UX Terms

Question 1

When you test two different versions of online content with users to see which one they prefer.

Answer 1

A/B Testing

Question 2

An incremental approach to software development. Instead of building the entire product at once, Agile breaks it down into smaller bits of user functionality and assigns them to two week cycles we call “iterations.”

Answer 2

Agile Development

Question 3

A mobile operating system developed by Google

Answer 3

Android

Question 4

How computers and web applications share information with each other.

Answer 4

API (Application Programming Interface)

Question 5

When a QA uses an automation tool to do tests on a software application.

Answer 5

Automation Testing

Question 6

The embodiment of a person or idea. Refers to a character that represents an online user. Mainly used in gaming and online communities.

Answer 6

Avatar

Question 7

Engine room of a website.

Answer 7

Back End

Question 8

A buildup of work that is due to be completed.

Answer 8

Backlog

Question 9

Beacons are small Bluetooth radio transmitters. They communicate with the user’s smartphone and are used to share information.

Answer 9

Beacon

Question 10

A design process that enables people with disabilities to interact with a product. This means designing for people who are color blind, blind, deaf, and people with cognitive disabilities, among others.

Answer 10

Accessibility

Question 11

A collection of layouts designed specifically for different devices. it detects the device type being used and displays the layout designed for it. This does not mean it is a different website—it means you’ll see a specific version of the website which has been optimized for mobile, desktop or tablet.

Answer 11

Adaptive Interface

Question 12

Clues that tell us what an element can do to us

Answer 12

Affordance

Question 13

Measures human behavior on a site. They help us better understand and interpret patterns of behavior on the products we use.

Answer 13

Analytics

Question 14

Material Design

Answer 14

Design language developed by Google in 2014

Question 15

Navigation systems help users understand their location in a website or app. They’ll show a sequence of steps users have take to get where they are.

Answer 15

Breadcrumb

Question 16

Mistakes in software that can cause a product to glitch, behave in unintended ways, or even crash.

Answer 16

Bug

Question 17

Allows for parts of software to be developed in parallel. This is so that code they are writing and code that is completed can be kept separate.

Answer 17

Branch (development)

Question 18

A memory lets you store and save data temporarily for later use. You’ll often find usernames, recent searches and websites in your _____ memory.

Answer 18

Cache

Question 19

In a _____ ______ exercise, we’ll give users topics, cards, and a Sharpie pen. We will then ask users to write down the topics on the cards and organize them in a way that makes sense to them. This exercises helps us understand and design the information architecture of a site.

Answer 19

card sorting

Question 20

Let you ask the system questions via a chat interface. You can find them everywhere these days. They are a popular customer service tool and resemble the experience of texting a friend.

Answer 20

Chatbot

Question 21

When you land on a site, you click your way through it to complete a task.

Answer 21

Clickstream

Question 22

Throughout the development process, developers create _____ whenever they have reached a good point in their work. They are similar to drafts

Answer 22

Commits

Question 23

A product or site is the percentage of users who complete a desired action.

Answer 23

Conversion Rate

Question 24

A software systems help manage business processes, like sales, data, and customer interactions.

Answer 24

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

Question 25

A style sheet programming language used to define how a website should be styled.

Answer 25

CSS

Question 26

Customer Experience: refers to all the different interactions a user has with a brand through its different channels and products, and how a user feels about them.

Answer 26

CX

Question 27

It’s a computer application that creates and manages digital content.

Answer 27

CMS (Content Management System)

Question 28

Numbers can tell us an awful lot about our users and their needs, and can help us define how to best meet them. ____ _____ focuses on making sense of these numbers or data and uncovering valuable insights that help us make better product decisions.

Answer 28

Data Science

Question 29

A design system made up of elements and features that will need to be cleaned up later on. The efforts made to quickly set them in place eventually generate more work down the line.

Answer 29

Design Debt

Question 30

A 5-stage method for creative problem solving. The 5 stages are: ``` Empathize: Understand the challenge Define: Define the problem Ideate: Brainstorm potential solutions Prototype: Build your solutions Test: Test your solutions ```

Answer 30

Design Thinking

Question 31

Qualitative research method is used to collect information about users over time. Participants are asked to write about their everyday lives in a journal over a defined period of time.

Answer 31

Diary Study

Question 32

focuses on fast technology delivery through the use of agile development. They focus on people and culture. It seeks to improve collaboration between operations and development teams.

Answer 32

Dev Ops

Question 33

Collaborative tools that help us visualize user behavior, attitudes and feelings. They are split into 4 equal quadrants containing information about what the user is saying, thinking, doing and feeling. At the center, we place our user persona. We fill each quadrant with information we’ve collected through user research.

Answer 33

Empathy Map

Question 34

Who are we designing the product for? This person is our

Answer 34

End User

Question 35

Lets us measure user eye activity with specialized tools, showing us where users look and in what order.

Answer 35

Eye Tracking

Question 36

Creates the visual front end of an app or website. They create features that are viewable by the user.

Answer 36

Front End development

Question 37

A minimalist user interface design style. It is characterized by simple, two-dimensional elements and vibrant colors.

Answer 37

Flat Design

Question 38

Illustrate the steps a user can take to complete a task on a product.

Answer 38

Flowchart

Question 39

The process of integrating game-design elements and principles into products in an effort to drive user engagement.

Answer 39

Gamification

Question 40

A web-based service used by developers. It is a way of using a central hub to work on collaborative coding projects.

Answer 40

Github

Question 41

A never ending loop of images or video clips.

Answer 41

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)

Question 42

An organizational tools that help us arrange content on a screen. They are made up of vertical and horizontal lines that create what we call columns and gutters.

Answer 42

Grid System

Question 43

The physical parts parts of a product or computer are called

Answer 43

Hardware

Question 44

A quick solution that solves a problem, but not particularly well, or in a particularly good way.

Answer 44

Hack

Question 45

This is when the digital team take a day or more out, to come up with innovative ideas. The aim of this is to encourage creativity to get people to think outside the box.

Answer 45

Hack Day/ Hackathon

Question 46

Set of markup codes inserted in a file for display on the web

Answer 46

Hypertext Markup Language. HTML

Question 47

A graphical representation of the areas on your product that receive the most user attention.

Answer 47

Heat Map

Question 48

A field of study concerned with the design and use of computer technology. It studies how we interact with interfaces and computers today.

Answer 48

HCI

Question 49

mobile apps combine both native and web technologies. They’ll often use a combination of technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and will live inside a native container that lets it access device capabilities.

Answer 49

Hybrid App

Question 50

The practice of arranging content in a product in an understandable manner. It involves organizing the content we interact with, as well as the different structures, such as the website’s navigation, we need in order to interact with it.

Answer 50

Information Architecture

Question 51

The practice of designing interactive digital products and considering the way in which users will interact with them.

Answer 51

Interaction Design

Question 52

A unique address that identifies a device on the internet or local network.

Answer 52

IP Address

Question 53

A mobile operating system designed and developed by Apple.

Answer 53

iOS

Question 54

The practice of breaking down development into small parts.

Answer 54

Iteration

Question 55

The 3rd cornerstone, defines how both the HTML and CSS should behave. Think of it as the language that helps us make elements on a page interactive.

Answer 55

JavaScript

Question 56

Measurable values that help us understand and track how well a product is doing. As a UX designer, you’ll often work with this like task success rate, user error rate, and time on task.

Answer 56

KPI (Key Performance Indicators)

Question 57

Any page a user lands on. Often tied to ads and search results and are designed to meet specific conversion goals. Not only are they the page a user lands on, but they are also a crucial part of marketing campaigns.

Answer 57

Landing Page

Question 58

Based on Agile, is a collaborative user-centric approach that prioritizes “learning loops” (building, learning, and measuring through iterations) over design documentation.

Answer 58

Lean UX

Question 59

Represents what the user believes to be true about a product’s functionality.

Answer 59

Mental Model

Question 60

The small bits of text you see on apps or websites that help you navigate it. Think labels on buttons, error messages, placeholder text in input fields and text on tooltips. Small bits of text, big impact on your product’s UX.

Answer 60

Microcopy

Question 61

Refers to accessing the internet from smartphones.

Answer 61

Mobile Web

Question 62

A static representations of a product. You can’t click through them or interact with them. They are essentially a picture of what the product will look like.

Answer 62

Mockup

Question 63

A device that enables a computer to transfer data over telephone or cable lines.

Answer 63

Modem

Question 64

Refers to the essential set of features we can launch a product with to get the ball rolling. It’s a way of developing a new product (e.g. a website) with acceptable features to suit the users. More features are only developed after considering feedback from the initial users.

Answer 64

MVP, or Minimum Viable Product

Question 65

It’s a way of transferring data wirelessly to a mobile device from another device. Tap and pay services like Apple pay work this way.

Answer 65

NFC means Near Field Communication

Question 66

Software that is available to anyone.

Answer 66

Open source software

Question 67

When two programmers work together. One writes code, while the other reviews it. The two programmers often switch roles.

Answer 67

Pair programming

Question 68

A representation of our target user. They aren’t necessarily a real individual but are constructed using real information and data based on real users.

Answer 68

Persona

Question 69

Developers tell others about code changes they’ve pushed to GitHub.

Answer 69

Pull Requests

Question 70

These little guys are the smallest controllable units on our screens. Tiny squares used to construct the images we see on our device displays.

Answer 70

Pixel

Question 71

A preliminary model of our product used for testing. You’ll often build different fidelity prototypes during the product development process.

Answer 71

Prototype

Question 72

The process of cleaning up and tidying code without affecting functionality, essentially increasing its quality. It isn’t done all at once but rather in small, incremental steps.

Answer 72

Refactoring

Question 73

Allows your website to adapt to the device your users are viewing it on.

Answer 73

Responsive

Question 74

When the team looks back on an iteration to improve the process for the next iteration.

Answer 74

Retrospective/Retro

Question 75

A way to deliver applications over the internet. Instead of installing and maintaining software, you access it via the internet. This frees you from complex software and hardware management.

Answer 75

SAAS

Question 76

An iterative agile software development framework for managing product development.

Answer 76

Scrum

Question 77

A software package that contains the tools required to develop products for a specific platform or operating system. They help expedite the development process by providing “parts” developers can use instead of having to write the code for them from scratch.

Answer 77

SDK

Question 78

The process of increasing a website’s visibility in free, or organic, search results. It often involves writing useful content on a website around words and phrases users use in searches related to the brand’s product or service.

Answer 78

SEO

Question 79

A set period of time which set work has to be completed.

Answer 79

Sprint

Question 80

A visual representation of a website’s pages and hierarchy.

Answer 80

Site map

Question 81

A visual representation of a user’s experience with a product or problem space. They are a film technique we’ve adopted and look a lot like comic strips.

Answer 81

Storyboard

Question 82

A development work that cannot be estimated until a development team runs a trial. The result of this is an estimate of the time it will take to do the work.

Answer 82

Spike

Question 83

Scalable two-dimensional graphics that can be manipulated and animated with code.

Answer 83

SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics

Question 84

The process of listing tasks or the steps a user takes to complete any given goal from the user’s perspective. It is typically done during early stages of product development to help us identify and communicate problems in the user experience.

Answer 84

Task Analysis

Question 85

Products accrue tthis whenever an easy but messy development solution is favored over a better yet more time consuming alternative. Eventually, the messy solution will need to be cleaned up, generating work.

Answer 85

Technical Debt

Question 86

Where parts of an application are tested to find out if they are good to use.

Answer 86

Unit Testing

Question 87

Elements are all the different parts found on an interface we need to trigger specific actions or get around an app or website. Think the buttons, input fields, toggles, and radio buttons.

Answer 87

UI Elements

Question 88

Patterns are reusable solutions to common usability problems in products or on the web expressed as a collection of UI elements.

Answer 88

UI Pattern

Question 89

Research method that lets us evaluate how easy a product is to use by testing it on a group of representative users.

Answer 89

Usability Testing

Question 90

An iterative design framework in which users and their needs are always kept at the center of every decision.

Answer 90

User-centered design or UCD

Question 91

Refers to a user’s emotions, attitude, and perceptions about a product, system, or service. In other words, it is how you feel while interacting with an app or website.

Answer 91

UX (User Experience)

Question 92

Describes the intended series of steps a user needs to take to complete a goal on a product. They often include a name, steps and a description of what happens during each step.

Answer 92

User Flow

Question 93

A set of visual components a user needs to interact with a product, made up of UI elements (see below).

Answer 93

User Interface

Question 94

Narrative documents that help us visualize the process a user goes through in order to accomplish a goal. They document the stages the user goes through, the tasks executed during each stage, user emotions, and product opportunities.

Answer 94

User Journey Maps

Question 95

Mini stories that describe the needs and/or context that brings a user to your product. They tell us who the user is, why the user is interested in your product, and what his or her goals are.

Answer 95

User Scenario

Question 96

In software _______ development, each phase must be completed before the next phase can begin. So, all the design would have to be completed before developers could begin any work.

Answer 96

Waterfall Development

Question 97

Common in tech job interviews, ________ interviews are designed to assess a candidate’s communication and problem solving skills. In it, candidates are given a problem and whiteboard to develop the solution on.

Answer 97

Whiteboard

Question 98

The blueprint of a screen. They are a low-fidelity representation of a website’s layout and content.

Answer 98

Wireframe

Question 99

Allows you to create a secure connection to another network over the Internet.

Answer 99

VPN, Virtual Private Network