Glossary
| 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. |
| Affordance | The first use of the word affordance is generally attributed to James Gibson, a psychologist researching the nature of visual perception. An affordance visually indicates how something is to be used. In design, affordance has been commonly used to indicate the physical interaction required to operate an artifact. The word now also serves to describe pixel-level visual cues found in software that indicate how to operate digital artifacts as well. |
| Anthropometrics | Related to Human Factors, anthropometrics refers to the physical sizes, shapes, and relationships found in the human body. The study of anthropometrics commonly implies an attempt to design for multiple body sizes and shapes, and is frequently used in the context of Universal Design. |
| Anthropomorphism | Anthropomorphism is the act of assigning human qualities to non-human entities. For example, one might claim that a soy sauce container “looks like a duck”; the container likely bears few pragmatic connections to a duck, but has various properties that, when taken as a whole, allude to the animal. |
| Biomimicry | Frequently, Designers turn to nature for inspiration. Biomimicry is the design strategy of noting the beauty and elegance found in nature and consciously applying these principles in the design process. |
| Brand | A brand is a level of recognition that is associated with a particular product, service, system, or company. While the brand may have a physical manifestation (such as a logo or a certain form), brand also refers to the ethereal feelings associated with the given artifact or company. |
| 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. All of the authors of this text attended CMU. |
| Cognitive Psychology | Cognitive Psychology is a large discipline that holds relationships to information processing, attention, learning, memory, language and language processing, and problem solving. Clearly, all of these issues are integral to the design of usable, useful, and desirable Interaction Design solutions. |
| Competitive Analysis | A basic technique in marketing is to assess the positive and negative aspects of products that already exist in the marketplace. This assessment, when coupled with strong usability testing and contextual research, can help to define the functional specifications that assist in product development. |
| 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 towards 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. |
| 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 towards “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 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. |
| 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 towards a certain goal. |
| Goals, Objects, Methods, and Selection Rules (GOMS) | GOMS is a particular way of thinking about the design of software. Developed by Card, Moran, and Newell, a GOMS model attempts to break down the interaction that occurs between a user and a computer into a discrete set of steps. The time allotted to these steps can be measured, and time-on-task can be determined. |
| 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 which compares an existing interface to a set of guidelines, or “best practices,” which 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. |
| Persona | A Persona is a prototypical approximation of a target user of a system, service, or product. The Persona is intended to humanize an otherwise technologically advanced artifact; it forces the development team to consider who will be using their product, and to design for that specific user rather than for some ambiguous target audience. |
| 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. |
| Six Sigma | Six Sigma is a quality management program that originated with Motorola; the program attempts to measure and reduce defects in the mass production of products. |
| Streamlining | Streamlining is the stylistic quality of designing inanimate objects that appear to be quickly moving. This technique was originally used in transportation design to reduce the amount of wind-produced drag affecting a vehicle; now, it is frequently applied to objects as a form of visual decoration. |
| 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 a user goes 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 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. |
| WIMP | WIMP, or Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers, is a particular paradigm for interacting with computer systems. WIMP is used on both Macintosh and Windows computers, and has become the standard method of controlling software. |
| 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 seventies. |
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