UX Research
This technique increases research validity by combining multiple methods or data sources.
What is triangulation?
This interaction technology became mainstream with the 2007 iPhone.
What is the touchscreen?
This technique reveals information gradually to reduce cognitive load.
What is progressive disclosure?
This heuristic emphasizes providing undo and redo options.
What is user control and freedom?
This Gestalt principal states that objectives that look alike are perceived as related.
What is the law of similarity?
This type of research focuses on what users say rather than what they do.
What is attitudinal research?
This 1981 workstation introduced the desktop metaphor and influenced modern computing despite poor commercial success.
What is the Xerox Star?
This IA deliverable visually represents the hierarchical structure of pages or screens.
What is a sitemap?
Popularized by Don Norman, this UX cue bridges the gap between what an object can do (an affordance) and what the user actually perceives.
What is a signifier?
This bias occurs when conclusions are drawn only from successful examples.
What is survivorship bias?
This bias leads participants to give answers they believe are more acceptable or favorable, in a way that aligns with social norms.
What is social desirability bias?
Considered one of the most widely lauded early digital pioneers, this Turing Award laureate and computer scientist invented the Dynabook (the direct predecessor of modern laptops) and Smalltalk (a programming language).
Who is Alan Kay?
This card sorting method lets participants use predefined categories while also creating new ones.
What is hybrid card sorting?
This scale, named after a UX pioneer, evaluates usability problems based on frequency, impact, and persistence.
What are Nielsen's severity ratings?
This perceptual phenomenon causes users to fail to notice visual changes or updates on a screen, typically when their attention is focused elsewhere.
What is change blindness?
This threat to research validity appears when participants naturally change over time, such as aging, fatique, or gaining experience using a product.
This Apple software form 1987 let users create stacks of linked cards, foreshadowing the web.
What is HyperCard?
This type of vocabulary ensures consistent naming across a content ecosystem.
What is a controlled vocabulary?
This unintentional action occurs when a user has the correct goal and knows what they want to do, but an error occurs in execution, such as a typo or misclick.
What is a slip?
This cognitive limitation causes people to miss a second stimulus when it's presented shortly after the first.
What is attentional blink?
This inductive research approach focuses on collecting data first instead of hypothesizing, aiming to firmly root insights in actual evidence instead of preconceive ideas.
What is grounded theory?
This HCI framework is used to predict user performance and task efficiency by breaking tasks into goals, operators, methods, and selection rules.
This theory describes how users follow cues that suggest the value and location of information.
What is information scent?
This concept states that thinking doesn't just occur in our brains. In UX, it means cognitive processes are spread across physical environments, external tools, and other people, with users offloading mental tasks onto systems to save brainpower.
What is distributed cognition?
This psychological rule states that people judge experiences based on their most intense moment and their last moment.
What is the peak-end rule?