A glossary of terms in interaction design.

Brainstorming – a group or individual creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its member(s).

Design document – a written description of a software product, that a software designer writes in order to give a software development team an overall guidance of the architecture of the software project.

Emotional design – how emotions have a crucial role in the human ability to understand the world, and how they learn new things. For example: aesthetically pleasing objects appear to the user to be more effective, by virtue of their sensual appeal. This is due to the affinity the user feels for an object that appeals to them, due to the formation of an emotional connection [with the object].

Experience design – the practice of designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions.

Flowchart – a type of diagram that represents an algorithm or process, showing the steps as boxes of various kinds, and their order by connecting these with arrows.

Human-computer interaction (HCI) – the study, planning, and design of the interaction between people (users) and computers.

Information architecture – the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.

Interaction design – often abbreviated IxD, is “about shaping digital things for people’s use”, alternately defined as “the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services.” Like many other design fields interaction design also has an interest in form but its main focus is on behavior.

Interaction model – function of input required by the learner while responding to the computer, the analysis of those responses by the computer, and the nature of the action by the computer.

Interface – a point of interaction between components.

Paper prototyping – a widely used method in the user-centered design process, a process that helps developers to create software that meets the user’s expectations and needs – in this case, especially for designing and testing user interfaces. It is throwaway prototyping and involves creating rough, even hand-sketched, drawings of an interface to use as prototypes, or models, of a design.

Persona – fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted Demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way.

Prototype – an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.

Qualitative research – to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior.

Quantitative research – the systematic empirical investigation of social phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques.

Requirement – a singular documented physical and functional need that a particular product or service must be or perform.

Social responsibility – an entity, be it an organization or individual, has an obligation to act to benefit society at large.

Test case – a set of conditions or variables under which a tester will determine whether an application or software system is working correctly or not.

Usability – the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object.

User scenario – a narrative, which most commonly describes foreseeable interactions of user roles… and the technical system.

Wireframes – also known as a page schematic or screen blueprint, is a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website.