Design process
Models, etc.
Worth 1000 words
My hero, Gestalt
Reasoning
100
This is used to show screen layout and functional compartments in a screen. It presents basic elements of a page and how information flows from page to page.
What is a wireframe?
100
This is the mathematical formula that predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.
What is Fitts's Law?
100
This is a simplified picture on a screen that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.
What is an icon?
100
This Law of Perceptual Organization states that elements tend to be perceived as aggregated into groups if they are near each other.
What is proximity?
100
This is the spacial and semantic set of possible relations between objects.
What is mapping?
200
In inverse pyramid writing, the most important information is placed here.
What is on top?
200
One reason visitors abandon websites is because of the number of these necessary to get to a goal (target) page.
What are links (clicks)?
200
This is a grouping of similarly-styled icons, using a consistent style.
What is an icon family?
200
This Law of Perceptual Organization claims that elements tend to be integrated into groups if they have a resemblance to each other.
What is similarity?
200
This is describing one object as being (or equal) to another object.
What is metaphor?
300
Strategy, a major design process element, combines users, usage, and goals -- that is, personas, scenarios, and these.
What are requirements?
300
This model maps human cognition to computer-based elements.
What is Model Human Processor?
300
These are the most enduring form of written communication, whether phonetic or ideographic.
What are images?
300
This Principle of Perceptual Organization claims that oriented units or groups tend to be integrated into perceptual wholes if they are aligned with each other.
What is continuity?
300
The user's understanding of the world (partial, informal, and unstable) can be gathered using a combination of techniques into this.
What is a mental model?
400
Task examples include a list of user tasks, and help to define this, in the design process.
What is scope?
400
This color wheel is used to map color to emotion.
What is Kansei (Nagamachi, 1970)?
400
This example was given to demonstrate how cultural background affects recognition.
What is a mailbox?
400
Elements tend to be grouped together if they are parts of a figure whose endpoints meet is this Gestalt principle.
What is closure?
400
This backward-reasoning method follows the course from event to cause.
What is abduction?
500
This is the horizontal space between letters.
What is kerning?
500
This is used to model the user's reasoning when interacting with a system.
What is Norman's Cycle?
500
The two halves of the ISO 9186 standard for testing graphical symbols include the comprehensibility test and this.
What is comprehension test?
500
The Mac icon shown in class is an approximation of this Law of Perceptual Organization (though it does not follow the Law).
What is symmetry?
500
This is what gives users a hint about how the object's agency -- the users perceive how the object can be used.
What is affordance?