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UI/UX Design Cheat Sheet

The core ideas of UI/UX Design distilled into a single, scannable reference — perfect for review or quick lookup.

PiqCue — piqcue.com/ui-ux-design/cheatsheet

Quick Reference

User-Centered Design (UCD)

A design philosophy and process that places the needs, behaviors, and limitations of end users at the center of every stage of the design process, from research through evaluation.

Information Architecture (IA)

The structural design of shared information environments, concerned with organizing, labeling, and categorizing content so users can find what they need and understand where they are within a product.

Wireframing and Prototyping

Wireframing creates low-fidelity skeletal outlines of a page's layout and content hierarchy. Prototyping builds interactive simulations of the product, ranging from clickable mockups to high-fidelity functional demos, enabling testing before development.

Usability Heuristics

A set of broad principles for evaluating interface design, most famously Jakob Nielsen's 10 heuristics, which include visibility of system status, match between system and real world, user control and freedom, consistency, error prevention, and recognition over recall.

Design Systems

A comprehensive collection of reusable components, patterns, guidelines, and principles that ensure consistency and efficiency across a product or family of products. Design systems typically include a component library, design tokens, and documentation.

Accessibility (a11y)

The practice of designing products that can be used by people of all abilities and disabilities, following guidelines such as WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). This includes considerations for visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments.

Interaction Design (IxD)

The design of the behavior of interactive products, focusing on how users engage with interfaces through actions like clicking, swiping, scrolling, and gesturing. It defines how a system responds to user input and communicates state changes.

User Research

Systematic investigation of users and their requirements through methods such as interviews, surveys, contextual inquiry, diary studies, and analytics analysis. User research informs design decisions with evidence rather than assumptions.

Visual Hierarchy

The arrangement and presentation of design elements in order of importance, using size, color, contrast, spacing, and typography to guide the user's eye through content in a deliberate sequence.

Usability Testing

An evaluation method where representative users attempt to complete specific tasks with a product while observers note difficulties, errors, and satisfaction levels. It can be moderated or unmoderated, remote or in-person.

Key Terms at a Glance

A/B Testing:A controlled experiment comparing two design variants to determine which performs better on a specific metric.
Accessibility:The practice of designing products usable by people with diverse abilities, guided by standards such as WCAG.
Affordance:A visual or physical property of an element that suggests how it should be used or interacted with.
Breadcrumb:A secondary navigation element that shows the user's current location within a site's hierarchy.
Card Sorting:A research technique where users organize content into categories to inform information architecture.
Color Theory:The study of how colors interact, combine, and affect human perception and emotion in design contexts.
Conversion Rate:The percentage of users who complete a desired action, such as signing up, purchasing, or clicking a call to action.
Design System:A comprehensive library of reusable components, tokens, patterns, and guidelines for consistent product design.
Design Tokens:Named values for colors, spacing, typography, and other visual properties stored in a platform-agnostic format.
Empathy Map:A collaborative tool summarizing what a user says, thinks, does, and feels to build shared understanding of user needs.
Figma:A browser-based collaborative design tool widely used for UI design, wireframing, prototyping, and design systems.
Gestalt Principles:Psychological laws describing how humans visually group elements by proximity, similarity, closure, and continuity.
Heuristic Evaluation:A usability inspection method where evaluators judge an interface against a set of established usability principles.
Information Architecture:The organization and structure of content within a digital product, including navigation, labeling, and categorization.
Interaction Design:The design of how users engage with a product through actions, animations, and system responses.

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UI/UX Design Cheat Sheet - Quick Reference Guide | PiqCue