DDSN 360: Glossary 6

Glossary 6

Business owners should think of designers as architects, not decorators.
— Jeffrey Zeldman

User Interface Design – Fall 2019

Redundant Navigation: Navigation that is redundant in a website or app means that there are multiple ways of navigating to the same thing. This is a good quality to have in a user experience. It means that the user will have many different ways to do the same action, ensuring that they will accomplish their goals. Adobe products make great use of Redundant Navigation in order to help their users accomplish all the various things that Adobe products can do.

404 page: This is an error page that you will see in your internet browser when your browser cannot find what you are asking it to find. It is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol standard response code, in computer speak, when a browser could reach a server, but the server could not find what was requested. Many companies have gotten very creative with their 404 pages. It’s something that any user could come across, so why not be ready with some creativity to respond? For example, check out Pixar’s 404 page:

Keywords: These are words associated with something. These are used VERY OFTEN by all of us when we search for something on the internet. We may only need to put in a few keywords to find what we are looking for. If you are advertising your site through Google, say, you could tag and make use of the right keywords to bring more traffic to your site.

Meta Data / Meta Tags: Meta Data, or metadata is data, about data. It is making use of data, without the original source details. For example, Google is tracking all kinds of metadata like what people are searching for, and how often at any given time. It’s a bigger picture way to analyze large amounts of data. Many people fear having a smart speaker line Amazon Echo or Google Home in their houses because they don’t want their conversations recorded. However, I read an article some time ago about the fact that they are collecting metadata, rather than individual conversations. What that means is they are monitoring how often you ask about the weather, or how often you ask about your schedule, or look up a recipe. They aren’t gathering your exact phrasing, but they are keeping track of how often you need to hear about the weather because even though you just asked Alexa what the weather would be that day, you totally weren’t listening when she told you the first time.

Listicle: This is a blog or article, published as an article, but structured as a list. BuzzFeed is a whole universe of listicles. It is an article, that is a list. Hence, listicle.

Backlinks: Backlinks are other websites that provide a link to your website. Having lots of these can help increase your website SEO. Here is a Backlink to the Wikipedia page for Backlinks. Woah, was that meta?

Anchor Link: An anchor link is something you can put in your website that will help users “jump” to different parts of your web page. This is most effective if there is a table of contents towards the top of the page, wherein each item listed, is an anchor link to that section of the page. There is also a good use of having a “back to top” anchor link throughout such a page so that the user can return easily to the table of contents, and choose another link to read more about.

Page Speed: Page Speed is the speed at which your website fully loads. Personally my patience for page speed has gone way down. I will even choose not to use a company because they can’t load their page and graphics quickly, which seems to me to be careless design. I would imagine photographers, whose files such as photographs are large, would want to focus on reducing the load time of their website.

Jeffrey Zeldman: Jeffrey is an author, blogger, and a pioneer of Web Design. He has been online, creating websites, user experiences, and publishing his personal blog since 1995. He is currently a Creative Director at Automattic, who are the makers of WordPress. His books, blog, and various other outputs are a huge resource for any designer. I will be following him wherever possible.

Ethan Marcotte: He’s another pioneering designer who coined the whole “responsive web design” concept. He has designed websites for huge clients like People Magazine, Sundance Film Festival, the W3C, and New York Magazine… to name a few! Again he is another designer to follow and use as a resource.