UX glossary

Explore key UX terms with clear definitions, practical context, and direct connections to the guides where each concept comes to life.

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A/B testing

Learn what A/B testing is in UX design and how comparing two interface versions with real users provides evidence for design decisions that qualitative research alone cannot deliver.

Accordion

Learn what accordions are in UX design, when collapsing content into expandable sections genuinely helps users, and when it just makes information harder to find.

Active state

Learn what active states are in UX design and how the brief visual change during a button press or tap provides the tactile-like confirmation that an interaction has been registered.

Aesthetic-usability effect

Learn what the aesthetic-usability effect is and how users perceive attractive interfaces as more usable, which can mask real usability problems in testing and user feedback.

Affinity mapping

Learn what affinity mapping is in UX research and how grouping qualitative observations into thematic clusters helps teams find patterns in messy research data.

Affordance

Learn what affordance means in UX design, explore its types, and understand how visual cues help users interact with interfaces without instruction.

AI affordance

Learn what AI affordance means in UX design and how to communicate the capabilities and limitations of AI features so users engage with them confidently.

AI transparency

Learn what AI transparency is in UX design and how helping users understand what AI systems are doing and why builds trust and prevents over-reliance or dangerous misplaced confidence.

Alt text

Learn what alt text is in UX design and how writing meaningful text alternatives for images ensures users who cannot see them still receive the information or context they convey.

Anchoring effect

Learn what the anchoring effect is and how the first number or option users see in a pricing table, comparison, or negotiation shapes all their subsequent judgments.

Anchor links

Learn what anchor links are in UX design and how in-page navigation links help users jump to specific sections in long documents without losing their context.

ARIA

Learn what ARIA is in web accessibility, when to use ARIA attributes to communicate roles and states to assistive technologies, and why the first rule of ARIA is to avoid using it.

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