Glossary » n
N-person view
a user interface that has explicit representations of each of N users. For instance, telepointers explicitly represent the pointer positions of each of the other participants in a conversation.
Read more »natural language interface
a user interface that allows people to interact using a human language, such as English, as opposed to a computer language, command line interface, or graphical user interface. Natural language interfaces may be designed for understanding either written or spoken…
Read more »natural language search query
a search that allows the user to enter the search query using natural language rather than a special search syntax. For instance: “What shipments have been received in the past 5 days from the west coast with a total value…
Read more »navbar
navigation bar; a group of buttons or hyperlinks that are used to navigate through a website or through a set of screens. Each button is typically labeled with the title of the page it goes to and/or an appropriate icon.…
Read more »navigation
finding things in large or complex information spaces, such as on websites. Some ways to help people navigate include:
showing miniatures or at least links to nearby or related areas providing a home page or top-level category showing navigation bars…
Read more »negative space
the space surrounding foreground elements; the background or whitespace. In graphic design theory, the shape of the negative space needs to be aesthetically pleasing to form a balanced composition. In certain types of layouts, the negative space may be just…
Read more »netiquette
polite ways of behaving on the internet, such as:
avoiding forwarding virus warnings without checking with your system administrator reading the frequently asked questions before posting to a newsgroup including the last-updated date on any web page containing information which…
Read more »newsgroups and mailing lists
similar in spirit to email systems except that they are intended for messages among large groups of people instead of 1-to-1 communication. In practice the main difference between newsgroups and mailing lists is that newsgroups only show messages to a…
Read more »NGOMSL
Natural GOMS Language. NGOMSL was developed as a formally defined version of CMN-GOMS based on cognitive complexity theory (CCT). It has a more structured hierarchy than CMN-GOMS and a well-defined analysis methodology for developing models. In addition to the execution…
Read more »NOIR
nominal-ordinal-interval-ratio. A mnemonic for remembering common data scales used in empirical measurement.
Nominal – a set of items that can be distinguished by name or category. Ordinal – items that can be ordered, such as military rank, or units of…
Read more »nomadic computing
being able to use a computer from anywhere, while traveling, while moving, without restrictions based on location, without necessarily the need to even find a power grid (by using batteries) or a phone wire (by using wireless communications).
Read more »notification slip
a simple dialog box for providing information to a user (NewtonOS term).
Read more »noun-verb paradigm
an approach to specifying commands to the computer, also called the select-then-operate paradigm. First an object or objects (representing some data — the nouns) are selected. Then an operation (or commands — the verb) is selected to perform some action…
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