UI/UX Design Guide is a glossary guide ebook that describes one topic per page. The guide is intended for quick easy learning about concepts, tactics, and ideas.
All the topics here are chosen because they have come up in real-world UI/UX work, with real-world stakeholders who want to learn about the topic.
If you have suggestions for more topics, then please let me know.
Some of the topics are related, so they are grouped into sections. For example, see the topic about task analysis: in the table of contents, it's listed as the first topic in a section that contains various kinds of task analysis techniques. The section grouping is intended to help readers get up to speed faster. If you have suggestions for new groups, or topics that should be in existing groups, then please let me know.
You can read any topic page, in any order, at any time. Each topic page is intended be clear on its own, without needing cross-references or links.
People should read this guide if they want to learn quickly about user interface (UI) design and user experience (UX) development, and how these concepts are practiced in companies today.
For UI/UX practitioners, this guide is intending to summarize and distill many of your daily concepts and terminology. For you, the value of the guide is in being able to quickly and easily teach stakeholders about general UI/UX topics. For example, if you want to use a particular technique such as user-centered design or task analysis with your stakeholders, then you can quickly and easily direct the stakeholders to this guide and its relevant topic pages, as one aspect of your communications. You can freely excerpt, remix, and share these pages with your coworkers.
For people whose work intersects with UI/UX topics, this guide is intending to bring you up to speed quickly and easily, so you can work better together with your team, your partners, and your other stakeholders. When you know the right terminology, then you're better-able to share information, collaborate, and create the working relationships that you value.
For students and educators, this guide is a snapshot of industry techniques and practices that can help bridge the gap between academic studies, such as computer science studies, and industry jobs, such as computer programming jobs. If students are able to learn what's in this book, they will have a big advantage when they go for job interviews for roles that involve UI/UX.
I am creating this ebook because of years of experience in UI/UX work, with a wide range of clients, from small startups to enormous enterprises.
When I work with companies and teams, then I'm able to use glossaries like this one to help create shared context and clearer communication. This can accelerate working together, and can help teams forge better UI/UX, in my direct experience.
For example, one of my enterprise clients describes this kind of shared context and clear communication in a positive sense as "singing from the same songbook". When a team understands UI/UX terminology, and has a quick easy glossary for definitions and explanations, then it's akin to teammates with the same songbook.
What I discovered is that these kinds of glossaries can be especially helpful for teams with members coming from various cultures, such as from different countries, or different industries, or different ways of working. The topic pages help provide a baseline for better collaboration.
Yes there are more guides that may be of interest to you.
Startup Business Guide: Learn topics that help with entrepreneurship, such as pitch decks, market/customer/product discovery, product-market fit (PMF), minimum viable product (MVP), technology industries and sectors, company roles and responsibilities, sales and marketing, venture capital (VC), and legal agreements.
Project Management Guide: Learn topics that help with leading projects, programs, and portfolios. Example: the project management life cycle (PMLC), outputs versus outcomes (OVO), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), SMART criteria, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), change management, digital transformation, and practices including agile, lean, kanban, and kaizen.
Business Lingo Guide: Learn about topics that show up in many workplaces. Examples: analysis tools like the 2x2 grid, aphorisms the Pareto Principle, idioms like "Get on the front foot", and quotations like "Make mistakes faster", and soft skills like how to collaborate. This guide can be especially helpful for cross-cultural communication.