Tags: ux map

User Experience MOC

Date: 2026-08-16

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UX is the discipline of finding out what people actually do, then removing what stops them. The research half tells you what’s wrong; the design half is a set of constraints on how humans process things.

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Ordered research → behaviour → structure → interface → accessibility → content → measurement. The first section is what makes the rest more than opinion.

Research

• Qualitative vs Quantitative Research — one tells you why, the other how many. Neither substitutes for the other, and most disputes are people using one to answer the other’s question
• User Interviews — asking about behaviour without asking people to predict themselves, which they can’t
• Usability Testing — watching someone attempt a task; the highest-yield-per-hour method there is
• Heuristic Evaluation — expert inspection against principles; hypotheses, not findings, because one evaluator finds about a third of the problems
• Moderated vs Unmoderated Testing — depth versus volume, and when remote unmoderated is enough
• Sample Size in Qualitative Research — why five users finds most usability problems, and what that claim actually rests on
• Surveys — question design, response bias, and why most survey data is worse than no data
• Diary Studies — behaviour over time, for decisions that aren’t made in one sitting
• Card Sorting and Tree Testing — testing whether your structure matches the user’s model
• Jobs To Be Done — framing by the progress someone is trying to make rather than by who they are
• Personas — the useful version and the decorative version
• Journey Mapping — the whole path including the parts that aren’t your site
• Service Blueprints — the backstage half: staff, systems and policies that shape the front-stage experience
• Research Repositories — making findings findable, without which every study is run twice

Behaviour and psychology

Constraints on how people process, not tricks. Each one is a reason a design fails.

• System 1 and System 2 — fast automatic processing versus slow deliberate reasoning, and why most interface decisions happen in the fast one
• Fogg Behaviour Model — behaviour happens when motivation, ability and a prompt coincide; a diagnostic for which of the three is missing
• Cognitive Load — the working-memory budget every interface spends
• Hick’s Law — decision time rising with the number of options
• Fitts’s Law — target size and distance determining how hard something is to hit
• Choice Overload — more options reducing the chance of any choice at all
• Anchoring — the first number seen setting the frame for every number after
• Framing Effects — identical information changing the decision depending on presentation
• Loss Aversion — losses weighing heavier than equivalent gains
• Social Proof — others’ behaviour as evidence, and where it backfires
• Scarcity and Urgency — the real mechanism, and the point at which it becomes a lie
• Reactance — pushback when a choice feels taken away; why heavy pressure can cost more conversions than it wins
• Reciprocity — the obligation created by giving something first
• Commitment and Consistency — a small first agreement making the next one likelier, which is why multi-step forms work
• Goal Gradient Effect — effort rising as the finish gets closer; progress indicators, stamp cards, and the head start that exploits it
• Zeigarnik Effect — the memory claim behind onboarding checklists fails to replicate; the resumption effect beside it holds
• Sunk Cost Fallacy — continuing because of what’s already been put in, and the flows that lean on it
• Authority — deference to perceived expertise, and which credentials actually register
• Liking — similarity, familiarity and warmth moving decisions, and the limits of that in an interface
• Unity — shared identity as the strongest affiliation signal; Cialdini’s later addition and the least established
• The Default Effect — whatever’s preselected being what most people get
• Peak-End Rule — memory of an experience being dominated by its peak and its end
• Trust Signals — what actually moves credibility, and the ones that do nothing
• Deceptive Design — the taxonomy of dark patterns, and where UK law now bites

Information architecture

• Information Architecture — the structure underneath the navigation
• Navigation Patterns — the standard forms and what each assumes about intent
• Taxonomy and Labelling — using the user’s words rather than the organisation’s
• Search and Findability — when people search instead of browse, and what that says about the structure
• Faceted Filtering — the ecommerce workhorse; facet choice, ordering, and the zero-results problem
• Category Page Design — the highest-traffic page nobody optimises
• Product Page Design — imagery, specification, social proof and the buy box; the page every retail decision funnels through
• Wayfinding — knowing where you are, where you’ve been, and what’s next

Interface and interaction

• Affordances and Signifiers — what an element permits versus what it advertises
• Feedback and System Status — telling people something happened, which is most of perceived quality
• Error Prevention and Recovery — designing so the mistake can’t be made, then so it can be undone
• Form Design — field order, labels, validation timing, and the specific decisions that move completion
• Checkout Design — the highest-value flow in ecommerce, and the constraints that come with hosted checkouts
• Progressive Disclosure — revealing complexity only when it’s needed
• Empty States — the screen with nothing on it, which is a first-run experience in disguise
• Loading and Perceived Performance — skeletons, optimistic UI, and why perceived speed diverges from measured speed
• Motion and Transitions — motion as explanation of what changed, not decoration
• Easing and Duration — the values that read as natural, and why linear rarely does
• Mobile Interaction Patterns — thumb zones, gestures, and the assumptions desktop design carries over wrongly

Accessibility

Not a section that comes last in practice, only in this list.

• WCAG — the standard’s structure, levels, and what conformance actually requires
• Accessibility Law in the UK — the Equality Act position, public sector regulations, and what applies to a commercial site [CHECK: current European Accessibility Act obligations for UK-based retailers]
• Screen Readers — how a page is actually consumed non-visually
• Keyboard Navigation — focus order, focus visibility, traps
• Focus Management — where focus goes after a modal, a route change, or a deletion
• Reduced Motion — prefers-reduced-motion as a requirement, not an enhancement
• Colour Contrast — the ratios, the tooling, and the cases the ratios miss
• Accessible Forms — labels, error association, and the failures that make a form unusable rather than annoying
• Cognitive Accessibility — plain language, consistency, and time limits
• Inclusive Design — designing for the range rather than the average, and why it improves the average anyway

Content and copy

• Content Design — content as the thing being designed, not the thing poured in afterwards
• Microcopy — the small text carrying most of the interaction’s clarity
• Reading Behaviour Online — scanning patterns, and writing for people who won’t read
• Readability — sentence length, reading level, and measuring it honestly
• Voice and Tone — the difference between them, and why tone varies by context while voice doesn’t
• Value Propositions — stating what it is, for whom, and why it’s better, in the space available
• Awareness Stages — how much the visitor already knows about the problem and the product, and matching the page to it; traffic source as the rough proxy
• Features, Benefits and Outcomes — what it has, what that does, and what changes for the customer; why copy stalls at the first
• Headlines — the highest-leverage line on any page
• Curiosity Gap — withholding just enough to earn the next click, and where it becomes clickbait
• Persuasive Structures — the durable copy frames, and where they stop being honest
• Product Descriptions — the ecommerce-specific problem of writing at scale without writing nothing

Measurement

Where UX stops being taste.

• Usability Metrics — task success, time on task, error rate, and the standard instruments
• System Usability Scale — the SUS questionnaire, its scoring, and what a score means
• Qualitative Coding — turning transcripts into counts without pretending they’re a survey
• Triangulation — reconciling analytics, replay and interviews when they disagree
• Research Ethics — consent, recording, incentives, and handling participant data

Borders

Filed elsewhere, needed constantly here.

• Analytics — Session Replay · Heatmaps · Form Analytics · Funnel Analysis · Voice of Customer Data
• Experimentation — Hypothesis Design · A-B Tests · Usability Testing · Test Prioritisation
• Web Development — The Accessibility Tree · Semantic HTML · ARIA · Core Web Vitals · Rendering Strategies · Design Systems
• Commerce & Growth — Price Elasticity · Psychological Pricing · Lifecycle Stages