UX Design Glossary

As there are numerous UX design terms and always something new to learn, we have selected only 25 of the most essential ones. If you are interested in pursuing a UX design career, you can request a free syllabus and explore our courses.

A/B Testing

Also known as split testing, A/B testing is the process of comparing two versions of a design, which can be pair of raw or a pair of final versions depending on the need. The chosen versions are shown to a group of target users, and then they are either asked to choose which is better or observed which version they navigated better.

Breadcrumbs

While breadcrumbs are supplementary navigation aids for users when interacting with an interface, they enable users to look back at the steps they took during the interaction. Essentially, this retrace function enables UX designers to also look at the steps and identify which to improve.

Clickstream

In connection to breadcrumbs, clickstream presents the number of clicks, which are steps, to accomplish a task when navigating a design. Tracking clicks is essential to measure user activities and behaviors.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of users who completed a defined task is the conversion rate. It is a statistical metric that determines how effective design is in persuading users to do desired actions. An example is the number of users who downloaded a certain app on a specific platform.

Customer Experience

Often mistaken to be the same with UX, Customer Experience (CX) is described as the totality of interactions and accumulation of experiences by a user over a certain period of time. CX is essentially the established relationship of a user to a certain company, encompassing its products and services.

End-User

End users are the target consumers of UX designers. They are the reason a UX design is created because it is aimed at their benefit.

Experience Architecture

Experience architecture (EA) is a model that outlines the steps users will take to complete an intended action. EA collates three UX elements in the process: information architecture, interaction design, and experience design. These are discussed separately in this UX glossary.

Experience Design

Experience Design (XD) is much simpler compared to UX. XD is focused on figuring out how a UX design will function when used on different platforms or interfaces.

Eye Tracking

Eye-tracking is a research method that measures and tracks users’ eye activities to enable clients to identify the specific parts of a design the users are interacting with. It determines which visual elements suit best for a specific UX.

Grid System

This system is a tool that includes horizontal (gutters) and vertical (columns) lines helping a designer arrange contents in an interface. This tool is meant for interfaces to be designed in an organized and consistent manner.

Heat Map

Unlike eye-tracking, heat map traces areas in a product that users are most attentive to and interact with the most. Heat maps usually use different colors to identify and rank areas from the most to the least used. This helps UX designers identify if there is unnecessary traffic in certain areas and enables them to layout better overall design.

Interaction Design

Interaction Design (IxD) is the second element of EA focused on designing products that create interactions. IxD is then used to predict how end users will interact with a product, showing a pattern of actions and behaviors.

Iterative Design

This is not design per se but a design methodology that considers a cycle of processes in creating a UX design. The cycle includes prototyping, planning, implementing, testing (including A/B and usability tests), getting feedback from end-users, and repeating these steps until updates are incorporated and calibrated to better suit target users.

Mindmap

Unlike heat maps that deal with actual working designs, mind maps are a collation of ideas and elements in a UX design for future versions. As part of iterative design, mind maps show a visual prediction of how a design will look like given projected updates and revisions.

Minimum Variable Product

A Minimum Variable Product (MVP) is the raw version of a product. It is used by clients to engage with their target end-users by letting them test the MVP first before the final version is released to the market.

Mockup

Mockups are actual but static versions of a product. They are developmental versions of the final product but necessarily the final version because all revisions and updates will be incorporated first.

Pain Points

These are the challenges that end users encounter when interacting with a product or design. When pain points are identified, UX designers will know user-friendly design solutions to propose for better UX.

Persona

Persona represents a perceived end-user or audience. In persona, a user profile is made up and developed for UX designers to have a projection on what the users need and want, deductively limiting the target users from the general public to more specific target users.

Prototype

Different from mockups being visual versions of a product, prototypes are high-fidelity views of the full version of a design or product, including its performance. They outline the proposed final product before its release for user testing.

User Interface elements

There are visual elements in a user interface (UI), a term often mistaken to be the same with UX. UI and UX are different; thus, these elements are limited to virtual spaces in designs or products. These tangible elements include texts, images, sounds, buttons, slider arrows, and others that enable users to navigate their interactions.

Usability Testing

Usability testing is the practice of testing how easy a design is to use with a group of representative users. It usually involves observing users as they attempt to complete tasks and can be done for different types of designs. It is often conducted repeatedly, from early development until a product’s release.

User Engagement

User engagement is an avenue of users to react to their engagements in a product or design placed on a specific page or platform. It also provides users direct access to give feedback, which is essential to identify problems and solutions.

User Journey

Also referred to as UX flow, the user journey includes the series of steps created by UX designers to present to users how to interact with a product design. The user journey accomplishes two actions: establish a flow of steps and trace those steps.

User Research

Research conducted to know target end-users is essential. This term encompasses all techniques and methodologies used to identify insight into users’ profile and behavior, challenges encountered, and statistical elements to use for improvement

Wireframe

Wireframes show a blueprint of a product or design without the elements shown in mock-ups and prototypes, laying out the framework to show functionality and contents. They are created in the first phase of UX design before mock-ups and prototypes are made.

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