Glossary » a

about box

A dialog box that describes the software product as a whole and the company that created it. The about box typically includes such things as author credits, copyright and trademark information, licensing and shareware information, contact information, version numbers, system…

above-the-fold

For webpages, the area that appears in the first screenful when a person loads a page; the part of a web page that can be seen without scrolling.

This is important real estate since users are more likely to…

access key

A key on the keyboard used as a shortcut to issue menu commands (underlined items in Windows menus).

access privileges

based on a person’s identity or the identity of their group, access privileges define what capabilities or features are available to them when they access a system, what files they can read or write, what programs they can run, what…

accessibility aids

assistive technology; tools to help people with disabilities to use computers more effectively. Some general categories of disabilities, and some common aids include:

…

accountability

the principle that in many multi-user situations, someone must be identifiable in order to take responsibility for actions or for decisions. In these cases, anonymity is not always effective or achievable (though users may be anonymous to other users while…

accumulating attribute group

a set of items or properties that are related and whose effect is cumulative, as with a group of checkboxes. Multiple items can be simultaneously selected, as in a font style menu, where a given letter can be made both…

ACM SIGCAPH

Special Interest Group on Computers and the Physically Handicapped, part of the Association of Computing Machinery. A professional society to research and apply computer technology to help people with disabilities and to educate the public.

acronym expansion

when a user enters a relevant acronym (or other abbreviation), acronym expansion automatically spells out the entire phrase represented. While this feature can help in any text entry with commonly repeated phrases, it is especially useful to those who have…

active badge

a small badge that someone can pin to their clothes which enables a computer system to determine their current location. This can be used in groupware systems to provide basic awareness information about coworkers or friends wearing active badges, though…

active value

a programming language extension that allows functions to be called every time a variable (the active value) is changed.

Along with callbacks and constraint systems, active values belong to a family of techniques that are extremely helpful in programming user…

adapted computer access

the use of accessibility aids for the disabled with the specific goal of enabling them to effectively use computers.

adaptive interfaces

user interfaces that change over time, in response to how they are used, to improve the quality of the interaction. Examples with current technology include speech and handwriting recognition systems that improve the accuracy of their recognition as they become…

adaptive menu

a menu where the most recently-selected item(s) are shown at the top so as to help the user repeat common commands quickly without searching for them in long menus. This technique does not work well with short menus, where it…

adaptive palette

a tool palette or toolbar that allows tools to be selected from a pop-up menu, and then shows the chosen tool as the default tool for that menu (can be selected again just by clicking, without the menu appearing). This…

adornment

an addition to a standard window, such as a ruler or toolbar, that moves with the window or is otherwise associated with it.

aesthetic integrity

a principle that advocates that a design should be visually appealing and should follow common principles of visual design: consistency, a clear identity, a clear visual hierarchy, good alignment, contrast, and proportions, etc.

What constitutes an aesthetically successful design may…

affective interface

a user interface that appeals to the emotional state of users and allows users to express themselves emotionally.

affinity diagram

a simple technique for organizing concepts: designers write down ideas on a set of cards and then organize the cards by grouping them and by placing closely related concepts close to each other (e.g. by shuffling the cards on a…

affordance

a situation where an object’s sensory characteristics intuitively imply its functionality and use.

A button, by being slightly raised above an otherwise flat surface, suggests the idea of pushing it. A lever, by being an appropriate size for grasping, suggests…

agent

while most software is designed to respond directly to user commands, agents are pieces of software designed to act on their own. In the background, while users are working, agents work in parallel on other tasks: searching for relevant or…

AIDA

Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. This classic advertising model says that an advertisement (and by extension, many effective user interfaces) ought to function by getting people’s attention, stimulating their interest, generating a desire, and then finishing with a call to action.…

alert box

a dialog box, generally modal, that appears to alert the user to important information.

3 categories of alert boxes are common:

…

algorithm animation

algorithms are the formal procedures for performing some computational task, such as the procedure to sort a set of numbers. An algorithm animation is a graphical display of process over time (auditory cues are also quite common). Algorithm animations are…

alpha testing

a stage of software development where the software is first tested for bugs by real users. In contrast to beta testing, alpha software is usually assumed to have some significant bugs or unimplemented portions.

ALV architecture

abstraction-link-view architecture. A technique for building software by developing the application as a user interface (the View), the abstract data and semantics (the Abstraction), and a set of relationships between these parts (the Links).

This technique makes it easy to…

ambient media

devices that monitor information states and display the information continuously in the periphery (that is, without the user needing to consciously attend to the display). This allows the user to be aware of the peripheral information without making an explicit…

analytic memo

a brief note used during the coding and construction of data that summarizes a possible interpretation or analysis of the data. Memos help to remember particular analyses and focus future data collection and coding to explore ideas in the memos.…

analytic modeling

the application of user models and interface models to make quantitative predictions of user performance with an interface.

anchor point

(graphics) the point on an object that remains stationary while an object is resized or rotated, for instance, while resizing a window or rotating an image within a drawing program.

Similarly, the point at which a selection begins. For instance,…

anecdotal report

an example stated in detail to demonstrate a point, often in narrative format. A case study is also a detailed consideration of one example, but in contrast to a case study, an anecdote is often one example selected from many…

anonymity

the ability to participate in interactions with other people without being identified. Anonymity can be at various levels, including hiding a person’s name and other characteristics, such as age and gender; from simply making their name accessible but nonobvious, to…

ANSI/INCITS-354 Common Industry Format

a standard format for usability reports, created by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology).

antialiasing

drawing graphics with smooth blends of colors along edges to avoid sudden shifts of color between pixels and give a smoother appearance. When a line is drawn on a computer screen, the common way to draw it in the early…

anticipation

in animation, preparation before an action so that the user has some foreshadowing of the action and can more effectively interpret the action. For instance, when a character runs away, the character will back off slightly in the opposite direction…

Apple Macintosh

the first mass-market computer with a graphical user interface, the Macintosh was introduced in 1984. Its operating system is known as Mac OS. Many of the original concepts behind its user interface were adapted from work done at Xerox on…

Aqua

the visual design style of Mac OS X, which most noticeably uses colored transparent buttons.

articulatory directness

how well the form and behavior of an input device (degrees of freedom, range of motion, discreteness of states) corresponds to the type of input values a user needs to express.

artifact analysis

the study of how people use and conceptualize objects, including how people use computers in their work or play. Artifacts may be examined from any number of perspectives, including where the objects are, how many there are, their functional role,…

artificial intelligence

“AI”; a field of study which examines how to perform high-level thinking on computers. Artificial intelligence research is typically associated with domains such as speech synthesis and recognition, language translation, image recognition, and strategy and planning. AI research is also…

assistant / wizard

a special type of dialog box that takes a user through a step-by-step procedure. Intended to simplify what might otherwise be a more complex procedure if performed, for instance, through direct manipulation.

“Assistant” is the term used in the Mac…

assistive technology

AT or enabling technology; technology used by those with disabilities or other special needs to help them fully participate in their work and everyday life.

associative activation error

an error that occurs when a thought or related idea interferes with the current action when it isn’t appropriate (like a Freudian slip).

associative links

links that go to related information in a freeform association, such as see-also links.

asynchronous groupware

software used to help people to work in groups, but not requiring those people to be working together at the same time. (asynchronous = not coordinating at a single point in time).

Examples include:

…

attention panel

the term used for modal dialog boxes in the NeXT operating system.

attention to detail

a design philosophy that emphasizes that what may appear to be insignificant details can determine whether a design succeeds. A design should be fully unified at every level of granularity.

attitude measure

a quantitative value representing the subjective rating or opinion of users reacting to seeing or using a system, as opposed to performance measures like task completion time or number of errors.

attract-mode opening

when a software application is started, it will often immediately enter a sequence which demos or explains or at least shows a lot of pizzazz of the product, especially in games and multimedia titles. This demo mode or “attract-mode” is…

auditory feedback

sounds in response to user activity, such as a click after a keypress, a whoosh accompanying opening and closing windows, or a klunk when a file is deleted. Useful as redundant reinforcement of activities and for those who are visually…

auditory I/O

sounds used for input and output, which may include speech, musical sounds, naturalistic sounds, and artificial waveforms. Sound as output has the advantage of being accessible to the visually impaired, of being heard even the user needs to be looking…

auditory menus

a list of choices presented verbally, as in a telephone answering system, e.g.: “Press 1 to order brochures. Press 2 to report a maintenance problem. Press 3 for more options.”

augmentative and alternative communication

AAC; technologies that enable those with limited speech to communicate.

augmented reality

systems that annotate physical objects and environments by displaying into the environment rather than on an independent display device. Typical display mechanisms include projectors that project displays onto physical desktops or head-mounted displays that are semitranslucent, allowing overlays to be…

auto-completion

(or auto-fill) a feature of text-entry fields that automatically completes typed entries with the best guess of what the user may intend to enter, such as pathnames, urls, or long words, thus reducing the amount of typing necessary to enter…

auto-exit

or auto-skip; in form fields with a fixed character size, the movement to the next field automatically on completion of the field, used to reduce keystrokes (by avoiding the necessity of tabbing to the next field).

automatic evaluation

a method of measuring the usability of a system automatically; that is, the usability is tested by a software application rather than manually, by a person.

Some types of automatic evaluation do not involve users at all. For instance, some…

automatic scrolling

scrolling that occurs when a user drags outside the visible region, such as when a user is selecting text across multiple pages. Automatic scrolling is any scrolling that occurs without a user having to explicitly scroll using a scrollbar.

automaticity

a level of skilled performance characterized by high speed, minimal errors, inability to verbally describe the thought process, and low interference with other simultaneous activities.

automation

using a computer to perform a task previously done by a human; the principle that if the user would always do the same well-defined task in a given context, then the computer ought to just go ahead and do it.…

autosave

a software feature that saves the file periodically while the user works on a document. Usually a user would need to explicitly save a file and risk forgetting to. The user would lose data if the application fails (e.g. during…

avatar

an online representation or manifestation of a person, generally in visual form. An alternate personality on the internet. An embodiment of a person’s interactions with others in a virtual world.

awareness

the sense of what other people are doing, even when you’re not communicating with them directly.

Awareness is useful for coordinating with others in collaborative tasks where direct communication is not always necessary. Awareness also refers to indirect forms of…

AWT

Abstract Windows Toolkit; a Java library for development of user interfaces, including standard widgets and layout tools.