Glossary » w

walk-up-and-use

describes systems intended to be used by first-time and one-time users who need to be able to effectively use the system without any training; for example, public information kiosks, museum displays, and ticket-purchasing systems.

warning

a message to a user that lets a user know of potential dangers, such as the possibility of data loss if they continue an operation; a type of alert box that provides such a message. A typical example is the…

waterfall model

a traditional linear model of the software development process that suggests each phase of development could be completed independently and pass its results onto the next phase. Thus, a requirements phase would produce a requirements document that would then be…

waypoints

pages within a website that act as landmarks and navigational hubs.

wearable computers

portable computing devices attached to the body or integrated into the clothing of a user, such as computers in hats, eyeglasses, earrings, belts, pockets, shoes, armbands, and wristbands. Wearable computers allow a persistence of use not possible with desktop computers…

web browser

software that enables people to access, view, and move between documents on the web, especially those prepared in HTML. Example browsers include Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Opera, Mosaic, and lynx. One of the most challenging aspects of website design is…

web-safe color palette

a set of 216 colors which display correctly on 8-bit monitors for both Macintosh and Windows machines. Each platform has an 8-bit color palette of 256 colors, but they only overlap for 216 of those colors. When colors that are…

WebDAV

WebDAV stands for “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning”. It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers.

website

a collection of web documents that appear in a common framework to the user, either through the use of a common addressing scheme (a shared domain name or URL) or through the use of a unifying look and feel.

website design

the process of designing the content, the look and feel, the structure, the navigation, and the implementation of a website.

Website designers are user interface designers who design for a specific domain which is challenging for the wide variety of…

website maintenance

long-term support and growth of a website, which may involve: adding new materials, adding new categories and adjusting the organization and navigation, technical support, configuring to support new browsers and internet standards, updating the look, correcting and updating information, etc.…

website topology

the structure of connections between pages on a website. Typical structures include:

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well

a location for dropping objects, from which those objects can later be retrieved or selected. For instance, a color well can have a “color chip” dropped into it, which then can be dragged out or just selected to color an…

white finger

or dead finger; loss of bloodflow in the hand due to prolonged exposure to vibration (as when operating machinery), which can cause numbness, increase sensitivity to cold, and lead to necrosis (dead tissue).

white space

(graphic design) the use of blank space on a page to help reinforce the structure of the page and avoid cluttered graphical elements. Blank space (not necessarily white), when used conscientiously, can help improve the organization and comprehensibility of a…

widget

any of a variety of interactive objects in a graphical user interface. Widgets are generally meant to metaphorically suggest real-world controls. A widget can be a button, a menu, a scrollbar. It can refer to a more complex object like…

WIMP interface

windows-icons-menus-pointer. A style of graphical user interface that uses these common widgets. A paradigm for human-computer interaction.

window

an area of a computer screen, used for representing an application or document or for any other set of related interface elements. Graphics drawn to a window are clipped to its frame.

“Overlapping windows” are the most common in GUIs.…

window dressing

all of the components of a window around the central document, especially the border, title bar, resize box, resize borders, close box, collapse and zoom boxes, and minimize and maximize buttons.

window manager

the portion of an operating system that gives the programmer an interface for displaying within a window without concern for where on the screen the user has moved it or resized it and without concern for when or how windows…

window title bar

the top region of a window that displays the window’s title and can be dragged to move the window. The title bar contains window controls such as the close box, minimize and maximize controls, zoom box, and collapse box.

wireframe

(website design) a skeletal version of a website or product that represents navigational concepts and page content. The term is used in 2 broad ways:

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within-subjects design

a study designed to make a comparison of 2 or more designs and that compares them by having each user try each design, measuring their performance for each design. The most common problem is that people learn over time, and…

wizard of oz prototype

a prototype that only works by having someone behind-the-scenes who is pulling the levers and flipping the switches. The wizard of oz technique in user testing has a user interacting with an interface without knowing that the responses are being…

wordwrap

the feature that moves entire words to the next line when the end of a line is reached (during typing, or whenever text is displayed), rather than chopping off the line or splitting words in half.

workflow systems

software allowing documents to be routed through organizations through a relatively-fixed process.

A simple example of a workflow application is an expense report in an organization: an employee enters an expense report and submits it. A copy is archived then…

working set

a small number of resources that a user switches between frequently, such as files users frequently edit or drawing tools they rapidly alternate between. The working set is identified so that the interface can support moving quickly between items in…

wow factor

the degree to which the first impression of something makes a person say Wow! A surprise, originality, coolness factor.

WWW

world-wide web; the collection of interlinked multimedia documents on the internet organized to enable easy navigation from one document to another, usually presented in HTML format.

WYSIWIS

(WHI-ZEE-WIZ) what you see is what I see. A term used for groupware interfaces that guarantee that users see the same thing at all times. This design principle says that it is easiest for users to coordinate when they are…

WYSIWITYS

(WHI-ZEE-WHI-TEEZ) what you see is what I think you see. This design principle is a relaxation of WYSIWIS that indicates that it is useful to have customized interfaces for each user, but that it is still important for each user…

WYSIWYG

(WHI-ZEE-WIG) what you see is what you get. A term used for direct-manipulation user interfaces.

The idea is that any operation that you visually perform is what is actually happening to the underlying data structure, and whatever you edit on…

WYSIWYN

What You See is What You Need; a variation of WYSIWYG, advocating that the information that a user needs is actually immediately visually perceptual.