Altruism

Altruism means acting in the best interest of others rather than in one’s own self-interest.

Appropriation

Literally it is defined as the act of taking something for your own use, usually without permission. In the past few decades, more awareness has been given to cultural appropriation: the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture. One example of this is the use of an indigenous headdress as a fashion statement (see http://apihtawikosisan.com/hall-of-shame/an-open-letter-to-non-natives-in-headdresses/ for more information on this case).

Design Activism

Design activism is about using your talents as a designer to create a positive impact in the world. It means using your talents to help non-profits establish their identity or offering to create a logo for an organization run entirely by volunteers. It’s about designers using what they know best, design, to help solve problems and build a better world. Design has the power to give a voice to people and causes without access to multimillion-dollar advertising budgets and to offer people alternative visions of how the world might be.

Design Authorship

Design authorship has conflicting definitions and is a murky category. Some definitions call into question who has ownership of the design, other discuss the agency and voice of the designer, and others refer to the obligations the designer has to their audience.

Design with Consequences

See also Design Responsibility.
It is being aware of the impact a product/service/system will have and realizing what the consequences will be.

Design Equity

While equality ensures that individuals are given access to the same tools, resources, materials, methods, etc, equity recognizes that some individuals require more aid depending on individual experiences (due to impairment, disabilities, etc). Design equity is the method of designing so that everyone is able to access the same material (recognizing that some may need alternate ways to access it than others). There are a lot of gaps which it comes to equality and access in diverse populations, and designing for design equity attempts to put all users on an even playing field.

Design with Empathy

Empathic design is the process of developing an understanding of users, not just their overt needs, but of their constraints, practices, problem-solving approaches, contexts, and the interrelations between people as a whole. The aim of researching users in such a way is to help designers identify their users' underlying needs (i.e. those that are not instantly apparent or accessible through questioning alone). Once we have established these needs we can develop new problem-solving approaches that accommodate the users' constraints and exploit (in a nice way) their capabilities. The ultimate aim is to improve the user's or consumer's experience by tailoring the product to their explicit, implicit, and latent needs.

Design for Good

Can also be referred to as social design. It’s design that aspires to better someone’s life. They have expertise in the traditional aspects of design, but includes empathy. Designing for a better world is associated with decreasing environmental depletion impacts while making good for both people and the environment, if possible. Evidently, this is a space where design deals with ethical matters, defining what is good or questioning if good has a universal meaning.

Design Philosophy

The basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of design within the design community. It can also refer to an individual designer’s approach to design: including their ethics, values, beliefs, experiences, etc.

Design Responsibility

A designer must be accountable to a moral standard. They must be professionally, culturally, and socially responsible for the impact his or her design has on the citizenry. It is recognizing that your actions will have reactions and impact others.

Ethical Design

Ethics is the system of moral principles that defines what is perceived as good and evil. Ethical design, is design made with the intent to do good.

Human-Centred Design

Human Centred Design is an approach that integrates multidisciplinary expertise towards enhancing human well-being and empowering people. It leads to systems, machines, products, services and processes which are physically, perceptually, cognitively and emotionally intuitive to use. The human centred designer is a relatively transparent figure who does not impose his or her preferences on a project, but, instead, conveys and translates the will of the people in order to empower them through the final design solution. Human centred design involves techniques which communicate, interact, empathise and stimulate the people involved, obtaining an understanding of their needs, desires and experiences which often transcends that which the people themselves actually knew and realised.

Social Design

“Social design cannot be a subspecialty of the design profession (like graphic design, package design, product design, service design, and so on), but is a larger activity that depends upon design in all its forms—thought, processes, tools, methodologies, skills, histories, systems—to contribute to the needs of a larger society. It implies at once an attitude and an approach to life; as such, it can help us frame how we want to live in the future.”

Fields such as participatory design, socially responsible design, and co-design have emerged in parallel to critical design practice. These modes reflect upon the relationship between design and the communities that are being designed for, and, or with. They operate beyond conditions set by fiscal gain or technological development. They are established as intellectual and politically motivated practices, informing policy and used to address complex societal concerns. In their deviation from focusing on the production of objects, they reflect instead a move towards the designer acting as the facilitator for large groups of people; they imply a critique of mainstream design, or at least challenge common perceptions of the designer’s role. They are assumed progressive within disciplinary discourse. They have been absorbed into the disciplinary orthodoxy through the shared efforts of theorists, commentators, and practitioners.

At the heart of good design is a search for ways to create a better world. Design is about finding solutions, practical innovations, and making improvements that enhance people’s lives, address problems or open up possibilities for a better life. When you think about design like this, ‘social design’ is about applying general design principles to our social realities and ‘designing’ ways to address social issues (such as poverty or social isolation), and ultimately creating a more just and sustainable society.

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility is an ethical theory, in which individuals are accountable for fulfilling their civic duty; the actions of an individual must benefit the whole of society. In this way, there must be a balance between economic growth and the welfare of society and the environment. If this equilibrium is maintained, then social responsibility is accomplished. Social responsibility in design is characterized by attitudes that value justice, equality, participation, sharing, sustainability, and practices that intentionally engage social issues and recognize the consequences of decisions and actions.

Design Action

The act uses your talents to create an impact, usually for non-profits to serve their community or a cause they believe in. See design activism.

Anti-consumerism

Anti-consumerism is a sociopolitical ideology opposed to consumerism, which discourages ever-growing purchasing and consumption of material possessions. Anti-consumerist activists express concern over modern corporations or organizations that pursue solely economic goals at the expense of environmental, social, or ethical concerns; these concerns overlap with those of environmental activism, anti-globalization, and animal-rights activism. One variation on this is the concept of postconsumers, who emphasize moving beyond addictive consumerism.

Centralization/De-centralization

Centralization is a process where the concentration of decision making is in a few hands. All the important decision and actions at the lower level, all subjects and actions at the lower level are subject to the approval of top management. It is the systematic and consistent reservation of authority at central points in the organization.

Decentralization is a systematic delegation of authority at all levels of management and in all of the organization. In a decentralization concern, authority in retained by the top management for taking major decisions and framing policies concerning the whole concern. The rest of the authority may be delegated to the middle level and lower level of management.

Citizen design

Two definitions for Citizen Design:

One is closely linked to “Citizen Designer:” the call to action to use skills to create things like PSAs rather than products for planned obsolescence, to motivate designers to use environmentally friendly materials rather than toxic ones, or to create materials that support social justice efforts. In David Berman’s book “Do Good Design,” he asks designers to consider their core values and mission and pledge to: (1) Be true to their profession, (2) Be true to themselves, and (3) Use 10% of their professional time to create a better place. Citizen design is ethical design.

Another definition is similar to participatory design, whereby citizens (from various disciplines) take part in the design process.

Citizen designer

Throughout history graphic designers have written design manifestos and taken action to focus their energy on designing for good. Whether it’s a call to action to use our skills to create things like PSAs rather than products for planned obsolescence, to motivate designers to use environmentally friendly materials rather than toxic ones, or to create materials that support social justice efforts, there is a group of dedicated graphic designers who believe that design is meant for something bigger and better than simply contributing to the cycle of consumer consumption. In David Berman’s book “Do Good Design,” he asks designers to consider their core values and mission and pledge to: (1) Be true to their profession, (2) Be true to themselves, and (3) Use 10% of their professional time to create a better place.

Citizen empowerment

The strengthening of individual and group contributions to community development, and decision-making and planning processes. The target is to promote social change concerning institutions, infrastructures, and resources. It allows citizens to become involved and become valuable in their own field.

Citizenry

Citizenry refers to the citizens of a place regarded collectively.

Consumerism

Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages the purchase of goods and services in ever-greater amounts. The term "consumerism" has also been used to refer to something quite different called the consumerists movement, consumer protection or consumer activism, which seeks to protect and inform consumers by requiring such practices as honest packaging and advertising, product guarantees, and improved safety standards. In this sense it is a movement or a set of policies aimed at regulating the products, services, methods, and standards of manufacturers, sellers, and advertisers in the interests of the buyer.

Collective action

Behavior or actions of a group working toward a common goal. When individuals engage in collective action, the strength of the group's resources, knowledge and efforts is combined to reach a goal shared by all parties. Social design focuses on the kinds of problems whose solutions require human relation and collective action. The intent here is to place primacy on the way design can bring people together to address issues, rather than on how to use design to further segment and isolate individuals for targeted consumption.

Community action

Community action is any activity that increases the understanding, engagement and empowerment of communities in the design and delivery of local services. Community action includes a broad range of activities and is sometimes described as ‘social action' or ‘community engagement'. These activities can vary in their objective, the role the community plays, the types of activities involved, their scale and their integration within the council. What they have in common is that they all involve greater engagement of local citizens in the planning, design and delivery of local services.

Consumption

The process in which the substance of a thing is completely destroyed, used up, or incorporated or transformed into something else. Consumption of goods and services is the amount of them used in a particular time period.

Creative citizenship

The idea that “everyday creative acts” can generate community engagement. It goes beyond individual approaches to investigate the creative potential and uses of a collective. With the advent of social media, attention is increasingly being placed on the potentials of mediated representations, user-created content, digitally mediated social networks and communities. It’s a way of understanding the potential of acts of creativity for individuals and communities within specific socio-political contexts. This can include things like photo sharing, digital storytelling, sharing of sewing and knitting patterns online, graffiti act, urban garden, cooking, and community-led design.

De-colonization

Literally it is a process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country. Decolonization can be gradual and peaceful for some colonies but violent for others. Decolonization in design is the idea that design is Eurocentric, and that our perception and interpretation of the world is largely driven by one perspective or culture. Contemporary design’s origins are in modernism, a European movement that sought to obliterate historical and cultural traditions in its search for something new. A decolonized design proposes a balancing with other cultures ways of knowing and making. It’s about examining and integrating the ways other groups have approached the construction and longevity of objects, the processes and materials used, and the impact on the social and physical environment.

Design Criticism

It is a critical view of design’s instrumental uses and its wider social role, or the lack of it.

Design Exclusion

While inclusive design and universal design are commonly accepted as good design aims, there are merits in looking at design exclusion. Design exclusion is design that is not accessible for all users. By identifying how and why end-users cannot use a product enables us to counter such exclusion. If a design is tailored too closely to a limited number of particular user groups, it is l to be exclusive.

Design Futures

Design futures is a discipline developed at the crossroads of design fiction, interaction design, ethnographic research and future foresights. Starting from a data driven observation of present and past trends, and leveraging on key anchor points (artifacts and/or experiential settings) it aims at creating engaging future-projected experiences, with the goal of inspiring people, increasing their awareness on contemporary challenges and their willingness to act and to responsibly impact on the future. Design futures does not deal with the future of design, but with the role of design in shaping future alternatives.

Ethical Consumption

As both Littler (2011) and Humphery (2011) have noted, however, the term ‘ethical consumption’ does not refer to a clearly defined set of practices, but rather has become a convenient catch-all phrase for a range of tendencies within contemporary consumer economies. In popular and market-based usage, ethical consumption has become an umbrella term covering a wide range of concerns from animal welfare, labour standards and human rights to questions of health and wellbeing and environmental and community sustainability.

Responsible consumption conventionally stems from an increased awareness of the impact of consumption decisions on the environment, on consumer health, and on society in general.

Material Culture

Refers to tools, weapons, utensils, machines, ornaments, art, buildings, monuments, written records, religious images, clothing, and any other ponderable objects produced or used by humans. If all the human beings in the world ceased to exist, nonmaterial aspects of culture would cease to exist along with them. However, examples of material culture would still be present until they disintegrated.

New Materialism

New Materialism is an emerging trend in 21st century thought in several fields of inquiry, including philosophy, cultural theory, feminism, science studies, and the visual arts. Defined around the primacy of matter and its properties and actions, New Materialism re-works long-held assumptions about the nature of the stuff of the universe. It responds to the need for novel accounts of agency, nature and social relationships in the contemporary epoch, when new questions have arisen about our place as embodied humans in the world and the ways we produce, reproduce and consume our material environment. In this challenge to invent new ways to understand the contemporary world, the visual arts have a special place given their concern with the manipulation of matter. For the artist or craftsperson in the studio or workshop, New Materialism can articulate and give agency to existing creative processes, and offer opportunities for new modes of authorship and expanded interpretations of materials and objects and our relationships with them.

Neo-colonialism

The control of less-developed countries by developed countries through indirect means. Refers to places where the power of developed countries is used to produce a colonial-like exploitation. The term is an unambiguously negative one that is widely used to refer to a form of global power in which transnational corporations and global and multilateral institutions combine to perpetuate colonial forms of exploitation of developing countries. Neocolonialism has been broadly theorized as a further development of capitalism that enables capitalist powers (both nations and corporations) to dominate subject nations through the operations of international capitalism rather than by means of direct rule.

Situated design

Sensory design activates touch, sound, smell, taste, and the wisdom of the body. Sensory design supports everyone’s opportunity to receive information, explore the world, and experience joy, wonder, and social connections, regardless of our sensory abilities. It supports the diversity of the human condition and is inclusive design.

Social justice

Social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations. We uphold the principles of social justice when we promote gender equality or the rights of indigenous peoples and migrants. We advance social justice when we remove barriers that people face because of gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, culture or disability.

Situated Design Methods

All design is situated—carried out from an embedded position. Design involves many participants and encompasses a range of interactions and interdependencies among designers, designs, design methods, and users. Design is also multidisciplinary, extending beyond the traditional design professions into such domains as health, culture, education, and transportation. This book presents eighteen situated design methods, offering cases and analyses of projects that range from designing interactive installations, urban spaces, and environmental systems to understanding customer experiences.

Accessible-Technology

Accessible technology is a technology that's been designed with the needs of a lot of different users in mind. It's technology with built-in customization features so that the user can really individualize their experience to meet their needs. This includes electronic documents, websites, software, hardware, video, audio, and other technologies. People who interact with technology are extremely diverse. They have a wide variety of characteristics, and we cannot assume that they’re all using a traditional monitor for output, or keyboard and mouse for input. Accessible technology considers people with vision, speech, and hearing impairment, individuals with learning disabilities (such as dyslexia), motor impairment, and individuals using devices at different screen sizes (including phones, tablets, etc).

Assistive technology

Assistive technology (AT) is any item, piece of equipment or system, whether acquired commercially, modified or customized, that is used to increase, maintain or improve functional capacities of individuals with disabilities. For example, screen readers used by people with vision impairments to navigate the web are considered assistive technology. Assistive technology is not enough to guarantee people with disabilities access to things like websites and software: they must be designed with accessibility in mind for people to be able to use them.

Accessible websites

Accessible websites are designed to meet the needs of various users (including, but not limited to, those with hearing, vision, and motor impairment). This includes things like providing text alternatives to non-text content (images, videos, etc), having distinguishable content through colour and audio control, and using clear headers. In an attempt to create an “accessible Ontario,” the Ontario government has listed details for website expectations for accessibilty here: https://www.ontario.ca/page/how-make-websites-accessible

Accessibility (design) standards

Standards that ensure a product or service is accessible. It is a set of guidelines or rules.

Accomodation

The process of adapting rf adjusting a service, product, etc, to someone (usually for people with disabilities). While there will always be the need for some specific accommodations, applying universal design concepts will ensure access for most users and minimizes the need for specific accommodations.

Affordances

The relationship between a physical object and a person. It is the properties of the object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used. A chair “affords” support and therefore affords sitting. Depending on the size of the chair and the strength of the person it could also afford lifting. Accessible design will include affordances.

Assumptions

Something that you accept as true without question or proof. Questioning assumptions means taking what you think is true about your users—for example, that they’ll appreciate your funny, quirky copy, or that they’re sitting at home comfortably scrolling your website on a big screen—and then asking, what if the opposite is true?

Color-Contrast

Color-contrast is about finding colors that not only provide maximum contrast, but provide enough contrast between content and the background for anyone with low vision impairments and color deficiencies. The text and non-decorative images need to be clearly legible for everyone regardless of whether they have moderately low vision or color deficiencies.

Constraints

By providing physical, logical, semantic, and cultural constraints, a designer/creator guide actions and ease interpretations. Constraints can be purposeful to make things easier to navigate and use.

Design Exclusion

While inclusive design and universal design are commonly accepted as good design aims, there are merits in looking at design exclusion. Design exclusion is design that is not accessible for all users. By identifying how and why end-users cannot use a product enables us to counter such exclusion. If a design is tailored too closely to a limited number of particular user groups, it is l to be exclusive.

Disability Advocacy

Disability advocacy is acting, speaking or writing to promote, protect and defend the human rights of people with disability.

Digital Accessibility

Digital accessibility is the ability of a website, mobile application or electronic document to be easily navigated and understood by a wide range of users, including those users who have visual, auditory, motor or cognitive disabilities.

Disability Rights

Individuals with mental or physical disabilities have the right to live free from discrimination, to enjoy the same quality of service, quality of education, quality of vocation, quality of inclusion and the same quality of life as everyone else.

Environmental Access

Environments that more usable, safer and healthier in response to the needs of an increasingly diverse population. Making an environmental accessible to all peoples.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics in Design (also referred to as human factors) is concerned with the usability of products, systems, tools and environments. Ergonomics has become popular when discussing how a project impacts the human body and if there are long-term damaging effects, but deals with any object, system, etc that humans interact with. Applying ergonomics to a product typically involves design thinking (especially empathy).

Human diversity

Any differences among people: typically used in reference to diversity in race, religion, nationality, gender, ethnicity, class, and disability, but can also refer to difference in personalities, attitudes, habits, lifestyles, etc.

Human factors

Human factors (also called ergonomics) is concerned with the usability of products, systems, tools and environments. Ergonomics has become popular when discussing how a project impacts the human body and if there are long-term damaging effects, but deals with any object, system, etc that humans interact with. Applying ergonomics to a product typically involves design thinking (especially empathy).

Inclusive Design

The Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDeA Center) focuses on research, development, education, dissemination, and design projects related to universal design. The IDeA Center is dedicated to enabling and empowering an increasingly diverse population by developing knowledge and tools that improve the human performance, health and wellness and social participation of groups who have been marginalized by traditional design practices. The IDeA Center’s activities are based on the philosophy of Inclusive Design, often called “Universal Design” or “Design for All.”

Legibility

Legibility is determined by the specific typographic traits affecting recognition of letters and words. As we read, we identify the overall shapes of familiar words rather than processing individual letters and assembling them into phonetic groups. This allows us to process content much faster. The key typographic factors are shape, scale, color, and style. Ensuring good legibility is important for making a material accessible.

Low Physical Effort

Design that can be used efficiently and comfortable with minimum fatigue.

Multisensory Inclusive Design

Design that uses multiple modes (pictorial, verbal, tactile, written, etc) to present information in a redundant fashion to ensure that people with limited senses are presented with the same information as others.

Marginalization

The process whereby something or someone is pushed to the edge of a group and accorded lesser importance. This is predominantly a social phenomenon by which a minority or sub-group is excluded, and their needs or desires ignored.

Natural Mapping

Natural mapping, taking advantage of physical analogies and cultural standards, leads to immediate understanding (ex. a designer can use spatial analogy: to move an object up, move the control up). Some natural mappings are cultural and biological, as in the universal standard that a rising level represents more, a diminishing level, less.

Perceptible Information

Perceptible information will is able to effectively communicate to the user regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities. It will use different modes (pictorial, verbal, tactile, etc) for redundant presentation of essential information, provide adequate contrast between information and its surroundings, maximize legibility, use hierarchy, and provide compatibility across a variety of techniques or devices used by people with sensory limitations.

Psychopathology

Refers to the study of mental illness or mental distress, or the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness of psychological impairment.

Signifiers

Where affordances determine what actions are possible, signifiers communicate where the action should took place. Both are needed for accessible design. People need a way of understanding the product or service their wish to use. They can be deliberate or intentional (deliberate: a push sign on a door; unintentional: the use of a visible trail made by previous people walking through a field).

Size and Space for Approach and Use

Design that has low physical effort ensures that appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use, regardless of the user’s body size, posture, or mobility.

Sensory Design

Sensory design is the orchestration of spatial stimuli in built environments, arranged to cumulatively lift the quality of experience for the occupants they serve. 

Tolerance for Error

Design that minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions. It arranges elements to minimize hazards and errors, provides warnings of hazards or errors, provides fail safe features, and discourages unconscious action in tasks that require vigilance.

Agile Development

Agile development is an iterative methodology that allows projects to grow and develop over time, adapting around both the evolving needs of the client, and the research materials the project may generate. (p. 196)

Benchmarking

The process of comparing a proposed project to similar projects and their outcomes (to help determine cost and effectiveness). Typically, it involves the use of case studies to provide examples of any claimed benefits or harms. Cost, time, and quality are typically used as benchmarking variables. Benchmarking can be used on individual projects, or on companies as a whole to determine best practices and overall performance.

Co-design

Co-design is a well-established approach to creative practice, particularly within the public sector. It has its roots in the participatory design techniques developed in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Co-design is often used as an umbrella term for participatory, co-creation and open design processes.
Co-design reflects a fundamental change in the traditional designer-client relationship. The co-design approach enables a wide range of people to make a creative contribution in the formulation and solution of a problem.

Co-design

Co-design is a well-established approach to creative practice, particularly within the public sector. It has its roots in the participatory design techniques developed in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Co-design is often used as an umbrella term for participatory, co-creation and open design processes.
Co-design reflects a fundamental change in the traditional designer-client relationship. The co-design approach enables a wide range of people to make a creative contribution in the formulation and solution of a problem.

A form of graphic design that engages end users in the process of building a product, platform publication, or environment. Designers have learned that users are experts in their own domains, and designers view themselves not as controlling an end results but as putting a process into play that actively involves an audience. It emphasizes the users experience as design’s ultimate result, rather than emphasizing the physical feature of the object, website, or other outcome. It comes out of the realization that “non-designers” (when given the right tools) are well-equipped to envision experiences that will satisfy their needs and desires.

Collaboration

It is the idea that designers should work with individuals across disciplines (and outside of the “design world”) to address highly complex problems. See co-design and participatory design.

Consumer-led design

Promotes the production of anything that can be fitted into a market. Consumer-led design can ignore any issues of morality to allow the consumer to choose for themselves what they want to purchase (by deciding not to make something because of environmental impact, you are making it so the customer cannot choose for themselves). In consumer-led design, if someone will buy it, make it.

Contextual Interviews

Contextual interviews are conducted in the environment, or context, in which the service process of interest occurs. This ethnographic technique allows interviewers to both observe and probe the behaviour they are interested in. (p. 162)

Cultural Probes

Cultural probes are information gathering packages. Based around the principle of user-participation via self-documentation, the probes are usually given to research participants for a prolonged period of time, during which they can produce richly engaging material for design inspiration. (p. 168)

Customer Lifecycle Maps

(Also referred to as Customer Journey Maps)
A Customer Lifecycle Map is a holistic visualization of a customer’s overall relationship with a service provider. This may include a series of customer journeys over time; from the customer’s initial contact with a service, right through to the point where they eventually stop using it altogether. (p. 210)

Design Scenarios

Design scenarios are essentially hypothetical stories, created with sufficient detail to meaningfully explore a particular aspect of a service offering. (p. 184)

Desktop walkthrough

A Desktop Walkthrough is a small-scale 3-D model of a service environment. Employing simple props like Lego figures lets designers bring a situation to life, acting out common scenarios and helping develop prototypes. (p. 190)

Desirability

Desirability is made up of three basic elements:
Utility — what the service does, or offers the customer, at the functional level
Usability — how easy it is to interact with the service
Pleasurability —how pleasurable the interaction is at the emotional level

Expectation Maps

This involves investigating and charting what customers expect when they interact with a service. The map can either focus on one specific service, or take the more generalized form of analyzing a particular service category. (p. 176)

Focus groups

Small groups of of people specifically selected for insights on a design solution. The dynamic created by this group, when guided by a skilled moderator, can provide deep insights into themes, patterns, and trends. It is a qualitative method of research, and is used to gauge the opinions, feelings, and attitudes of a carefully selected group of participants. The moderator can help direct the discussion and ask questions.

Information architecture

Information architecture is the practice of deciding how to arrange the parts of something to be understandable. It’s in websites we use, apps and software we download, printed materials we encounter, and the physical places we spend time in. A good information architecture will help people to understand their surroundings and find what they’re looking for (in the real world and online). Practicing information architecture involves facilitating the people and organizations we work with to consider their structures and language thoughtfully.

Journey mapping

A visualization of the experiences people have when interacting with a product or service, so that each moment can be individually evaluated and improved. It tells the story about their actions, feelings, perceptions, and frame of mind (including all positive, negative, and neutral moments) as they interact with a multi-channel product or service over a period of time. It helps to shifts the designers focus to the larger context in which their products and services are used in the real world, and also pinpoints any moments that elicit a strong reaction. Journey-mapping is typically used with personas and scenarios documents, and multiple maps should be used for multiple personas.

Mobile ethnography

Mobile ethnography can be defined as ethnographic research that takes place independent of geography. This usually means that the researcher is not present in person, but the technique differs from cultural probes in that instead of participant’s being directed, the insights generated revolve around how participants choose to structure the research themselves. (p. 172)

Participatory design

A human-centered approach advocating active user and stakeholder engagement throughout all phases of research and the design process (including co-design activities). It encompasses several methods: cultural probes, diary studies, collage, flexible modelling, etc (with the belief that they all involve active consultation with users, clients, and other stakeholders in the design process). Participants help guide the design process, but should be paired with design expertise.

Personas

The personas are archetypes built after an exhaustive observation of the potential users. Each persona is based on a fictional character whose profile gathers up the features of an existing social group. In this way, the personas assume the attributes of the groups they represent: from their social and demographic characteristics, to their own needs, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds.

Service blueprint

Service blueprints are a way to specify and detail each individual aspect of a service. This usually involves creating a visual schematic incorporating the perspectives of both the user, the service provider and other relevant parties that may be involved, detailing everything from the points of customer contact to behind-the-scenes processes. (p. 204)

Service prototype

A service prototype is a simulation of a service experience. These simulations can range from being informal “roleplay” style conversations, to more detailed full scale recreations involving active user-participation, props, and physical touchpoints. (p.192)

Service staging

Service staging is the physical acting out of scenarios and prototypes by design teams, staff, or even customers in a situation that resembles a theatre rehearsal. Those participating will usually act out an encounter that one of the team has experienced, or explore a prototype situation. (p. 194)

Shadowing

Shadowing involves researchers immersing themselves in the lives of customers, front-line staff, or people behind the scenes in order to observe their behaviour and experiences. (p. 156)

Social Media

Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas and information and the building of virtual networks and communities. By design, social media is internet based and offers users easy electronic communication of personal information and other content, such as videos and photos. Users engage with social media via computer, tablet or smartphone via web-based software or web application, often utilizing it for messaging. Social media originated as a tool that people used to interact with friends and family but was later adopted by businesses that wanted to take advantage of a popular new communication method to reach out to customers. The power of social media is the ability to connect and share information with anyone on Earth (or multitudes of people) as long as they also use social media.

Stakeholder maps

A stakeholder map is a visual or physical representation of the various groups involved with a particular service. By representing staff, customers, partner organizations and other stakeholders in this way, the interplay between these various groups can be charted and analyzed. (p.150)

Storyboards

A storyboard is a series of drawings or pictures that visualize a particular sequence of events. This might include a common situation where a service is used, or the hypothetical implementation of a new service prototype. (p. 186)

Storytelling

(In the context of Service Design)
Storytelling supports the exploration of the service idea. Through the use of simple words, the teller will illustrate the solution as it is a story. This allows the communication of the idea inside a group but also the preparation of the first sketches for the storyboard.
The storytelling leave some blanks to be fill in by the suggestions of other stakeholders and users.

Service Design

Service design is a process in which the designer focuses on creating optimal service experiences. This requires taking a holistic view of all the related actors, their interactions, and supporting materials and infrastructures. Service design often involves the use of customer journey maps, which tell the story of different customers’ interactions with a brand, thus offering deep insights.
The term “service design” was coined by Lynn Shostack in 1982. Shostack proposed that organizations develop an understanding of how behind-the-scenes processes interact with each other because “leaving services to individual talent and managing the pieces rather than the whole make a company more vulnerable and creates a service that reacts slowly to market needs and opportunities.” 

User experience

Customer (or user) experience refers to the user’s emotions, attitudes, and opinions on using a particular product or service. It is a subjective experience (based on the individual), and dynamic (in that it can change over time the longer the individual interacts with it). A number of research techniques are used to determine the user experience (focus groups, observation, journey-mapping, etc).

User interface design

User interface (UI) design is the design of user interfaces for software or machines, such as the look of a mobile app, with a focus on ease of use and pleasurability for the user. UI design usually refers to the design of graphical user interfaces—but can also refer to others, such as natural and voice user interfaces. Since software is intangible, the only way a user can control or interact with it is through a designed user interface. A well-designed user interface creates a user experience that the designer intended and/or a user experience that the user appreciates. Many user interfaces are designed with a focus on usability and efficiency. A well-designed user interface becomes effectively invisible to those using it (they interact directly with the ‘reality’ the design portrays) At the other end of the spectrum, designers can—unethically—deliberately design user interfaces that are confusing—in order to trick users into purchasing or signing up for things they might not be interested in. These user interfaces are known as dark patterns.

User research

User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. This can include contextual interviews, focus groups, personas, etc.

Community-based design

One core value of community design is participatory decision-making, inviting suggestions from the community throughout the design and development process. Evaluation is a key element to measure impacts and to assess the process of activities and the role of intermediaries and local stakeholders. Community-Based design involves projects created for a specific community.

Community voice

The collective voice of a community. The voice of a community can be seen when joined together for a specific cause (ex public protests). A strong community voice can convey what the views of the public are.

Cultural Bias

Cultural bias is this tendency of judging the other person based on his/her cultural standards. It is a major hindrance in performing a cross-cultural research. A culturally biased person ignores the differences existing between his culture and those of others. Cultural bias can stereotype a culture. Cultural bias finds plenty of practical implications like in judicial decision-making, in employee perception in the workplace, in imparting education in classrooms, in giving health care, in the media, and in many other areas. It also has a profound impact on the mannerism and speech of a culturally biased person. For example, a judge while giving away a judgment knowingly or unknowingly has a specific feeling towards a party based on his or her cultural standards. This influence affects his or her verdict.

Design for Behaviour Change

Design for Behaviour Change is the idea that design has the potential to influence and alter human behaviour. These behavioural changes can may be either intentional or unintentional, and it’s important for creators to be mindful of the consequences of their work. Recently, it has become recognized as a tool for enabling social change and its potential for having a positive impact. An example of a product influencing both good and bad behavioural change would be the cell phone: positive change was seen in the ability to communicate more often and strengthen relationships; while a negative impact would be higher stress levels associated with the technology and unsafe behaviour such as texting and driving.

DIY Design

The debate of whether whether people outside of the profession should be encouraged to design elements of their own life (such as personal business cards, letterheads, wedding invitations, etc). Some argue (Ellen Lupton included) that by playing around with design they’ll become more educated in visual literacy and have a better understanding and appreciation for the profession. Others argue that by opening up design work to the public it will devalue the profession and diminish design’s authority.

Open source

Open source is a philosophy that promotes the free access and distribution of an end product, usually software or a program, although it may extend to the implementation and design of other objects. The term open source gained traction with the growth of the Internet because of the need to rework massive amounts of program source code. When source code is opened to the public it allows for the creation of different communication paths and interactive technical communities; it also leads to a diverse array of new models.

Public discourse

Discourse analysis is focused on the implicit meanings found in public discourse, text, and media. In the modern era, public discourse can be assessed in political or social debates, newspapers, magazines, television, film, radio, music, and web-mediated forums (Facebook, Twitter, and other public discussion). Research across a variety of disciplines has documented that dominant social groups tend to employ certain discursive strategies when discussing minority groups.

Public discourse is often structured in ways that marginalize minority groups and legitimize beliefs, values, and ideologies of more dominant groups. These discursive strategies include appealing to authority, categorization, comparison, consensus, counterfactual, disclaimers, euphemism, evidence, examples, generalizations, rhetorical questions, metaphors, national glorification, and directive speech acts. Evoking such discourse often enables prevailing dominant groups to reify majority social status, reinforce negative assumptions about minorities, and maintain a positive public social image, despite deprecating and, sometimes, dehumanizing references.

Public sphere

The “public sphere” is generally conceived as the social space in which different opinions are expressed, problems of general concern are discussed, and collective solutions are developed communicatively. Thus, the public sphere is the central arena for societal communication. In large-scale societies, mass media and, more recently, online network media support and sustain communication in the public sphere.

The English term “public sphere” is a translation of the German öffentlichkeit. The term translates into two related terms: “the public,” or the collective of speakers and listeners present in the public sphere, and “publicness,” or the state of being publicly visible and subject to scrutiny by the public. In communication studies, the concept of the public sphere has been applied to political as well as cultural communication. The term carries both a descriptive and a normative connotation. Normative theories of the public sphere usually specify ideal characteristics of public communication, as well as conditions conducive to their realization, and help to evaluate critically existing communication.

The most prominent normative theorist of the public sphere is German social theorist Jürgen Habermas (born in 1929) whose work has inspired a long-lasting and controversial debate in communication studies and beyond.

Social Capital

‘…the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance or recognition’ (Bourdieu 1986, p. 248)[18].’made up of social obligations (‘connections’), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the form of a title of nobility’ (Bourdieu 1986, p. 243).

Social capital consists of the economic resources obtained from the interactions between businesses and individuals or networks of individuals. The resources include those of tangible and non-tangible assets, such as information, innovative ideas, and financial support.

Social Change

Social change, in sociology, is the alteration of mechanisms within the social structure, characterized by changes in cultural symbols, rules of behaviour, social organizations, or value systems. There is a belief that design has the ability to influence and change human behaviour (see behaviour change) on an individual level, but is also capable of doing it on a larger scale to create change in society. A key to designing social change is a deep understanding of how the design of experiences must drive individual actions, which, when performed by many individuals, drives wide-scale, societal change.

Social Enterprise

Social enterprises are social mission driven organizations which apply market-based strategies to achieve a social purpose. The movement includes both non-profits that use business models to pursue their mission and for-profits whose primary purposes are social. Their aim is to accomplish targets that are social and/or environmental as well as financial: is often referred to as the triple bottom line. Many commercial businesses would consider themselves to have social objectives, but social enterprises are distinctive because their social or environmental purpose remains central to their operation.

Social Impact

Social impact includes benefits to social, humanitarian, community or environmental causes. It relates to socially responsible design. Design for social impact brings together social, environmental, humanitarian, sustainable, human-centered, public-interest, and other related design disciplines focused on creating positive change and lasting impact. Examples of design for social impact include: community or environmental impact initiatives, products for underrepresented communities, distribution systems, disaster relief, etc.

Social Innovation

Social innovation is the process of developing and deploying effective solutions to challenging and often systemic social and environmental issues in support of social progress.

Although social entrepreneurship has become a popular rallying point for those trying to improve the world, social change can happen outside of them. As a matter of fact, solutions have historically come from the nonprofit, private, and government sectors.

The concept of social innovation focuses attention on the ideas and solutions that create social value—as well as the processes through which they are generated, regardless of where they are coming from.

Standardization

Standardization is a framework of agreements to which all relevant parties in an industry or organization must adhere to ensure that all processes associated with the creation of a good or performance of a service are performed within set guidelines. This ensures that the end product has consistent quality and that any conclusions made are comparable with all other equivalent items in the same class.

Financial vitality

Financial vitality is a function of overall organizational vitality-- defined as the degree to which an organization has continually been successful in meeting performance expectations in the eyes of its clients, patrons, participants, staff, stakeholders and communities. It is these strengths, sustained over the long term, that result in an organization remaining strong, especially economically, over the long term.

Anthropocene

Paul Crutzen and colleagues introduced the term “Anthropocene” (e.g., Crutzen 2002; Steffen, et al. 2007) as a name for a new epoch in Earth’s history—an epoch when human activities have “become so profound and pervasive that they rival, or exceed the great forces of Nature in influencing the functioning of the Earth System” (Steffen 2010). Since the early 18th century, they suggest, we have moved from the Holocene into the Anthropocene.

They identify three stages in the Anthropocene: Stage 1, which lasted from c. 1800 to 1945, is called the “Industrial Era”; Stage 2, which extends from 1945 to c. 2015, is called the “Great Acceleration”; and Stage 3, which may now be starting, is a stage when people have become aware of the extent of the human impact and may thus start stewardship of the earth system. However, there are many scientists who suggest that the Anthropocene has a much-longer history than this scheme suggests, with early humans causing major environmental changes through such processes as the use of fire and the hunting of wild animals.

Behaviour Change

“There is a growing recognition that some of the challenges related to sustainable development are fundamentally social in nature.

They are social in terms of the behavioural drivers of consumption, how we choose to structure organisations and businesses and the behavioural assumptions underpinning many of the policies and interventions for sustainable consumption and production.

Many policies and interventions have assumed that humans behave in rational and predictable ways but how and why people and businesses behave is determined by many factors. For example, individual behaviour is deeply rooted in social situations, institutional contexts and cultural norms alongside cognitive factors. There are parallels with how businesses behave in the sense that organisational behaviour occurs within a broader context of innovation systems and sectors that embody institutional and cultural norms.”

Biomimicry

Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul.

The core idea is that nature has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers. After billions of years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.

Biodiversity

The term “biodiversity” was coined during the 1980s and refers to the totality of genes, species, and ecosystem in a defined space. It became a mainstream policy concern following the ratification of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. Although the instrumental-value arguments for biodiversity conservation gain most traction in policy, the term is also used as the modern-day label for a broader set of moral-aesthetic value arguments that have origins in social movements dating back to the 19th century. Key concerns have been the conservation of natural resources, avoiding the extinction of species and other forms of biological diversity, the protection of sites and landscapes with cultural and scientific value, and lately the maintenance and restoration of ecosystem services. Because its strategies involve the reservation and/or restrictions on the use of land, biodiversity conservation is a domain of significant politics and controversy.

Circular design

The concept of Circular Design can be described as the challenge to link together the concepts of Design for Sustainability and the Circular Economy, promoting a radical reshaping of current business approaches towards the development of sustainable and competitive products, services, and systems.

Circular economy

Looking beyond the current take-make-dispose extractive industrial model, a circular economy aims to redefine growth, focusing on positive society-wide benefits. It entails gradually decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources, and designing waste out of the system. Underpinned by a transition to renewable energy sources, the circular model builds economic, natural, and social capital. It is based on three principles:

1. - Design out waste and pollution
2. - Keep products and materials in use
3. - Regenerate natural systems

Climate change

In a nutshell, climate change occurs when long-term weather patterns are altered — for example, through human activity. Global warming is one measure of climate change, and is a rise in the average global temperature.

Co-design

Co-design is a well-established approach to creative practice, particularly within the public sector. It has its roots in the participatory design techniques developed in Scandinavia in the 1970s. Co-design is often used as an umbrella term for participatory, co-creation and open design processes.

Co-design reflects a fundamental change in the traditional designer-client relationship. The co-design approach enables a wide range of people to make a creative contribution in the formulation and solution of a problem.

A form of graphic design that engages end users in the process of building a product, platform publication, or environment. Designers have learned that users are experts in their own domains, and designers view themselves not as controlling an end results but as putting a process into play that actively involves an audience. It emphasizes the users experience as design’s ultimate result, rather than emphasizing the physical feature of the object, website, or other outcome. It comes out of the realization that “non-designers” (when given the right tools) are well-equipped to envision experiences that will satisfy their needs and desires.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

A growing number of businesses have recognized an increasing consumer demand for products and services from organizations that take responsibility for their impact on the environment, the communities where they operate, their employees, their stakeholders and the general public.

As a good corporate citizen, your business decisions will be aligned with an ongoing effort to make every impact of your business positive. For example, you may consider implementing innovative environmental measures into your operations, or developing a community outreach program that provides a needed service to less fortunate members of the community.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada promotes CSR principles and practices to Canadian businesses because it makes companies more innovative, productive, and competitive. CSR helps make Canadian business more competitive by supporting operational efficiency gains; improved risk management; favourable relations with the investment community and improved access to capital; enhanced employee relations; stronger relationships with communities and an enhanced licence to operate; and improved reputation and branding.

Cradle-to-cradle

Everything is a resource for something else. In nature, the “waste” of one system becomes food for another. Everything can be designed to be disassembled and safely returned to the soil as biological nutrients, or re-utilized as high quality materials for new products as technical nutrients without contamination.

Ecological vitality

Vitality refers, in ecology, to the success of an organism in translating nutrients or other inputs into growth. The word appears in numerous papers (for example, Aario et al., 2001; Šantrůček, Svobodová, & Hlavičková, 2003)⁠ describing the ability of an organism to survive in the context of its environment.

Ecological impact

Ecological impact is the effect of human activities and natural events on living organisms and their non—living environment.

Environmental design

Environmental design is a new approach in planning consumer products and industrial processes that are ecologically intelligent, sustainable, and healthy for both humans and our environment.

Eco-design

Eco-Design is not a specific method or tool, but rather a way of better design through analyzing and synthesizing in order to reduce environmental impacts throughout the product’s life cycle.

(Related terms: Sustainable Design)

Fair Trade

Fair Trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in the South.

Fair Trade organizations have a clear commitment to Fair Trade as the principal core of their mission. They, backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade.

Life cycle

Life cycle refers to the series of changes a product or system goes through from conception to disposal (it is also sometimes referred to as “cradle to grave” design). Life cycle design often incorporates the environmental impact into each phase of the product design so damages are minimized. It’s an important consideration of eco design.

Resiliency

“[…] the current, more ecological concept of resilience is not only about bouncing back and recovery but also about the ability to adapt, often discussed as adaptive capacity. In this context resilience is the capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining function, structure, feedbacks and, therefore, identity.”

Sharing economy

Sharing economy: focus on the sharing of under-utilized assets, monetized or not, in ways that improve efficiency, sustainability and community.

Collaborative economy: focus on collaborative forms of consumption, production, finance and learning (“collaborative consumption” is closest to the orthodox sharing economy definition).

Slow design

[…] a new evaluative tool to encourage design practices to orientate towards social, cultural and environmental sustainability under the rubric of ‘Slow Design.

'Slow Design' is a unique and vital form of creative activism that is delivering new VALUES for design and contributing to the shift toward sustainability.

Sustainable design

The process of developing products, services, and organizations that comply with the principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. There are many principles of sustainable design, including a customer-centric approach, dematerialization, transmaterialization, and biomimicry.

“Sustainism”

Despite the root word "sustain" in our term for the new culture, sustainism encompasses much more than just green practices. It's as much concerned with the internet, social media and open-source information. Amidst these global trends, we see a growing interest in what’s local, for example in our food (think of the 6,000-plus farmers’ markets in the U.S. alone). To put it simply, sustainism is where connectivity, new forms of localism and sustainable life styles meet. 

Sustainism (or whatever you wish to call the new culture) is bringing its distinctive style and perspective: diverse rather than uniform; effective instead of efficient; networked instead of hierarchical. It stands for the perspective of long-term investment and appropriate speed, rather than "quick return“ and "faster is better." From functionality to meaning, from space to place.

Transition Design

Transition Design acknowledges that we are living in ‘transitional times’. It takes as its central premise the need for societal transitions to more sustainable futures and argues that design has a key role to play in these transitions. It applies an understanding of the interconnectedness of social, economic, political and natural systems to address problems at all levels of spatiotemporal scale in ways that improve quality of life. Transition Design advocates the reconception of entire lifestyles, with the aim of making them more place-based, convivial and participatory and harmonizing them with the natural environment. Transition Design focuses on the need for ‘cosmopolitan localism’, (Manzini 2009; Sachs 1999) a lifestyle that is place-based and regional, yet global in its awareness and exchange of information and technology.

Transition economy

A transition economy is one that is changing from central planning to free markets. Since the collapse of communism in the late 1980s, countries of the former Soviet Union, and its satellite states, including Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, sought to embrace market capitalism and abandon central planning. However, most of these transition economies have faced severe short-term difficulties, and longer-term constraints on development.

Wicked problems

A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. Poverty is linked with education, nutrition with poverty, the economy with nutrition, and so on. These problems are typically offloaded to policy makers, or are written off as being too cumbersome to handle en masse. Yet these are the problems—poverty, ilitability, equality, and health and wellness—that plague our cities and our world and that touch each and every one of us. These problems can be mitigated through the process of design, which is an intellectual approach that emphasizes empathy, abductive reasoning, and rapid prototyping.

Open design

Open design is a means to producing a better product. It means sharing solutions, process and assets and gathering feedback from fellow designers, the design community and nondesigners alike

An Open Design project is part of a greater ecosystem that work for its development, which can reach increasing structure and complexity with these levels:

1. 1. A documentation of a design artifact, and the manufactured or final design artifact
2. 2. An open, collaborative and openly documented process that manages the whole life cycle of a design artifact
3. 3. An organization (community, company, foundation, ...) that extends the work of the founders of the project with participation, discussion, contribution
4. 4. An open, collaborative and openly documented budget that allocate costs and revenues
5. 5. An open, collaborative and openly documented governance that manages the processes, participation and budget of the project

Environmental systems theory

(Theory developed by psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner)

“The ecological systems theory holds that we encounter different environments throughout our lifespan that may influence our behavior in varying degrees. These systems include the micro system, the mesosystem, the exosystem, the macro system, and the chronosystem.

1. - The micro system's setting is the direct environment we have in our lives.
2. - The mesosytem involves the relationships between the microsystems in one's life.
3. - The exosystem is the setting in which there is a link between the context where in the person does not have any active role, and the context where in is actively participating.
4. - The macrosystem setting is the actual culture of an individual. 
5. - The chronosystem includes the transitions and shifts in one's lifespan.”

Sustainable Development

“Improving the quality of human life while living within the carrying capacity of the Earth’s supporting eco-systems”.

“Caring for the Earth: a Strategy for Sustainable Living”, IUCN/UNEP/WWF (1991).

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
This definition was created in 1987 at the World Commission on Environment and Development (the Brundtland Commission).

There are many ways to measure or define sustainability. As described in the book Natural Capitalism, in business, these should include the sustainable development and use of, at least, the following four types of capital:

1. - Financial Capital
2. - Manufacturing Capital
3. - Natural Capital
4. - Human Capital