20 most important design terms for user researchers

Here are the top 20 design terms I think are most important for user researchers to truly understand. Most people struggle with UX terms in general, and that's no surprise. Our terms are a cluster* of confusion! That's why we developed the UX Lexicon (link in the comments below).

I'd like to write a blog article about the importance of these design terms, with simple definitions for each.

What would you add or omit from this list?

  1. Affordance

  2. Color Theory

  3. Gamification

  4. Grid System

  5. Heuristic Evaluation

  6. Human-Centered Design (HCD)

  7. Information Architecture (IA)

  8. Information Design

  9. Interaction Design (IxD)

  10. Microinteractions

  11. Mockup

  12. Prototype

  13. Responsive Design

  14. User-Centered Design (UCD)

  15. User Experience (UX)

  16. User Flow

  17. User Interface (UI)

  18. Usability Testing

  19. Visual Hierarchy

  20. Wireframe

New User Experience (NUX)?

Previous User Experience (PUX)?

Excited to hear your thoughts!



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