Ux Glossary

Browse 60 ux terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

60 Ux Terms

Above the Fold
Describing the part of a web page visible without scrolling, borrowed from newspaper layout language. In web culture, the phrase is used when discussing what...
A/B Testing
A/B Testing is an experimental method where two variants of a product, webpage, or feature are shown to different segments of users simultaneously to determine...
Accessibility
Accessibility (a11y) is the practice of making technology usable by everyone, including people with permanent, temporary, or situational disabilities. The...
Affordance
Affordance is a design concept describing the properties of an object or interface element that suggest how it should be used, without requiring explicit...
AI Interface
The interface through which users or systems interact with an AI capability, including prompts, controls, result displays, feedback mechanisms, and surrounding...
AI Streaming
The delivery of AI output incrementally as it is produced rather than waiting for the full response to complete. AI streaming improves perceived speed and can...
Below the Fold
Describing content that appears only after a user scrolls down the page. In web and media culture the term is used when discussing how much important...
Breadcrumb
A navigational element that shows where a user is within a hierarchy and how to move back through parent pages or sections. In design and debugging culture,...
Card Sorting
A user research technique where participants organize topic labels written on cards into groups that make sense to them, revealing users' mental models and...
Cherry on Top
A small extra improvement or flourish added after the main work is already solid, often to increase delight, polish, or convenience. In tech teams it can...
Choice Architecture
The way choices are presented to people so that defaults, ordering, framing, and interface design influence decisions. In tech and product culture the phrase...
Cognitive Load
The amount of mental effort required to understand, remember, or act on information in a given situation. In tech culture the concept is widely used in...
Cognitive Load AI
The mental effort required from users to work effectively with an AI system, especially when reviewing outputs, correcting errors, or understanding uncertain...
Cookie Banner
A banner or pop-up on a website asking users to accept, reject, or manage cookie and tracking preferences. In web culture cookie banners are associated with...
Cumulative Layout Shift
A Core Web Vital metric that measures visual stability — how much the page layout unexpectedly shifts during loading. Caused by images without dimensions,...
Customer Journey
The end-to-end sequence of stages and interactions a customer goes through from awareness to purchase, onboarding, usage, support, and renewal. Mapping the...
Dark Pattern
A user interface design deliberately crafted to trick users into doing things they don't intend — hidden unsubscribe buttons, pre-checked consent boxes,...
Deep Link
A URL that opens a specific screen within a mobile app rather than the app's home screen. Universal Links (iOS) and App Links (Android) handle the URL at the...
Default Setting
The preselected or standard option a system uses unless someone changes it. In product and policy culture, default settings matter because many people accept...
Feature Discovery
How users become aware of and learn about a feature inside a product. In product culture feature discovery matters because many useful features fail simply...
Friction
Any obstacle, delay, confusion, or extra effort that slows users or buyers from taking the next desired action. In product and growth work, removing friction...
Frictionless
Describing an experience designed to minimize effort, delay, or complexity for the user. The term is often aspirational because real businesses still need...
Front Door
The primary entry point through which users or buyers first encounter and start using a product, such as a homepage, signup flow, integration, or marketplace...
Happy Path
The ideal expected flow through a system where inputs are valid, dependencies behave, and nothing unusual goes wrong. Teams often contrast it with edge cases...
Heuristic Evaluation
A usability inspection method where a small group of evaluators examines an interface against a set of recognized usability principles (heuristics), such as...
Information Architecture
The structural design of shared information environments — the art and science of organizing, labeling, and structuring content on a website or app so users...
Layout Shift
An unexpected movement of visible page elements after they have already been rendered, measured by Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) as a Core Web Vital. Common...
Mental Model AI
The user's or designer's conceptual model of how an AI system works, what it knows, and how it will behave in different situations. Clear mental models are...
Mockup
Mockup is a static, visual representation of a product or interface that demonstrates its appearance, layout, and key design elements without functional...
Modal
A UI overlay dialog that appears on top of the current view and blocks interaction with the content behind it until the user dismisses it or completes the...
Motion Design
The discipline of designing animations and transitions within a user interface — including easing curves, duration, choreography, and spatial relationships —...
Optimistic Update
A UI pattern where the interface immediately reflects a state change before the server confirms it, rolling back if the server request fails. Makes the app...
Pagination
Breaking large result sets into smaller pages returned one at a time. Offset-based (page=3&per_page=20) is simple but slow for deep pages. Cursor-based...
Paper Prototype
A low-fidelity prototype made with sketches or printed screens to test interface ideas, flows, or user reactions before investing in full implementation. It is...
Persona
A fictional but research-based archetype representing a key segment of users, complete with a name, demographics, goals, frustrations, and behavioral patterns...
Persona AI
An AI system or configuration designed to present a particular role, tone, expertise profile, or interaction style. Persona-based design can improve usability,...
Progressive Enhancement
A web development strategy that starts with a baseline of semantic HTML that works everywhere, then layers on CSS for styling and JavaScript for interactivity,...
Progressive Loading
A technique for rendering content incrementally as it becomes available — showing skeleton screens, low-resolution placeholders, or partial data — rather than...
Prototype
Prototype is a preliminary version of a product, system, or feature built to test concepts, validate assumptions, and gather feedback before investing in full...
Prototyping
Building a preliminary, often rough version of a feature, system, or interface to validate ideas, test assumptions, or gather user feedback before committing...
Push Notification
A message sent from a server to a user's device without the user actively requesting it. Delivered via platform services like APNs (Apple), FCM (Google), or...
Rubber Banding
In gaming and real-time applications, the visible effect of network latency compensation — an object appears to jump back to a previous position when the...
Sane Defaults
Default settings chosen to be safe, practical, and useful for the common case so users do not need to understand every option up front. Good sane defaults...
Scroll Snap
A CSS feature (`scroll-snap-type` and `scroll-snap-align`) that forces a scrollable container to settle on specific snap points after the user stops scrolling,...
Shimmer Effect
A loading placeholder animation — popularized by Facebook — that displays gray shapes mirroring the expected content layout with a sweeping gradient highlight...
Skeleton Loading
A UI loading pattern that displays a wireframe-like placeholder mimicking the shape and layout of the content that is still being fetched, giving users an...
Skeleton Screen
A loading state that shows the page's layout structure with placeholder shapes (gray boxes, lines) instead of a spinner or blank page. Creates the perception...
Spinner
A visual loading indicator — either a rotating icon in a GUI or an animated sequence of characters (⠋⠙⠹⠸) in a terminal — shown to the user while an operation...
State Restoration
The process of saving an application's UI state — such as scroll position, navigation stack, and in-progress form data — before the app is suspended or...
Subcommand
A secondary command that follows the main program name in a CLI invocation, selecting a specific operation. For example, in `git commit`, `commit` is a...
Toast
A small, non-blocking notification that appears briefly at the edge of the screen (typically bottom or top-right) to inform the user of an event — such as a...
Usability Testing
Usability Testing is a user experience research method where real users attempt to complete specific tasks with a product while researchers observe their...
User Flow
A visual diagram or sequence that maps out the complete path a user takes through a product to accomplish a specific task — from entry point through each...
User Hostile
Describing a design or behavior that feels needlessly punishing, confusing, or disrespectful to users. In engineering slang, user-hostile choices are often the...
User Interface
The visual and interactive layer through which a human interacts with software, encompassing graphical elements (GUI), command-line prompts (CLI), or other...
User Persona
A representative profile of a target user built from patterns in needs, goals, constraints, and behavior. User personas help teams design and communicate with...
User Story
A short, informal description of a software feature written from the perspective of an end user, typically following the template: 'As a [type of user], I want...
UX Writing
The practice of designing the words that appear in user interfaces, such as labels, prompts, errors, confirmations, and onboarding text, so products are...
Web Vitals
A set of user-centric performance metrics defined by Google — most notably the Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint...
Wireframe
A low-fidelity, skeletal outline of a web page or app screen that maps out structure, layout, and content hierarchy without visual polish — no colors, real...

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