Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
126 results found in Interaction Design.
- Omakase (Omakase mode, I leave it to you)
- A Japanese word — literally 'I leave it to you' — adopted in human-robot interaction and assistive-AI research to describe a mode of user involvement in which the person defers all decisions to the sy…
- On-Body Interaction (Body-centric interaction, Skin input, On-body input)
- An interaction paradigm that uses the surface of the user's own body as an input medium, typically through gestures like taps, swipes, or touches on the skin. On-body interaction leverages tactile and…
- Overview+Detail (Overview and Detail)
- A visualization interaction paradigm that presents a smaller overview view alongside a larger detail view, letting users navigate the whole while inspecting a part. Common in maps, document readers, a…
- Page Structure Preservation (Layout Preservation, Structure Retention)
- The principle of maintaining the original spatial layout and DOM structure of a webpage when applying accessibility enhancements, content filtering, or other modifications. Preserving page structure e…
- Paper Prototyping (Lo-Fi Prototyping, Low-Fidelity Prototyping)
- A rapid design technique that uses paper, cardboard, and other simple materials to create tangible representations of product concepts before investing in digital or electronic implementation. Paper p…
- Passive Exploration (System-Directed Presentation)
- An interaction paradigm in non-visual interfaces where a complete representation of information is presented to the user all at once, rather than being discovered through user-directed navigation. In …
- Personalization (User Personalization, Interface Personalization)
- The adaptation of digital content, interfaces, or experiences to individual user preferences, needs, and contexts. In accessibility, personalization is essential because people with the same type of d…
- Playful Interaction (Playful design)
- A design stance that treats play — voluntary, intrinsically motivated, rule-structured activity — as a core property of interactive systems rather than a surface layer of rewards or points. Playful in…
- Proactive Prompt (Proactive Cue)
- In voice-interface and conversational-agent design, a system-initiated utterance or visual cue that surfaces a suggestion, reminder, or next step without the user first asking. Examples include sugges…
- Procedural Accessibility
- An aspect of web accessibility that addresses the consistency and clarity of interaction sequences and workflows within digital systems. Procedural accessibility ensures that similar services follow t…
- Prompt engineering (Prompt design, Prompt crafting)
- The practice of designing and iteratively refining natural language inputs to large language models to elicit more accurate, relevant, or useful responses. In accessibility contexts, prompt engineerin…
- Pull Notification (On-Demand Notification, User-Initiated Notification)
- A notification or information delivery model where content is provided only when explicitly requested by the user, in contrast to push notifications which are delivered automatically. In assistive nav…
- Put That There (Put-That-There)
- A pioneering multimodal interactive system built at MIT's Architecture Machine Group (1979-1980), reported by Bolt (1980) and further developed by Schmandt and Hulteen (1982). Users seated in a 'media…
- Redundant Input (Redundant Input Channels, Multimodal Redundancy)
- A design approach in which a user interface accepts the same command through more than one input channel — for example, voice and gesture, keyboard and pointer, or speech and switch — so that users ca…
- Relevance Threshold (Filtering Threshold, Display Threshold)
- A user-adjustable cutoff value that determines which content elements are displayed or hidden based on their relevance scores. Elements scoring above the threshold are shown; those below are de-emphas…
- Row-Column Scanning (RCS, Grid Scanning, Two-Switch Scanning)
- The most widely used single-switch selection method for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices and on-screen keyboards. Options are arranged in a two-dimensional grid, and the interf…
- Scrubbing (Video Scrubbing, Timeline Scrubbing)
- The interaction of dragging a playhead across a video or audio timeline to preview content at arbitrary positions, typically with real-time visual or audio feedback. Scrubbing is ubiquitous in video e…
- Semantic Grounding (Meaning Grounding, Form-Meaning Mapping)
- A design principle in which practice or interaction is accompanied by explanations that connect the form of an action to its underlying meaning, rather than treating the action as an arbitrary symbol …
- Semantic Redundancy (Redundant Multimodal Input)
- A design strategy in multimodal interfaces where the same command or message is conveyed simultaneously through multiple input channels, each independently signalling the user's intent. For example, a…
- Shared Movement (Linked Locomotion, Guided Movement)
- A virtual reality interaction technique that allows one user to move through a virtual environment by attaching to or following another user's avatar, inspired by the physical sighted guide technique …