80/20 Rule: 80% of output is produced by 20% of its inputs. (Team 6)
Accessibility is standardizing design for all humans (Team 8)
Affordances: The relationship between individuals and the properties of artifacts that gives the individual insight into how to use the artifact. (Team 3)
Alignment: Create order and organization among elements (Team 7)
Anthropomorphic Form: People are drawn to humananoid forms or patterns as long as they are not too realistic. (Team 5)
Archetypes are conventions we learn from our culture(s) (Team 8)
Attractiveness Bias: People are likely to assume good things about attractive people than unattractive people, often based on facial symmetry and hip-to-waist ratio. (Team 3)
Biophilia Effect: The emotional, cognitive and physical benefits conferred by exposure to natural environments (Team 9)
Cathedral Effect: The influence of ceiling height on people’s focus and behavior by generating feelings of confinement or freedom (Team 2)
Chunking: Dividing information into 3-5 chunks makes it easier to process and memorize. (Team 5)
Classical Conditioning: A psychological approach that uses positive or negative stimuli to create an association or influence behavior. (Team 4)
Closure: Objects grouped together are seen as the whole (Team 7)
Cognitive Dissonance: A state of intellectual/emotional discomfort that results when expectations about something are subverted. (Team 4)
Color: Used to improve the aesthetics of a design, create visual interest, and assign meaning. (Team 4)
Comparison: A method to understand relationships and pattens between two or more elements. (Team 1)
Confirmation: A technique of verification to ensure the intended action is executed. (Team 1)
Consistency: When things behave the same, the systems are more usable and learnable. (Team 6)
Constraint: A restriction that guides a desired behavior or outcome by preventing unnecessary/unwanted actions. (Team 4)
Contour Bias: A tendency to favor contoured objects overs sharp, angled, or pointed objects. (Team 9)
Depth of Processing: How information is retained in long-term memory (Team 7)
Desire Lines: Integrate how users are actually using a product into its design. (Team 6)
Discoverability: The ease with which one can determine possible actions, and how to complete those actions, when a system or object is unfamiliar. (Team 4)
Exposure Effect: Occurs when people begin to like something (neutral or positive) after they’ve been exposed to it many times (Team 5)
Face-ism Ratio: The ratio of face to body in an image that influences the way the person in the image is perceived. (Team 10)
Fibonacci Sequence: A sequence where two previous numbers summed together form the next sequential number, whose ratio is often naturally occurring. (Team 10)
Feedback: Any means through which the result of an action is communicated back to the user who prompted it.(Team 1)
Figure-Ground Relationship: Manipulating the separation of a visual focus and the rest of the visual field to produce either an emphasis through contrast or ambiguous interpretation. (Team 2)
Five Hat Racks: The five methods that can be used to organize information — categorically, through time, through location, alphabetically, and through a continuum. (Team 3)
Flexibility-Usability Tradeoff: As flexibiity increases, usability decreases (Team 7)
Forgiveness: Use good affordances to help users avoid making errors altogether, minimize unintended consequences, and where possible fully recover from errors. (Team 3)
Framing: Emphasizing the positive and/or negative aspects of an idea or situation in order to influence the thoughts and decisions of users. (Team 6)
Gamification: The principle of gamification is the method of designing an experience that would not usually be experienced in a game like way. (Team 8)
Garbage In-Garbage Out: Bad input produces bad output. (Team 1)
Golden Ratio: The ratio between two quantities is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger two quantities. (Team 4)
Gutenberg Diagram: The Gutenberg Diagram is a principle that describes the Western reading orientation where the reader begins from the top left and ends at the bottom right. (Team 6)
Hick’s Law: A principle, described in the form of a formula, stating that the more choices available, the longer it will take the user to make a decision. (Team 3)
Hierarchy: Complex relationships are organized into simple and visual structures. (Team 6)
Highlighting: Differentiating a small, specific area of content to increase scan-ability and call attention to points of emphasis. (Team 6)
Horror Vacui: The busier and more cluttered a design, the cheaper the product feels. (Team 6)
Immersion: A state of mental focus so intense that awareness of the “real” world is lost, generally resulting in a feeling of joy and satisfaction. (Team 8)
Interference Effect: Objects and things that cause a conflict in the thought process and increase cognitive load are known as the “interference effect.” (Team 8)
Inverted Pyramid: A way information can be presented so that critical information can be presented first followed by additional information in descending order of importance. (Team 3)
Iteration: The methodical and intentional reworking of a system or piece of a system to work towards a continuous, improved outcome. (Team 1)
Law of Pragnanz: humans subconsciously interpret complex figures in the simplest forms possible. (Team 3)
Layering: the idea of grouping the related information together in order to manage complexity and strengthen relationships in information. (Team 10)
Mimicry: The imitation of familiar things in order to take advantage of that familiarity and recognizability. (Team 4)
Mnemonic Device: A way to make information easily remembered by connecting something unfamiliar with something familiar through the use of imagery or words. (Team 9)
Nudge: The technique of using gentle reminders to lead a user to a desired action, typically utilizing defaults, feedback, incentives, structure choices, and visible goals to reduce friction and reinforce desired choices. (Team 2)
Ockham’s Razor: Simplicity is preferred over complexity. (Team 10)
Orientation Sensitivity: The ability to parse visual information along the x and y axes more easily, as well as the ability to discern a different element against a background of common orientation. (Team 10)
Performance Load: The amount of effort required to complete a task. (Team 4)
Progressive Disclosure: Showing the user only the most relevant, useful information, as the user needs it. (Team 7)
Propositional Density: The notion that objects and environments can be more interesting and memorable when it contains more deep meanings relative to the number of (visual) elements depicted. (Team 3)
Prototyping: Create mocks to explore the design of a product, test it, and refine it. (Team 1)
Proximity: Using distance between objects to help group or organize information visually. (Team 2)
Recognition-Over-Recall: Using cues to induce familiarity, reduce cognitive effort, and increase precision. (Team 2)
Red Effect: Women are percieved as more attractive and men are regarded as more powerful if they’re wearing red (Team 5)
Scarcity: The idea that an object’s level of desirability increases as its supply decreases (Team 5)
Self-Similarity: Property in which individual pieces are similar in composition to the sum of the pieces. (Team 9)
Signifiers: Communicating appropriate actions and behaviors. (Team 7)
Stickiness: Refers to the virality of ideas entering society’s cultural consciousness based on simplicity, surprise, concreteness, credibility, emotion, & story. (Team 2)
Symmetry: A sense of harmonious and beautiful proportion and balance. (Team 10)
Uncanny Valley: The effect when anthropomorphic forms have features that resemble the human form too much, so much that it becomes unappealing and creepy (Team 5)
Veblen Effect: Pricing something higher raises demand due to exclusivity. (Team 8)
Visibility: The usability of a system is improved when its status and methods of use are clearly visible. (Team 8)
von Restorff Effect: Things that are different stand out and are remembered. (Team 8)
Wabi-Sabi: A traditional Japanese philosophy that embraces imperfect and weathered aspects of an object. (Team 9)
Wayfinding: The process in which people understand, orient, and guide themselves through a physical environment by use of information and visual ques. (Team 9)
Many thanks to Tiffany Tam for coordinating this list.
