UX Glossary

User experience design is full of technical jargon that can be hard to decipher. This personal project is a growing library of UX terms and their definitions. Please leave a comment to suggest a term you would like to see explained.

A/B testing

A research methodology that consists of randomised experiments with two variants (the “A” and “B”). It can be used during the main testing phase or post launch but requires a large sample size for accurate results.

Accessibility

A set of principles that enables people with disabilities to effectively use a product or service. This includes permanent, temporary and situational disability and ensures a better experience for all users. Common practices include ensuring that the colour contrast for typography meets WCAG 2.1 standards, providing captions for video and audio content etc.

Accordion

A UI component that consists of a vertically stacked list of items. Its functionality is similar to that of tabbed navigation, meaning only one item at a time is expanded.

Adaptive

An adaptive user interface (AUI) is a collection of design solutions created for particular screen sizes and device types. It automatically detects which device is being used and chooses which version of the interface to load accordingly. Its alternative is a responsive interface.

Affordance

A design pattern that gives visual clues as to how a user can interact with a UI element. The most common example in digital interfaces are button states that signify that they “afford” to be clicked to trigger and action.

Breadcrumbs

Also known as a breadcrumb trail, breadcrumbs are a secondary navigation system that shows the user’s location on the site. Just like Hansel and Gretel in the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale used crumbs of bread to find their way home, website users can use breadcrumbs to understand the site structure and trace their steps back to the homepage.

Breakpoint