Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
110 results found in Human-Computer Interaction.
- User Frustration (Computer Frustration, Technology Frustration)
- The emotional response experienced by users when technology fails to meet their expectations or prevents them from completing tasks. User frustration can be caused by errors, confusing interfaces, ina…
- User Interface Agent (Interface Agent, Software Agent, Assistant Agent)
- A software component that observes user behaviour and the state of an application, then unobtrusively offers help — suggestions, shortcuts, summaries, or warnings — to reduce workload or prevent error…
- User-System Model (User-System Interaction Model)
- A conceptual model that describes the relationship between a user and the technology system they interact with, taking into account the user's abilities, preferences, and needs alongside the system's …
- Voice Assistant (Smart Speaker, Voice-Activated Assistant, Conversational Agent)
- A software application that uses speech recognition and natural language processing to respond to voice commands and perform tasks. Common examples include Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple Si…
- WIMP (Windows Icons Menus Pointer)
- An acronym for Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers — the dominant graphical user interface paradigm used by most desktop operating systems since the 1980s. WIMP interfaces rely on a pointing device (t…
- Wizard of Oz (WoZ, Wizard of Oz Testing, Wizard of Oz Prototyping)
- A research and design method in which a human operator (the "wizard") secretly controls or simulates system responses that participants believe are automated. In accessibility research, Wizard of Oz s…
- Wizard-of-Oz (WOZ, Wizard of Oz Method, WOZ Study)
- A research methodology where participants interact with what they believe is an autonomous system, but a human "wizard" is secretly operating it behind the scenes. Named after the 1939 film, this tech…
- Wizard-of-Oz Study (WOz Study, Wizard of Oz Method, WOz Technique)
- A research methodology in human-computer interaction where participants believe they are interacting with an autonomous system, but a hidden human operator (the "wizard") is actually controlling some …
- Wrapping (Focus Wrapping, Cursor Wrapping)
- An interface navigation technique where the focus or cursor automatically returns to the beginning of a line, list, or group of elements when it reaches the end, or vice versa. In accessible interface…
- Zipf's Law
- A statistical observation that in any natural language corpus, the frequency of a word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. The most common word occurs roughly twice as often …