A-Z of experience design.

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Anytime you learn something new, you need to become familiar with new terms, acronyms, and jargon, and experience design is no exception! To give you a head start, we've compiled a list of terms commonly used in Bo Studio articles and within the experience design space.

Accessibility.

Accessible design involves designing products, devices, services, or environments that are usable by everyone. This involves ensuring that all users and customers can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with your offering regardless of their abilities. Accessible design should consider people with cognitive and learning disabilities, vision, colour blindness, hearing impairment, motor skills, and speech.

Customer Experience (CX).

A customer's overall perception of their interactions with a company or brand. This includes all stages of the customer journey, from initial awareness and discovery to purchase and post-purchase support.

Design Thinking.

An iterative problem-solving approach that involves understanding the user, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions. It involves five stages: empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Read our article on 5 ways you can bring design thinking into your business.

Employee Experience (EX).

All employee interactions with their employer, from recruitment to departure. This includes the physical, cultural, and technological environments in which they work.

Figma.

One of the most widely used design platforms for creating user interfaces and prototypes for websites, apps and digital solutions.

Heuristic Evaluation.

A usability inspection method in which evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with recognised usability principles (the "heuristics"). This is often used to identify usability problems in a user interface design. Learn more about the 10 Usability Heuristics from the Neilson Norman Group.

Information Architecture (IA).

Information architecture involves organising, structuring, and labelling content in an effective and understandable way to help users find information and complete tasks. This could be on a website, app, instructions, in-store, etc.

Miro.

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that enables teams to brainstorm, plan, and collaborate visually in real-time. It supports creating diagrams, mind maps, and wireframes and integrates with other productivity tools to enhance teamwork. Learn more about introducing Miro to your workflow.

Personas.

Fictional characters created based on research to represent the user types that might use a service, product or solution similarly. They help to understand users' needs, experiences, behaviours, motivations and goals. Check out our article on mastering user personas.

Prototype.

A sample or release of a product built to test a concept or process. Prototypes are used to evaluate a new design, and they could be as simple as a paper design or more complex as a digital design created with a tool like Figma.

Quantitative Research.

Quantitative research involves collecting and analysing numerical data to identify patterns, relationships, and trends. It aims to quantify the problem by generating numerical data or data that can be transformed into usable statistics.

Qualitative Research.

Qualitative research involves collecting and analysing descriptive and non-numerical data such as interviews, open-ended survey responses or user observations to understand concepts, opinions, or experiences. It aims to gain a deeper understanding of underlying reasons and motivations.

Service Blueprint.

A visual representation that details the process of service delivery. It includes the people, props, and processes involved in delivering the service and helps to identify potential fail points and areas for improvement.

Service Design.

The process of organising and optimising a company's resources—people, tools, and procedures—to enhance employee experiences and, as a result, improve customer experiences.

Usability Testing.

A technique used to evaluate a product by having real users interact with it. This approach provides direct feedback on how users will engage with your product or service, highlighting what works well and what needs improvement. Take a look at our article on embracing the unexpected with usability testing.

User Experience (UX).

UX primarily focuses on users' interactions with a specific product or service. It encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction, including usability, design, and functionality. Take a look at the vital role UX plays in agriculture.

User Interface (UI).

UI design focuses on the visual elements of a product's interface. It aims to create an appealing, cohesive look that aligns with the brand's identity. UI design involves crafting the individual components users interact with on a screen, such as buttons, icons, spacing, typography, and colour schemes, ensuring a visually appealing and consistent user experience.

User Research.

User research involves gathering insights about the users of a product or service to understand their needs, behaviours, motivations, and pain points. This information helps designers create products that are tailored to the target audience and provide a better user experience. Methods include interviews, surveys, usability testing, and more. Get access to a free template and read about the power of customer research repositories.

User Journey Map.

Diagrams that show the process a person goes through to accomplish a goal or specific task. They help designers understand how to structure solutions for optimal user experience.

Wireframe.

A basic, low-fidelity representation of the layout of a webpage or app. It outlines the structure and components of a page without focusing on design elements like colour or typography.

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Let us know if there are any terms we should add!