10 Terms Every Designer Needs to Know
By Mehreen Masood
Design Terms
A doctor is well aware of terms like systolic pressure and the aorta. That’s because these terms belong to their line of work and are frequently tossed around like plain English. Design is no different. It brings design terms to the table, ones that you should know as an aspiring designer. To make matters easy for you, here is a compilation of design terminology that every designer needs to know before traveling further along the design career path
1. Product design
Product design is the process designers use to blend user needs with business goals to help brands make consistently successful products. Product designers work to optimize the user experience in the solutions they make for their users and help their brands by making products sustainable for longer term business needs.
2. Service design
Service design is a process where designers create sustainable solutions and optimal experiences for both customers in unique contexts and any service providers involved. Designers break services into sections and adapt fine tuned solutions to suit all users’ needs in context based on actors, location and other factors.
3. User Centered Design
User centered design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process. In UCD, design teams involve users throughout the design process via a variety of research and design techniques, to create highly usable and accessible products for them.
4. Interaction Design
Prototyping is an experimental process where design teams implement ideas into tangible forms from paper to digital. Teams build prototypes of varying degrees of fidelity to capture design concepts and test on users. With prototypes, you can refine and validate your designs so your brand can release the right products.
5. Wireframes
Wireframing is a way to design a website service at the structural level. A wireframe is commonly used to lay out content and functionality on a page which takes into account user needs and user journeys. Wireframes are used early in the development process to establish the basic structure of a page before visual design and content is added.
6. Prototyping
Prototyping is an experimental process where design teams implement ideas into tangible forms from paper to digital. Teams build prototypes of varying degrees of fidelity to capture design concepts and test on users. With prototypes, you can refine and validate your designs so your brand can release the right products. Some handpicked prototyping tools by Foundry can be found here.
7. UI Design
User interface (UI) design is the process designers use to build interfaces in software or computerized devices, focusing on looks or style. Designers aim to create interfaces which users find easy to use and pleasurable. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms e.g., voice controlled interfaces. Foundry has a great list of UI tools for you to get started here.
8. UX Design
User experience (UX) design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product, including aspects of branding, design, usability and function. Foundry has a great list of UX tools for you to get started here.
9. Web Design
Web design refers to the design of websites that are displayed on the internet. It usually refers to the user experience aspects of website development rather than software development. Web design used to be focused on designing websites for desktop browsers; however, since the mid 2010s, design for mobile and tablet browsers has become ever increasingly important.
10. Empathy
Empathy is the ability to fully understand, mirror, then share another person’s expressions, needs, and motivations. In UX, empathy enables us to understand not only our users’ immediate frustrations, but also their hopes, fears, abilities, limitations, reasoning, and goals. It allows us to dig deep into our understanding of the user and create solutions that will not only solve a need, but effectively improve our users’ lives by removing unnecessary pain or friction.
11. User
By "user" , we may mean an individual user, a group of users working together. An appreciation of the way people s sensory systems (sight, hearing, touch) relay information is vital. Also, different users form different conceptions or mental models about their interactions and have different ways of learning and keeping knowledge and. In addition, cultural and national differences play a part.
Meet the Team
Mehreen Masood
Senior Student, LUMS
