Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
126 results found in Interaction Design.
- Shared Visual Attention (Collective Visual Attention, Visual Joint Attention)
- A core feature of Deaf-centred interaction in which all participants coordinate their gaze, body orientation, and signing space so everyone can see the current signer, referenced content, and each oth…
- Shared control (Collaborative control, Blended control)
- A control paradigm in assistive technology where input from multiple sources — such as a wheelchair user and a companion, or a user and an autonomous system — is combined to produce a single action. S…
- Signifier (Perceived Affordance)
- A perceptible cue — visual, auditory, or tactile — that indicates how an element can or should be used, making an underlying affordance discoverable. In Don Norman’s refinement of affordance theory, t…
- Skeuomorphic Design (Skeuomorphism)
- A design approach in which digital interface elements are made to resemble their real-world physical counterparts in appearance and behavior. For example, a digital notepad might have lined paper text…
- Snap Turn (Snap Rotation, Comfort Turn)
- A virtual reality locomotion technique that rotates the user's viewpoint in discrete angular increments rather than continuous smooth rotation. Typically triggered by a thumbstick or controller input,…
- Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff (Speed-Accuracy Trade-off, SAT)
- A fundamental principle of human motor control where increased movement speed leads to decreased accuracy, and vice versa. Users can choose to move quickly and accept more errors, or move slowly and c…
- Subtle Interaction (Discreet interaction)
- A design approach in which interactions with a device or digital system are intentionally minimized in visibility, amplitude, or audibility to reduce social disruption, preserve user privacy, and supp…
- Supportive Empathy
- A therapeutic conversational stance in which a listener responds to another person's feelings with affirmation, validation, and gentle encouragement rather than problem-solving or interpretation. In m…
- Tangible Interface (Tangible User Interface, TUI)
- A user interface that uses physical objects as representations and controls for digital information, allowing users to interact through touch and manipulation of tangible artifacts. In accessibility c…
- Tangible interaction (Tangible user interface, TUI, Physical computing)
- An interaction paradigm in which users manipulate physical objects and materials to interact with digital information, bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds. Tangible interfaces lev…
- Tappability (Tap Target, Tappable)
- The property of a user interface element that indicates whether it can be activated by tapping on a touchscreen device. Tappability is a key concern in mobile accessibility because elements that appea…
- Target Size (Touch Target Size, Click Target Size, Hit Area)
- The physical dimensions of an interactive element on screen — such as a link, button, or checkbox — that a user must point to and activate. Adequate target size is critical for users with motor impair…
- Task-Specific Navigation (Task-Based Browsing, Goal-Directed Navigation)
- A web interaction paradigm where the interface adapts to surface content relevant to a user's specific task or goal, filtering or de-emphasizing irrelevant elements. Task-specific navigation contrasts…
- Technology acceptance model (TAM, UTAUT)
- A theoretical framework predicting how users come to accept and use a technology, originally proposing that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use determine adoption. The Unified Theory of Acc…
- Technology interdependence (Technological interdependence, Multi-tool strategy)
- The strategic use of multiple complementary technologies in combination to accomplish tasks that no single tool can fully support. For people with disabilities, technology interdependence is particula…
- Unimodal Interface (Single-Mode Interface)
- An interface that accepts input through only one mode or channel of interaction, such as keyboard-only, voice-only, or gesture-only input. In contrast to multimodal interfaces that combine multiple in…
- Unobtrusive Interaction (Unobtrusive Interfaces)
- A design orientation, associated with ambient, wearable, and assistive-technology research, that aims to minimise disruption to users' natural behaviour, attention, and social presence. Rather than de…
- User Agency (User Control, User Autonomy)
- The degree to which users maintain control over their interactions with a system, including the ability to make choices, adjust system behavior, override automated decisions, and understand what the s…
- User Elicitation (Elicitation study, Gesture elicitation study, User-defined gestures)
- A participatory user-research method, widely used in gesture and interaction design, in which end users or domain experts are shown a desired system effect (a "referent" such as "rotate this object") …
- Verification loop (Feedback loop, Edit-verify cycle)
- An interaction pattern in which a user performs an action, receives feedback about the result, evaluates whether the outcome matches their intent, and decides whether to accept, undo, or refine the ac…