Research

User/Usability Research vs. Market Research: While somewhat related, they are not the same. The questions might be similar but the goals and analysis is different. User/usability research is focused on understanding people’s behaviors, motivations, perceptions and things related to people’s psychology. Market research focuses on products, what’s their value, what’s their demand, possibilities of new products or new markets for products and making improvements to existing products. Usually, market research happens before user research, depending on the company and products.

Basic Emotions: This has changed through time but the basic 6 are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.

UX Laws: There are a few but the main ones that have been proven through extensive research and mathematics are:

Hick’s Law – The more choices a user is given, the longer the decision time.
Fitts’s Law – Locating and moving to a target area is directly related to the distance and size of the target.
Miller’s Law – The approximate number of things a person can hold in their working memory is 7 +/- 2. Things can be grouped to hold more information.

Design Thinking: This is a practice that has many interpretations but its primary use is to ideate and innovate from a human-centered approach, guided by root cause analysis.

Journey Map: A journey map is a visual diagram, showing how roles or personas reach their goals. This maps out the steps they need to take and the shortcuts or pain points they might face getting to their goals.

Persona: This can be either a fictitious or factual profile that represents a role or user. This is to help designers and researchers refer to flows or journey maps.

World Café: An activity used to get groups of people to ideate and share perspectives. In a typical group conversation, not everyone is speaks up either because they’re more introverted or didn’t get a chance to. In the world café activity, a topic is chosen and people write their ideas down on a big sheet of paper and discuss.

Ethnography: The study of people’s customs and cultures. This is important in the field of user experience and research as it usually has a profound effect on people’s behaviors and perceptions.

Storyboarding: A visual way of organizing a sequence of events regarding a particular task that the role or user is performing. In the context of user experience, this differs to journey mapping as it’s more details and less high level.

Design

Golden Ratio: The 1:1.6 mathematical ratio that appears to be universally aesthetically pleasing.

Rule of 3rds: When dividing an image into vertical and horizontal thirds, the intersecting points are where the most interest and tension are and should be the focal points of an image.

Art vs. Design: Art is subjective while design is objective. Both tap into creativity, communicate visually and try to evoke emotions but design does this based on the audience while art does this based on the artist.

Gestalt Principles: Originated from perceptual psychology, gestalt principles outline a group of laws that deal with visual perception:

Law of Proximity—The law of proximity states that when an individual perceives an assortment of objects they perceive objects that are close to each other as forming a group.
Law of Similarity—The law of similarity states that elements within an assortment of objects are perceptually grouped together if they are similar to each other.
Law of Closure—The law of closure states that individuals perceive objects such as shapes, letters, pictures, etc., as being whole when they are not complete.
Law of Symmetry—The law of symmetry states that the mind perceives objects as being symmetrical and forming around a center point.
Law of Common Fate—The law of common fate states that objects are perceived as lines that move along the smoothest path.
Law of Continuity—The law of continuity states that elements of objects tend to be grouped together, and therefore integrated into perceptual wholes if they are aligned within an object.
Law of Good Gestalt—The law of good gestalt explains that elements of objects tend to be perceptually grouped together if they form a pattern that is regular, simple, and orderly.
Law of Past Experience—The law of past experience implies that under some circumstances visual stimuli are categorized according to past experience.

Color Theory: The understanding and study of color and the relationships they have with one another. Areas include additive and subtractive color mixing, primary/secondary/tertiary colors, complementary colors, warm and cool colors and lightness/hue/saturation of colors.

Business

15 Core Experiences: Aggregated by Steve Diller and Nathan Shedroff in the book, Making Meaning, breaks down all experiences into 15 basic core experiences. A business adopt one or more of these core experiences.

Accomplishment – Achieving goals and making something of oneself; a sense of satisfaction that can result from productivity, focus, talent, or status
Beauty – The appreciation of qualities that give pleasure to the senses or spirit
Community – A sense of unity with others around us and a general connection with other human beings
Creation – The sense of having produced something new and original, and in so doing, to have made a lasting contribution
Duty – The willing application of oneself to a responsibility
Enlightenment – Clear understanding through logic or inspiration
Freedom – The sense of living without unwanted constraints
Harmony – The balanced and pleasing relationship of parts to a whole, whether in nature, society, or an individual
Justice – The assurance of equitable and unbiased treatment
Oneness – A sense of unity with everything around us
Redemption – Atonement or deliverance from past failure or decline
Security – The freedom from worry about loss
Truth – A commitment to honesty and integrity
Validation – The recognition of oneself as a valued individual worthy of respect
Wonder – Awe in the presence of a creation beyond one’s understanding

Brand Positioning: Where and how a brand sits within the mind of a person, how it’s differentiated or positioned differently from competitors.

Strategy vs. Tactics: Strategy is the overall plan, tactics are steps to achieve the overall strategy.

SWOT Analysis: An analysis of a business or project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Business Model Canvas: Breaks a business into 9 major areas to see relationships and potential areas of improvement. Areas that are focused on are called epicenters.

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis: An analysis of competition based on 5 factors, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of new entrants and threat of substitutes.

G.E. Multi Factoral Analysis: An analysis used in marketing and product management to determine what product lines to continue investing in and which ones to sell off.

Growth–Share Matrix: A matrix created by Bruce D. Henderson to help businesses analyze their product lines. The four quadrants represent the status of a product line:

Cash cows is where a company has high market share in a slow-growing industry. They are to be “milked” continuously with as little investment as possible, since such investment would be wasted in an industry with low growth.
Dogs, more charitably called pets, are units with low market share in a mature, slow-growing industry. Dogs, it is thought, should be sold off.
Question marks (also known as problem children) are businesses operating with a low market share in a high-growth market. Question marks must be analyzed carefully in order to determine whether they are worth the investment required to grow market share.
Stars are units with a high market share in a fast-growing industry. They are graduated question marks with a market- or niche-leading trajectory. The hope is that stars become next cash cows.

Miscellaneous

Gamification: Used in user experience as a way to motivate or change people’s behaviors by adopting aspects of gaming. Rules, scores, sounds, leveling, awards and competition can all be used to promote certain types of behaviors and motivations.

Captology: Stands for Computers as a Persuasive Technology, coined by B.J. Fogg in 1996 to describe how technology can be used to change human behavior and perception.

Verify vs. Validate: Verification is testing something based on requirements, validation is making sure that the requirements align with users and business cases.

Agile vs. Waterfall: Agile and waterfall are methodologies used in software development. Waterfall was and is still in use but is the more traditional methodology. The advantage that waterfall has over agile is less of a need to regularly communicate and sync with other team members, this is useful when there are team members scattered in various locations or when validation from business or end users don’t happen often or at all until the end. Agile is an iterative methodology, the product is never really “done” and the emphasis is on keeping features and functions limited to the given timeline.

T-Shaped Knowledge: This refers to individuals who have a wide breadth of knowledge but specialize deeply in a particular field.

Minimum Viable Product: The minimum functions and features a product needs to have to meet validation.