| Flow | Flow is the state of focus described by artists and designers and documented by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that is necessary to produce creative work. Flow requires a total immersion and awareness of the present activity, with no regard for deadlines, no interruptions, and little awareness of oneself. |
| Focus Group | A focus group is a marketing technique used to gather opinions from a small set of the population about a product, service, or system. A facilitator leads the group of people through various scenarios and questions and directs questioning toward a certain goal. |
| Graphical User Interface (GUI) | A graphical user interface describes the digital set of controls, and the methods of interacting with these controls, that the user is confronted with while using a piece of software. Traditional GUI controls include windows, icons, scrollbars, and other widget-style controls. |
| Heuristic Evaluation | A usability inspection method that compares an existing interface to a set of guidelines, or best practices, that help to identify usability problems. This is considered a discount usability technique because it requires no users—only trained facilitators—and thus takes considerably less time and resources to conduct. |
| Human--Computer Interaction (HCI) | The field of HCI exists to understand the nature of human factors in computing. It examines issues that relate to the ways people interact with computer systems. |
| Human Factors | Human factors is the field that examines the physical and cognitive performance of humans as they interact with human-made creations. The phrase is typically used synonymously with ergonomics, as to imply a sense of reduced physical discomfort or fatigue. |
| Industrial Design | Industrial Design typically refers to the field responsible for the creation of mass-produced objects; however, this definition does not serve to contain the work done in the creation of system design or service design. Some choose to think of Industrial Designers as problem solvers rather than form givers. |
| Information Architecture | Information Architecture is a relatively new discipline with roots in the fields of computer science and library science, but to call it a science itself would be much too pragmatic and would not fully acknowledge the emotional user-centeredness of this discipline. To be an architect of information, one must embrace the end goal of clarity, comprehension, and creation. Ultimately, an information architect exists to make meaning out of data. |
| Interaction Design | Interaction Design is the creation of a dialogue between a person and a product, service, or system. |
| Interactive Design | Interactive Design implies a focus on the technological layer that exists between a user and a piece of software or a website. |
| Interpretation | To interpret is to judge critically and create meaning. Interpretation is a critical aspect of the Design process; after conducting research and gathering a great deal of data, it is imperative to interpret the data to truly understand the significance of it. |
| Offshore Product Development | Offshoring is the process of outsourcing various services to another country, typically with a large financial incentive. While offshore manufacturing was perceived as a threat to the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, it has become a standard method of mass producing goods. |
| Process Flow Diagram | Also known as data flow diagrams or decision tree diagrams, a process flow diagram is traditionally used in the fields of electrical engineering and in computer science to illustrate the logical flow of data through a system. These diagrams assist in understanding the discrete rules, and their relationships to one another, that make up an activity. This analysis tool can then be shared with engineers in order to articulate and demonstrate the rationale behind design decisions. |
| Product Requirement Document (PRD) | A PRD is generally created by marketing to define the feature set and use cases of a product, service, or system. |
| Scenario | A scenario is a story used to illustrate a person using a product in pursuit of a goal. Scenarios, like personas, are used to better understand how a new artifact will fit into the daily life of a user and to understand the nuances of user behavior. |
| Semantics | Semantics is literally the study of meaning; when applied to products, it relates to the implicit meaning found in the physical and formal characteristics of an object. Product semantics are related to language, in that the form of an object and the name of that object can be inexplicably connected in memory. |
| Semiotics | Semiotics is, literally, the study of signs. A sign need not be a printed object but instead can include the theoretical understanding of the process of signification. By signifying something (or signing as a verb), humans can communicate meaning, and a sign itself is thought to carry some form of meaning. |
| Social Entrepreneurship | A form of business that focuses on multiple bottom lines---both revenue production for the organization itself and social currency development for the world that involves improving some component of the human condition. |
| Think Aloud Protocol | Developed by Herb Simon and Allen Newell, Think Aloud Protocol is the most common form of usability evaluation performed on software interfaces. A Think Aloud user study involves having participants use a system and vocalize what they are doing as they are doing it; the transcribed verbalization becomes the protocol, which is then analyzed to determine where the software was problematic. |
| Universal Design | Universal Design is a movement that encourages the design of products so that everyone can use them, without regard for physical or age differences. Universal Design is also known as inclusive design, in that it attempts to include all humans. |
| Universal Modeling Language (UML) | UML is a modeling language developed to visualize the process of use cases—the set of steps that users go through as they attempt to achieve a goal. It is a method of moving from the narrative ambiguity of scenarios to a more formal wireframe prototype. |
| Usability | Usability frequently implies a level of efficiency in designed systems. A usability analysis commonly tracks the number of errors or time on task in an effort to objectify the efficiency the system affords; however, qualitative usability testing can provide insight into the more subjective aspects of product use, such as desirability or pleasure. |
| Use Case | A use case is a specific and designated path through an interface, usually to accomplish a goal. A test case is used by software developers to ensure bug-free code; a use case is used by usability professionals to track the various ways of using a system. |
| Visual Interface Design | Visual Interface Design commonly refers to the aesthetic elements that make a particular interface feel a certain way. This includes the fonts, the colors, and the other subjective elements of the GUI. |
| Wicked Problems | An ill-defined form of social problem that has multiple stakeholders with competing goals that affects the most fundamental qualities of human life and that is characterized by its tangled connections to other wicked problems. |
| Xerox PARC | PARC, or the Palo Alto Research Center, was the research division of the Xerox Corporation. Many of the computer tools and standards that exist today were developed at PARC in the early 70s. |
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