Top UI/UX Design Terminologies That Every Designer Must Know

Last Updated : 17 Jun, 2025

UI/UX is a trending domain nowadays, many people want to be UI or UX, or Product Designers. However, most people are not aware of some very important terminologies that are often used in the field or by the designers themselves. Also, in the last 5 years, the demand for UI/UX designers has increased, thus creating an increase in job openings. Every year, there are more than thousands of job postings for UI/UX designers. There are more than 50 UI/UX terms designers use in their daily lives. Here we have mentioned some of the most common and top UI/UX terms designers come across.

To have a good fundamental understanding of the field, knowing those terminologies is very important. In this article, we’ll explore those terminologies with examples and their general usages. But before that, let's discuss the most basic terminologies you might already be aware of.

What is UI Design?

The user interface is the visual or graphic elements a user interacts with in a platform. UI design or User Interface design is the process of creating the visual interfaces for a software application. There are lots of businesses where a designer will play both parts, but there are also lots of designers who specialize in UI design. UI designers help users to navigate an interface by using visual cues.

What is UX Design?

User experience refers to the overall experience of a person using a product, platform or service. Especially in terms of how simplistic and pleasing it is to use. UX design or User Experience design is the process of creating the experiences or the interactions that a user has with a product. The basic principle of UX design is to keep the needs of the user prior and improve the interaction of the user and the product keeping this in mind.

Top UI/UX Design Terminologies That Every Designer Must Know

1. Customer Experience (CX)

Stands for Customer Experience. But aren’t UX and CX the same thing? NO, absolutely NO. The simplest difference is that “CX is a bigger umbrella under which UX falls”. CX or customer experience is the term we use to describe a customer’s complete journey. Including all the touchpoints encountered by a user within a brand through its various goods and channels. CX can tell how the consumer feels about each interaction made with multiple channels of a Brand. Trust in brands is significantly impacted by customer experience, therefore. It can also be referred to as service design.

For example, Geeksforgeeks is a “Brand”, and XYZ is a user that interacts with different touchpoints or interactions such as “Blogs”, “Video tutorials”, “Coding platforms” and “Job Portals”.

2. Adaptiveness

This refers to functionality where the design is adaptive as per specific screens. It is a group of screen layouts, created especially for various devices that make up an “adaptable interface”. So basically such designs recognize the type of device being used and then as per the layout show the interface created for it. Users get to see a particular version of the website or mobile app that has been tailored for that mobile, desktop, or tablet. However, the only drawback of adaptive design is that code changes made for one design will only reflect that design. That means development efforts will be much higher if multiple screens are targeted.

3. Responsiveness

This refers to functionality where the design adapts to the screen type it is being displayed. Whereas adaptiveness is when we design a tailored interface as per particular screens. Responsiveness is not to be confused with adaptiveness, both are very different in nature. Responsive designs are the single designs/interfaces that fit in the screen by adjusting, rearranging, shrinking, or stretching. There is only one design that exists, therefore developers don’t have to code interfaces for each different screen size or dimension. Responsiveness is more popular but in design, everything depends on the context you are solving for.

4. Site Map

A sitemap is a diagram that represents a website/app's overall structure. Sitemap and IA(Information Architecture) are generally mixed together but they are different concepts. A sitemap gives the Information Architecture of the digital product. It basically shows the interconnectivity and content hierarchy of different segments. A sitemap will only include map pages.

For example: Let’s take any e-commerce app, so the sitemap here would be the Home page, Men's section, and Women's section.

5. Information Architecture(IA)

Generally confused with Sitemap but is very different. IA is a combination of organizing content, labeling, and navigation schemes. A good IA always helps users navigate smoothly back and forth without getting lost. It is an organized set of labels given on the website.

For example: Under the primary navigation label “Doctors” the secondary navigation a user would be expecting are “Find a doctor”, and “Request an appointment”.

6. MVP

It’s the “Minimum Viable Product”, capturing some core set of characteristics that it must have within a product in order to be launched. This can be the most effective set of functionalities that you’re targeting. MVP is created for the means of testing. Once the core functionalities are built and tested then going ahead we’ll build more components or elements upon the base variant. MVP helps in frequent releases and captures useful customer inputs.

7. A/B Testing

The process of contrasting 2 or more design variants, in order to know the best variant out of them. Generally done to check which variant is more close to the user's mental model. Variants in a/b testing can be exactly the same design with a difference of a few elements(called traditional a/b testing) or can be completed in 2 different designs. (called multivariate a/b testing).

For example: When the team is not sure about the CTA style and color is not engaging, try to put both in front of users as a/b test variants. Whichever variant gets more votes or conversion rate, can be picked up as a winner.

8. Mockup

This term is very popular among product managers and designers. Mockups are the static representation of visual design and screen interfaces. These can be only viewed but can’t be interacted with or tested. Mockups are the final screen renders that show how the end product would look like.

9. Mental Model

A mental model represents what a user perceives to be true about a product's functioning. The mental model helps users to better utilize a product if their mental model matches the functionality of a product which is called the “Conceptual model” to a greater extent. It is seen in many kinds of research that about 80% of usability issues arise due to a clash between the mental model and the conceptual model. So it is very important for a designer to match and align the conceptual model of an app or website with the user's mental model.

10. Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Called the Key Performance Indicators, these are quantifiable metrics that enable us to track & comprehend a product's performance i.e. is it fulfilling the user’s need, etc? Designers & product managers decide these and often work to track success rates, conversion rates, and other ROIs.

11. ROI

ROI(Return on Investment) is the financial statistics that are used to assess the size of overall investments and improvements a design would make. ROI measures help to determine achievable design goals from product and business aspects. ROI measurements include points such as conversion rate, decrease in the drop-off, increase in usage, etc.

For example, the conversion rate for an e-commerce app/website is measured by # the count of visitors, buying the product. Completing the whole funnel from start to end without dropping off in the middle.

12. Heat Maps

A heat map is a graphical representation of different areas where “Most” of the people gazed at or viewed at. Heap maps are generated using coulometers (the eye tracking tool). The color varies from Green(cool) to Red(warm), indicating the frequency of views and also giving track of how users are scanning the app/website. The red spots in the heat map represent the areas that visitors engage with the most on the website. Whereas green spots show the least engagement of visitors. Heat maps when used to test early designs can help find out the most and least engaging elements on the page.

13. Grid Systems

It’s the design tool used by visual designers that helps to properly organize different elements on the screens. Consists of rows, columns, gutters, and margins.
For example: When designing websites we generally use 12 columns grids and for mobile, it is 4 columns.

14. Affordance

The visual cues tell users what an element can afford to do. While designing user interfaces, affordance helps to properly indicate what a user can and can not do on a screen.

For example, A door’s handle that communicates a push or pull to the user is called affordance.

15. Accessibility

The process of designing a product such that any individual with disabilities or impairments whether it is permanent or temporary can engage with it is known as accessibility. Interfaces that follow accessibility are called accessible designs. Creating designs while having accessibility in mind is good for all, among others, and accessible to those who have color, cognitive, or motor impairments.

For example: Designing with grayscale colors for complex data charts or graphs is good for all and also for people with color blindness impairment.

16. Card Sorting

It is an effective tool in providing user vocabulary of labels. The design team gives users different cards and labels for a card-sorting exercise. As per the user’s understanding, they arrange those themes on the cards in a way that makes sense. This exercise aids in our comprehension and site information architecture design.

17. Empathy Map

It is a collaboration that enables users to see user behavior, attitudes, and feelings. While creating personas, is it good to create empathy maps to empathize with the user a little more? Empathy maps are divided into four equal quadrants, each of which shows data about the user's actions, thoughts, motivations, and feelings. Placed along with the user persona in the center. Later while data gathering, each quadrant is filled.

18. Task Analysis

A set of techniques for decomposing actions a user takes to accomplish any given objective from their point of view. It is usually carried out in the early phases of product development, during research to assist in identifying and communicating user experience issues. Helps to evaluate and refine the task flow. So basically as a designer, you have to list down all the tasks and goals associated with that task and then provide steps involved to accomplish that task.

19. User Scenarios

These are short stories about a specific user with some specific task to be accomplished. Generally used in the early phases of product development, as they provide us with information on the user's identity, motivations for using your product, and goals. Scenarios are critical for both developers and designers while doing usability testing. Scenarios revolve around the user(in terms of what the user wants, and what they’ll be able to do) but NOT around design or screens.

20. Persona

Persona generally refers to how a user profile looks to get an idea of the audience's interest. When a designer designs UI on the basis of a specific audience demand instead of a generic one. It generally represents a typical user of an app or website. The simple steps to be followed are: the designer has to collect information from users and on the basis of behavioral patterns, create a persona.

21. Gamification

Gamification means taking specific "game-like" elements or elements that you would most likely see in a game and putting them into your product or service that is not the game in order to drive user engagement. Please don't gamification as turning everything into a game.

The science behind gamification is called motivation science. so typically how it works is including things like progress circles and leaderboards into your product or platform so that when people see these things they're a bit more excited and a bit more willing to use your platform and complete that one task that brings them closer to complete that goal.

22. Usability Test

A usability test basically evaluates a product/service (in this case UI/UX of the product or service) by testing it with some users and implementing the feedback provided by them. In the Usability test, participants have to complete some tasks created by professionals and these professionals watch the users and take notes.

Usability tests can be remote or in-person. Through usability tests, we give users access to the product or platform so that they can play around with it. We can give them a specific task to do and then while they are figuring it out, you can observe and see what problems that they are facing. This helps us understand things that we might have missed during designing the product. A usability test is mostly done before you launch a new product or feature so that you can possibly make up for any mistakes before it actually gets into the market.

23. UI patterns

UI patterns are reusable solutions that is these are the solutions that have already been created and can be used by us to improve the interface of our product. A good example of UI patterns is the Navbar, a Navbar helps the user to navigate the different sections of the website. It solves a problem in terms of being able to guide or show the user where different levels of content are and it is a solution that has already been created so all we have to do as a designer is to reapply it in user experience.

24. User-Centered Design

User-centered design is a series of processes or steps taken by the designer team in order to put the user at the center of the development of the product. With user-centered design, every decision is made keeping the user and the goals of the user in mind.

User-centered design usually includes 4 steps:

Identifying the needs of the users.
Specifying the exact number of requirements.
Designing a solution.
Evaluating the solution keeping in mind the needs that we initially identified.

User-centered design is a great way to ensure that whatever we are designing actually fits in with the goal of the average user and that way we are not going to spend resources designing things that the users actually don't need.

25. Heuristics

Heuristics is the study and use of heuristic techniques to help humans discover and learn things for themselves. In UX design, we do heuristic evaluations as rules of thumb for a better user experience.

There are 10 main usability heuristics, These were created by Jakob Nielsen. Here is the list of 10 Heuristic evaluations:

Visibility of system status;
Match between the system and the real world;
User control and freedom;
Consistency and standards;
Error prevention;
Recognition rather than recall;
Flexibility and efficiency of use;
Aesthetic and minimalist design;
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors;
Help and documentation.

Conclusion

So these are a few important terminologies that a beginner in the field of UI/UX should know. Knowing these terms helps make a good field foundation and also while working as a designer. Next time you hear people talking and they mention KPI, and ROI you don’t feel left out in the conversation as a junior designer. Use these most common UI/UX terms and get hands-on experience with them.

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Article Tags :

Top UI/UX Design Terminologies That Every Designer Must Know

What is UI Design?

What is UX Design?

Top UI/UX Design Terminologies That Every Designer Must Know

1. Customer Experience (CX)

2. Adaptiveness

3. Responsiveness

4. Site Map

5. Information Architecture(IA)

6. MVP

7. A/B Testing

8. Mockup

9. Mental Model

10. Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

11. ROI

12. Heat Maps

13. Grid Systems

14. Affordance

15. Accessibility

16. Card Sorting

17. Empathy Map

18. Task Analysis

19. User Scenarios

20. Persona

21. Gamification

22. Usability Test

23. UI patterns

24. User-Centered Design

25. Heuristics

Conclusion

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