UX design terms for beginners, in plain words: the working vocabulary of a design team, each with an example. Start here if you are new to design, or send it to a colleague who keeps asking what a wireframe is.
UX design (user experience design) is the work of shaping how a product feels to use: whether people can find what they need, understand what to do and reach their goal without friction. It covers research, structure, flows and testing, and it starts long before anything is drawn.
Example. When a food delivery app lets you filter by price, reorder last week's meal in two taps and see an honest delivery time, that is UX design at work.
Also called: user experience design, UXD
UI design (user interface design) is the visual and interactive layer of a product: layout, type, colour, spacing, icons and the states of every control. A UI designer decides how each element looks and behaves so the interface is clear at a glance.
Example. A music app keeps one large play button in the same spot on every screen, so your thumb finds it without looking. That is a UI decision.
UX decides what the screens need to do; UI decides how they look and respond while doing it. Most product roles today expect both.
Also called: user interface design
UX vs UI: UX is how the product works for the person using it; UI is how it looks and responds on screen. UX answers "can people reach their goal?", UI answers "is every screen clear and pleasant to use?". In most product teams one designer covers both, with a different weight by role.
Example. Moving the checkout from five steps to two is a UX change. Making the Pay button larger and higher in contrast is a UI change.
Also called: difference between UX and UI, UI vs UX
Product design is UX and UI work tied to business results: a product designer owns a problem from research to shipped screens and measures whether the change worked. The role adds product thinking, metrics and close work with product managers and engineers.
Example. A product designer at a fintech app sees that people abandon sign-up at the ID check, tests a clearer flow, ships it and tracks the completion rate.
Also called: product designer
User-centered design is an approach where every decision starts from the needs, context and behaviour of real users, and is checked with them again before it ships. Research comes first, testing comes often, and opinions in the room carry less weight than evidence.
Example. Before redesigning a hospital booking form, the team watches five patients book an appointment and builds the new flow around where they got stuck.
Also called: UCD, human-centered design
Design thinking is a problem-solving process in five broad steps: understand the people involved, define the real problem, generate ideas, prototype and test. IDEO and the Stanford d.school made it popular well beyond design teams.
Example. A bank team runs a two-day workshop: interviews with branch staff, a clear problem statement, twenty quick ideas and paper prototypes tested the same afternoon.
Also called: design thinking process
User research is the work of learning how people actually behave, what they need and why, through interviews, observation, surveys, usability tests and data. It turns guesses into evidence the team can design against.
Example. Ten short interviews show that freelancers open an invoicing app mainly to check whether a client has paid, so the home screen is rebuilt around payment status.
Also called: UX research, design research
A persona is a short, research-based profile of a typical user: their goal, context, frustrations and the moment they reach for your product. It keeps the team designing for a real person instead of an average or for themselves.
Example. "Maria, a clinic manager who books shifts on her phone between patients" makes it obvious why the scheduling screen has to work one-handed.
A persona describes a user. A designer archetype describes the designer, which is a different tool.
Also called: user persona
A user journey map lays out every step a person takes to reach a goal, across screens, emails and offline moments, with what they think and feel at each step. It shows where the experience breaks and which fix would matter most.
Example. Mapping a parcel return shows the real pain is the moment the customer has to print a label, and no screen redesign would fix that.
Also called: customer journey map, journey mapping
A user flow is a diagram of the path a person takes through a product to complete one task, with every screen, decision and branch. It helps the team agree on logic before anyone designs pixels.
Example. A password reset flow shows the happy path and also what happens when the email never arrives or the link has expired.
Also called: task flow, flow diagram
Information architecture (IA) is how content and features are organised, grouped and named so people can find them. It covers navigation, labels, categories and the hierarchy of pages.
Example. An online store moves "Returns" out of the footer and into the order page, where people actually look for it.
Also called: IA
A wireframe is a simple, low-fidelity sketch of a screen that shows structure and priority without colour or final visuals. It is the blueprint you test and change cheaply before building the detailed design.
Example. Before designing a banking app, the team wireframes where "Transfer" and "Balance" sit, tests it with three people and moves Transfer up.
Also called: wireframing, low-fidelity layout
A prototype is a clickable model of a product that feels real enough to test without code. It can be low fidelity (linked sketches) or high fidelity (screens that look finished), and it exists to learn before building.
Example. In Figma, a designer links six screens so testers can book a flight; two of five get lost at seat selection, so that screen changes before development starts.
Also called: prototyping, interactive prototype, UX prototyping
Usability is how easily and efficiently people can use a product to reach their goal: how fast they learn it, how few errors they make and how satisfied they feel. Good usability means nobody needs a manual for everyday tasks.
Example. A search page with one clear field and instant results has high usability. A settings page with forty unlabeled toggles does not.
Also called: ease of use
Usability testing means watching real people try to complete real tasks with your design and noting where they hesitate or go wrong. Jakob Nielsen's model estimates that five participants from one user group find about 85% of the usability problems, so several small rounds beat one big study.
Example. Asked to change a delivery address, three of five testers look for it under Profile instead of Orders, so the option moves.
Also called: user testing, usability test
A heuristic evaluation is an expert review of an interface against a set of usability principles. The best known set is Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics, such as visibility of system status and error prevention.
Example. A reviewer flags that a file upload shows no progress at all, which breaks the "visibility of system status" heuristic.
Also called: usability heuristics, Nielsen heuristics
Interaction design (IxD) defines how a product responds when people act on it: taps, swipes, hovers, transitions and feedback. Good interaction design makes every action feel acknowledged and every result predictable.
Example. When you like a photo, the heart fills and briefly grows. That small response tells you the tap worked.
Also called: IxD
The difference between UX and UI design: UX is how a product works for the person using it, UI is how it looks and responds on screen. Most product teams expect one designer to cover both. See UX vs UI.
For usability testing, Jakob Nielsen's model estimates that five participants from one user group find about 85% of the problems. Three small rounds with fixes in between teach more than one big study. See usability testing.
A wireframe is a static, low-fidelity layout that shows structure; a prototype is clickable and lets people try a flow. Teams usually wireframe first, then prototype what they want to test. See wireframe and prototype.
To learn UX design step by step, start with the foundations (type, colour, clear language, patterns), practise each lesson on a real task, then build one case study and get feedback. Step 1 of the free UX design courses covers the foundations.
Every term on this page connects to a part of DesignPath where you can practise it.
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