Have you ever been in a situation where you knew what you wanted your product to look like, but you had no idea how to communicate with the design agency what you meant in designer-speak? It felt like foreign language, didn’t it?

Pretty much every job has its own language or set of terms that those working in that field use on an everyday level, whether it’s being a doctor, a lawyer or a designer. However, this can be quite a challenge for clients who are not involved in the design industry. So, that’s why we’re here – make thing easier.

In case you want to be more prepared as you meet prospective agencies, I’ve compiled some of the most common UX/UI terminologies to help you make sure you are speaking the same language with designers.

First, let’s make clear what’s different between UX and UI:
  • UX (User experience) : UX focuses on the human interaction with the computer or device.
  • UI (User Interface): The user interface is simply how a user interacts with the design on a page.
Okay, it’s time to find out others. Let’s scroll!

A/B testing


At its core, A/B testing is exactly what it sounds like: You take two versions of a product , and present them side by side to a group of users, to determine which one performs better and which one the users likes more.

Breadcrumb

Breadcrumbs are a navigation trail that show users where they have been on your website. Taking a website which has a lot of pages as an example, breadcrumb navigation in this case can greatly enhance the way users find their way around.

Call to Action

It’s a term used for describing specific texts, images, banners or buttons that encourage the reader or viewer of a website to take an expected, predetermined action.

Simple examples include: “Click here” or “Buy now”.

Conversion

This term is used to describe when visitors take whatever action that you want them to make such as: completing a web form, submitting a request for information, subscribing to a newsletter or making an e-commerce purchase.

Flat Design

This is a design philosophy that focuses on clean and minimalist styles. Quite literally, flat means design that has no dimensional depth. Instead of designing elements that look like you can reach out and grab them, flat design goes back to the basics of graphics – bright colors, primitive shapes, icons, etc.

Information Architecture

It refers to the organization of the information, dealing with what pages go where in a website’s structure, what content is contained on each page and how each of these interact with other pages within the site

Landing page

In the purest sense, a landing page is any web page that a visitor can arrive at or “land” on. Oftentimes, a special landing page is designed for a specific business purpose (usually in connection with an advertising or marketing campaign)

Micro-interaction


Let’s have a look at this example:. When you see the red and white box icon on Facebook, you automatically know that you have a new message and immediately click on it to read messages. That’s micro-interactions.

Micro-interactions make devices more human-like in their moments. As a result, the design is more usable and enjoyable.

Prototype

Many people cannot distinguish prototype from wireframe. Look at it this way: Wireframe is just a low detailed presentation of a product, but prototype is a medium or highly detailed representation of the final product.

It’s the sample model of the product that gives the ability to test it and see if the solutions and decisions made about the product are efficient.

Personas

A persona is a profile of your one ideal customer. It is usually a fictional character created based on your user research and interview data.

Responsive Design

Responsive design creates the layout magically adjusts itself to fit any sizes of the screen, whether desktop, mobile or smart phone.
Check it out: 5 Compelling Reasons Why Your Website Should Be Responsive

White Space

White space is also called called negative space. It’s the blank space that surrounds text, images or other parts of the page. One more thing adding, white space is not necessarily white but uses the background color of the site.

Wireframe

In short, wireframe is a skeleton of you app or product. As I mentioned above, it’s a low detailed presentation of a design – no images, no content, no interactive elements. It’s like your website blueprint. Designers will take the main group of content that you want and lay it out exactly as it will be on your product.

Conclusion

That’s a look at some of the more common UX/UI terms you’ll see in the design world. Now you’re practically a designer, right? Just kidding! But guess what? You are totally ready for your meetings with a design agency!

By no means is this the be-all-end-all of web design terminology… so feel free to add your own glossary in the comments as well.