Universal Principles of Design Flashcards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the individual principles of design detailed in the text.

80/20 Rule

A principle asserting that approximately 80 percent of the effects generated by any large system are caused by 20 percent of the variables in அந்த system.

Accessibility

The principle that objects and environments should be designed to be usable, without modification, by as many people as possible regardless of sensory or physical abilities.

Advance Organizer

An instructional technique consisting of brief chunks of information presented prior to new material to help facilitate learning and understanding.

Aesthetic-Usability Effect

A phenomenon in which people perceive more-aesthetic designs as easier to use than less-aesthetic designs.

Affordance

A property in which the physical characteristics of an object or environment influence its function, such as a handle affording pulling.

Alignment

The placement of elements such that edges line up along common rows or columns, or their bodies along a common center, to create unity and cohesion.

Anthropomorphic Form

A tendency for humans to find forms that appear humanoid or exhibit humanlike characteristics appealing and attention-getting.

Archetypes

Universal patterns of theme and form resulting from innate biases or dispositions hardwired in the brain over the course of human evolution.

Area Alignment

Alignment based on the visual weight or area of elements rather than their edges, often used for nonuniform and asymmetrical elements.

Attractiveness Bias

A tendency to perceive attractive people more positively, seeing them as more intelligent, competent, moral, and sociable than unattractive people.

Baby-Face Bias

The tendency to see people and things with baby-faced features—such as large eyes and round heads—as more naïve, helpless, and honest.

Biophilia Effect

The phenomenon where environments rich in nature views and imagery reduce stress and enhance focus and concentration.

Cathedral Effect

A relationship between ceiling height and cognition where high ceilings promote abstract thinking and low ceilings promote concrete, detail-oriented thinking.

Chunking

A technique of combining many units of information into a limited number of units, typically $4 \times 1$, to make them easier to process in short-term memory.

Classical Conditioning

A technique used to associate a neutral stimulus with an unconscious physical or emotional response by pairing it with a trigger stimulus.

Closure

A Gestalt principle stating that people tend to perceive a set of individual elements as a single, recognizable pattern by filling in missing info.

Cognitive Dissonance

The state of mental discomfort that occurs when a person's attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs conflict with one another.

Color

A design element used to attract attention, group elements, indicate meaning, and enhance aesthetics.

Common Fate

A Gestalt principle asserting that elements moving together in a common direction are perceived as a single group.

Comparison

A method of illustrating relationships and patterns by representing information in controlled ways, such as using benchmarks or single contexts.

Confirmation

A technique used for critical actions that requires verification before the action is performed to prevent unintended errors or slips.

Consistency

The principle that systems are more usable and learnable when similar parts are expressed in similar ways (aesthetic, functional, internal, or external).

Constancy

The tendency to perceive objects as unchanging—regarding size, brightness, shape, or loudness—despite changes in sensory input.

Constraint

A method of limiting the possible actions that can be performed on a system, categorized as physical (paths, axes, barriers) or psychological.

Contour Bias

A tendency for humans to favor objects with contours over objects with sharp angles or points.

Control

The principle that the level of system control provided should relate to the user's proficiency, with beginners needing more structure and experts needing more flexibility.

Convergence

A process where similar characteristics evolve independently in multiple systems as they approximate optimal strategies for a stable environment.

Cost-Benefit

A principle stating that an activity will be pursued only if its benefits are equal to or greater than the costs associated with it.

Defensible Space

An area with features like territorial markers and surveillance opportunities designed to convey ownership and deter crime.

Depth of Processing

A memory phenomenon where information analyzed deeply through elaborative rehearsal is better recalled than information analyzed superficially.

Design by Committee

A design process based on consensus building and group decision-making, preferred when requirements are complex and consequences of error are serious.

Desire Line

Traces of use or wear, such as a beaten path in a park, that indicate preferred methods of interaction with an environment.

Development Cycle

The four stages of product creation: requirements, design, development, and testing.

Entry Point

A point of physical or attentional entry into a design that significantly influences subsequent perceptions and attitudes.

Errors

Unintended results from actions or omissions, categorized as slips (errors of execution) or mistakes (errors of intention).

Expectation Effect

A phenomenon where perception and behavior change based on personal expectations or the expectations of others, such as the Halo or Hawthorne effects.

Exposure Effect

The phenomenon where repeated exposure to neutral stimuli increases its likeability and acceptance.

Face-ism Ratio

The ratio of face height to total visible body height in an image, which influences whether a person is perceived as more intellectual or physical.

Factor of Safety

The use of extra elements or materials beyond what is thought necessary to offset unknowns and prevent system failure.

Feedback Loop

A system relationship where the consequences of an event feed back as input, either amplifying output (positive) or stabilizing it (negative).

Fibonacci Sequence

A sequence of numbers (e.g., 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8…) where each number is the sum of the preceding two, often found in nature and aesthetic designs.

Figure-Ground Relationship

A Gestalt principle asserting that the perceptual system separates stimuli into figure elements (objects of focus) and ground (background).

Fitts' Law

A model predicting that the time required to move to a target is a function of the target size and the distance to it.

Five Hat Racks

The five ways to organize information: Category, Time, Location, Alphabet, and Continuum.

Flexibility-Usability Tradeoff

The principle that as the flexibility of a system increases, its usability decreases due to increased complexity.

Forgiveness

A design quality that helps people avoid errors and minimizes the negative consequences when errors do occur.

Form Follows Function

A design corollary asserting that beauty results from purity of function and the absence of ornamentation.

Framing

A technique using images and words to manipulate decision-making and judgment by presenting information in positive or negative contexts.

Freeze-Flight-Fight-Forfeit

The ordered sequence of four innate responses to acute stress in humans and mammals.

Garbage In-Garbage Out

The principle that the quality of system output is dependent on the quality of system input.

Golden Ratio

A mathematical ratio within the elements of a form, approximately $\frac{bc}{ab} = \frac{ab}{ac} = 0.618$.

Good Continuation

A Gestalt principle stating that elements arranged in a straight line or smooth curve are perceived as a related group.

Gutenberg Diagram

A diagram describing the eye-movement pattern (top-left to bottom-right) followed by Western readers on homogeneous, text-heavy displays.

Hick's Law

A principle stating that the time required to make a decision increases as the number of available alternatives increases.

Hierarchy

The simplest structure for visualizing complexity, represented visually as trees, nests, or stairs.

Hierarchy of Needs

A principle specifying that a design must meet low-level needs like functionality and reliability before it can satisfy higher-level needs like proficiency and creativity.

Highlighting

A technique for bringing attention to an area of text or image, recommended for no more than 10 percent of the visual design.

Horror Vacui

A tendency to favor filling blank spaces with objects and elements rather than leaving them empty, often inversely related to value perception.

Hunter-Nurturer Fixations

Innate play preferences where males favor hunting-related objects (movement, tools) and females favor nurturing-related objects (color, babies).

Iconic Representation

The use of pictorial images to improve recognition and recall, classified into similar, example, symbolic, and arbitrary types.

Immersion

A state of intense mental focus where challenges are met at near capacity and awareness of the real world is lost.

Inattentional Blindness

The failure to cognitively process a stimulus presented in clear view because the observer's attention is focused elsewhere.

Interference Effects

A phenomenon where mental processing is slowed or hampered by competing perceptual or cognitive processes, such as the Stroop effect.

Inverted Pyramid

A method of information presentation where the most critical information is presented first, followed by details in descending order of importance.

Iteration

A process of repeating operations to progressively building on simpler structures, including design exploration and development tuning.

Law of Prägnanz

A Gestalt principle stating that people interpret ambiguous images as simple and complete rather than complex and incomplete.

Layering

The organization of information into related groupings to manage complexity, using two-dimensional or three-dimensional planes.

Legibility

The visual clarity of text influenced by size, typeface, contrast, text block characteristics, and spacing.

Life Cycle

The sequence of stages a product follows: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Mapping

The relationship between controls and their movements or effects, which is considered good when it corresponds to user expectation.

Mental Model

Representations of systems and environments derived from experience, categorized into system models and interaction models.

Mimicry

The act of copying properties of familiar objects or organisms (surface, behavioral, or functional) to improve usability or functions.

Mnemonic Device

A method of reorganizing information—using techniques like first-letter acronyms or rhymes—to make it easier to remember.

Modularity

A structural principle for managing complexity by dividing large systems into smaller, self-contained modules.

Most Advanced Yet Acceptable

The MAYA principle, which asserts that the most novel design that is still recognizable as familiar will have the most commercial success.

Most Average Facial Appearance Effect

The tendency for people to find faces more attractive when their features approximate the population average.

Normal Distribution

A symmetrical, bell-shaped curve that describes a set of data where the average is also the most common value.

Not Invented Here

NIH syndrome; an organizational phenomenon where groups resist ideas and inputs that originate from external sources.

Nudge

A method for predictably altering behavior, such as using defaults or incentives, without restricting options.

Ockham's Razor

A principle stating that given a choice between functionally equivalent designs, the simplest design should be selected.

Operant Conditioning

A behavioral modification technique that uses positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment.

Orientation Sensitivity

A visual phenomenon where certain line orientations, specifically vertical and horizontal, are more easily processed than oblique ones.

Performance Load

The degree of mental (cognitive) and physical (kinematic) activity required to achieve a goal.

Performance Versus Preference

The observation that designs that help people perform optimally are often not the same as the designs people find most desirable.

Personas

A technique employing fictitious user profiles—derived from market research—to guide design decisions.

Picture Superiority Effect

The phenomenon where pictures are remembered more accurately and for longer durations than words.

Priming

The activation of specific concepts in memory to influence subsequent thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

Progressive Disclosure

A strategy to prevent information overload by displaying only necessary or requested information at any given time.

Propositional Density

The relationship between the perceptible elements of a design (surface) and the meanings they convey (deep).

Prospect-Refuge

An evolutionary preference for environments that provide unobstructed views (prospect) and areas of concealment (refuge).

Prototyping

The creation of simplified, incomplete models—such as concept, throwaway, or evolutionary—to evaluate and refine design ideas.

Proximity

A Gestalt principle stating that elements close together are perceived as a single group or related chunk.

Readability

The degree to which prose is understood based on word length, commonality, and sentence complexity.

Recognition Over Recall

The principle that people are better at identifying things they have previously experienced than recalling those things from memory.

Red Effect

A tendency to perceive women in red as more attractive and men in red as more dominant.

Redundancy

The use of extra elements to prevent total system failure if an individual component fails (diverse, homogenous, active, or passive).

Rosetta Stone

A technique for communicating novel information by embedding keys or elements of common understanding in the message.

Rule of Thirds

A compositional technique dividing a medium into thirds to create aesthetic positions for primary design elements.

Satisficing

The strategy of settling for a satisfactory solution rather than pursuing an optimal solution, especially in complex or time-limited contexts.

Savanna Preference

A tendency to prefer natural environments characterized by open areas, scattered trees, and water.