Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
229 results found in Research Methods.
- Mixed Methods Research (Mixed Methods, Mixed Method Evaluation)
- A research approach that combines both quantitative methods (such as performance measurement and statistical analysis) and qualitative methods (such as interviews and thematic analysis) within a singl…
- N-back Task (N-back, 2-back Task)
- A working-memory paradigm in which participants view or hear a sequence of stimuli (letters, digits, positions) and, on each trial, respond when the current stimulus matches the one presented N steps …
- NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX, TLX)
- A widely used subjective workload assessment tool developed by NASA that measures perceived workload across six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and fr…
- Narrative-Flip Method (Narrative flip)
- A qualitative HCI research method in which participants first encounter a technology or artifact without knowing its origins or intent, reflect on it, and only afterwards are told its disability-led, …
- Native Signer (Native Sign Language User, L1 Signer)
- A person who acquired a sign language as their first language (L1) during the critical period of language development, typically before age 5. Native signers usually learned sign language from deaf pa…
- Networked Minds Social Presence Inventory (Networked Minds Measure of Social Presence, NMSPI)
- The Networked Minds Social Presence Inventory is a self-report questionnaire developed by Biocca, Harms and colleagues to measure social presence - the sense of 'being together' with another person - …
- Non-Use (Technology Non-Use, Technology Refusal)
- A research tradition in HCI that takes seriously the choice not to use a technology — treating refusal, abandonment, and selective engagement as meaningful, reasoned behaviour rather than as failure. …
- Normal-Hearing Listener (NH Listener, Normal Hearing)
- A research term for a participant whose audiometric thresholds fall within the clinical normal range (typically pure-tone thresholds of 25 dB HL or better across speech frequencies), used as a compari…
- Novelty Effect (Novelty bias)
- A research-methodology concept describing the tendency for users to behave differently with a new technology simply because it is new, rather than because of its enduring value. Novelty effects inflat…
- OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing, Online Analytical Processing, Data Cube)
- OLAP (on-line analytical processing) is a class of database technology that organises data into multi-dimensional 'cubes' — for example, sensor-firing counts indexed by room, time zone, day of week, a…
- Online Focus Group (Virtual Focus Group, Remote Focus Group)
- A qualitative research method in which a group of participants discusses a topic through an online platform rather than meeting in person. Online focus groups are particularly valuable for accessibili…
- Operant Conditioning (Instrumental Conditioning, Operant Learning)
- A learning process in which behaviour is modified by its consequences — specifically, by reinforcement (rewards that increase the likelihood of the behaviour) or punishment (consequences that decrease…
- PICTIVE (Plastic Interface for Collaborative Technology Initiatives through Video Exploration)
- PICTIVE is a participatory paper-prototyping technique introduced by Michael Muller at CHI 1991, in which end users and designers jointly build low-fidelity interface prototypes using pre-cut paper UI…
- PRISMA-ScR (PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews)
- PRISMA-ScR is the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews - a 20-item checklist and flow diagram that standardises how scoping reviews are repo…
- Part-of-Speech Tagging (POS Tagging, Grammatical Tagging)
- Part-of-speech tagging is the natural-language-processing task of labelling each word in a text with its grammatical category — noun, verb, adjective, and so on — using context from surrounding words.…
- Participatory Design (PD, Cooperative Design, Scandinavian Design)
- A design approach originating in Scandinavian workplace democracy movements that emphasizes the direct involvement of people in the design of technologies and systems that affect them. Participatory d…
- Perceptual Analysis (Perceptual Judgment, Auditory-Perceptual Analysis)
- A method of evaluating speech, voice, or other sounds based on a human listener's subjective auditory impressions rather than instrumental measurement. In clinical speech-language pathology, perceptua…
- Perceptual Learning (Visual Perceptual Learning, PL)
- A long-studied phenomenon in vision science in which repeated exposure to, or training on, specific perceptual features — color, orientation, spatial location, shape — produces durable improvements in…
- Persona Design (Design Personas, User Personas)
- A user-centered design technique in which designers create fictional but grounded profiles of representative users — demographics, goals, context, pain points — to guide design decisions when direct u…
- Personal Data Externalization (Data Externalization)
- The process of representing internal experiences — thoughts, emotions, behaviours, bodily states — in some external medium such as a drawing, written word list, spreadsheet, physical artefact, or trac…