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UX Deliverables: Glossary

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Curated: 27/08/2024 from www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-deliverables-glossary/
UX Deliverables: Glossary

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In UX, a deliverable is a document that serves as a record of work that has occurred.

UX practitioners produce a wide range of deliverables to communicate design ideas, research findings, and the context of projects to various audiences. Juggling all these different deliverables requires knowledge and understanding of many jargon terms. Use this glossary as a reference as you navigate various UX deliverables throughout a project’s lifecycle.

Jump to a definition in the table or review the complete glossary.

Affinity Diagram

Feasibility, Desirability, and Viability Scorecard

Process Map

Sketch Test

Analytics Report

Field Roadmap

Product Roadmap

Skill Map

Antipersona

Hierarchical Task-Analysis (HTA) Diagram

Promptframe

Specialty Roadmap

Archetype

Impact–Effort Matrix

Proto Persona

Stakeholder Persona

Asset map

Interactive UX Map

Prototype

Stakeholder Profile

Chronological Map

Interview Guide

Prototype Specification

Statistical Persona

Cognitive Map

Job-to-Be-Done

Qualitative Persona

Story

Concept Map

Journey Map

RACI Matrix

Storyboard

Content Audit

Kano Model

Relationship Map

Style Guide

Content Inventory

Landscape Map

Research Plan

Survey

CSD Matrix

Mind Map

Research Repository

Usability Report

Dashboard

Mockup

RICE Method

User Flow

Design System

Mood Board

Scenario Map

User-Story Map

Ecosystem Map

MoSCoW Analysis

Screener

UX Roadmap

Empathy Map

Paper Prototype

Service Blueprint

Wireflow

Experience Map

Persona

Site Map

Wireframe

Affinity Diagram (Affinity Map)

The clustering of information, often using sticky notes, into relational groups based on similarities or themes.

Analytics Report

A data report that describes what users do with a live product, such as their navigation paths, feature engagement, traffic sources, and exit points. This information can help monitor the performance of various content, UIs, or features in a product and identify what doesn’t work.

Antipersona

A representation of a user group that could misuse a product in ways that negatively impact target users and the business.

Archetype

An abstract representation of a user type, summarizing behaviors, attitudes, motivations, pain points, and goals without specific personal details like names or photos.

Asset Map

A high-level, chronological method of displaying and organizing all the screens and elements users encounter across channels when completing a workflow or journey, to assess its consistency.

Chronological Map

Visualization of the users’ experience over time. There are 3 types of chronological maps: experience map, service blueprint, and user-journey map.

Cognitive Map

A visual representation of a person’s (or a group’s) mental model for a process or concept. Cognitive mapping is free-form and can include numerous visualization methods, including bulleted lists, flowcharts, concept maps, mind maps, or affinity diagrams.

Concept Map

A graph in which nodes represent concepts and labeled, directed edges illustrate relationships between them.

Content Audit

An evaluation of the quality of the content listed in a content inventory. Content audits uncover content that needs updating, gaps for new content, and whether certain pieces of content are ready for removal.

Content Inventory

A list of every piece of digital content you currently have, captured at either the page or asset level. It includes specific characteristics about each piece.

CSD Matrix

A framework created by Tennyson Pinheiro, Luis Alt, and the team at Livework São Paulo for outlining and visualizing what everyone involved in a project knows (Certainties), hypothesizes (Suppositions), and doesn't know yet (Doubts).

Dashboard

A collection of data visualizations, presented in a single-page view that imparts at-a-glance information on which users can act quickly.

Design System

A complete set of standards intended to manage design at scale using reusable components and patterns.

Ecosystem Map

A visual representation of the people, organizations, products, and services that a user may interact with during a particular experience.

Empathy Map

A collaborative visualization used to articulate what is known about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to create a shared understanding of user needs and aid in decision making.

Experience Map

A visualization of an entire end-to-end experience that a “generic” person goes through to accomplish a goal. This experience does not involve a specific business or product. An experience map is used for understanding a general human behavior (as opposed to a customer-journey map, which is more specific and focused on a specific business).

Feasibility, Desirability, and Viability Scorecard

A prioritization method developed by IDEO that ranks items based on a sum of individual scores across feasibility, desirability, and viability. 

Field Roadmap

An expansion of the themes that a UX team owns on the product roadmap. It represents all future problems to be solved by UX (for example, related to design, research, or content) but does not include problems outside of UX (for example, in marketing, development, and support).

Hierarchical Task-Analysis (HTA) Diagram

A graphical representation of task analysis that breaks down a user’s process of achieving a goal into tasks and subtasks, illustrating the sequence and structure of actions needed to achieve that goal.

Impact–Effort Matrix (Prioritization Matrix)

A 2D-visual that plots relative user value against implementation complexity.

Interactive UX Map

A high-fidelity map that utilizes UI-design software to add interactive elements like revealing user-research data alongside specific findings or showing specific elements.

Interview Guide (Discussion Guide)

A guiding document used in structured interviews that lists interview questions and helps provide focus to the interview.

Jobs-to-Be-Done

A framework based on the idea that whenever users “hire” (i.e., use) a product, they do it for a specific “job” (i.e., to achieve a particular outcome). The set of “jobs” for the product amounts to a comprehensive list of user needs.

Journey Map (User-Journey Map or Customer-Journey Map)

A visualization of the process that a person goes through to accomplish a goal.

Kano Model

A prioritization framework published by Dr. Noriaki Kano where items are grouped into four categories according to user satisfaction and functionality and then plotted on a 2D graph.

Landscape Map

Arranging groups of similar content (usually written on sticky notes) into a preassigned structure (such as a customer-journey map) to understand relationships and patterns across items, groups, and time.

Mind Map

A tree that represents a central topic and its subtopics.

Mockup (UI Mockup or Design Comp)

A static, high-fidelity simulation of a proposed UI design that includes visual-design details such as colors and imagery.

Mood Board

A collage of images, video frames, patterns, or text that convey a certain feeling at a glance. 

MoSCoW Analysis

A prioritization framework created by Dai Clegg for clustering items into four primary groups: Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, and Will Not Have.

Paper Prototype

A low-cost, quick-to-create research tool that involves sketching out potential concepts, flows, or ideas on paper and testing those sketches with users.

Persona

A fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target product user.

Process Map

A visual representation of a zoomed-in view on a specific user or business process, used to understand how a given process works. Possible formats of process map include flowcharts, operational-sequence diagrams, or HTA diagrams.

Product Roadmap

A strategic document that represents all future problems that need to be solved, whether related to UX, marketing, content, design, research, development, support, or operations.

Promptframe

A design deliverable that documents content goals and requirements for generative-AI prompts based on a wireframe’s layout and functionality.

Proto Persona

A persona type meant to quickly align the team’s existing assumptions about who users are, but not based on (new) research.

Prototype

An early version of a design used to test and validate ideas, interactions, and functionality.

Prototype Specification (Prototype Annotation or Prototype Redline)

Text written next to a prototype and describing details, such as font size, line spacing, click effects, and active or inactive conditions of UI elements.

Qualitative Persona

A persona type based on small-sample qualitative research, such as interviews, usability tests, or field studies.

RACI Matrix (Responsibility-Assignment Matrix)

A framework outlining how individuals with different specializations will participate in tasks such as work phases, activities, and the creation of deliverables.

Relationship Map

A diagram of an organization's essential teams, people, and resources. The diagram is used to describe relevant resources under the control of these individuals, how they might help each other, and the manager of that person or team.

Research Plan

A document that outlines the research objectives and how the research will be executed.

Research Repository

A shared collection of UX-research elements designed to enhance organizational UX awareness and participation, as well as to support and streamline UX professionals' research activities.

RICE Method

A prioritization framework developed by Intercom that takes into account four factors: reach, impact, confidence, and effort to prioritize which features to implement.

Scenario Map

An ideation tool used in brainstorming workshops that helps UX teams visualize how persona segments might approach an activity using a product or service. It is meant to facilitate ideation for design solutions.

Screener

A questionnaire that gathers information about candidate participants’ experiences to quickly identify and prioritize optimal candidates that are representative of your target audience and exclude any candidates who may not be a “good fit” for your research study.

Service Blueprint

A diagram that visualizes the relationships between different service components — people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes — that are directly tied to touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Site Map

A visual representation of the organization of your site’s content.

Sketch Test

A research method of providing a deliverable to a colleague, asking them to create a brief sketch or summary of it, and then observing their output to identify and refine any confusing or unclear elements in the original document.

Skill Map

A collaborative activity used to visualize strengths and weaknesses of UX professionals and UX teams in order to take inventory of the existing team’s composition.

Specialty Roadmap

A subset of field roadmaps that focus only on problems within one UX area (for example, in user research).

Stakeholder Persona

A fictional character that represents a typical character from your stakeholder group.

Stakeholder Profile

An artifact to organize and understand stakeholder insights so they can be used strategically for a project’s success.

Statistical Persona

A type of persona that emerges from the statistical analysis of a large-sample survey informed by initial qualitative research.

Story (UX Story)

An account of events from the user’s perspective; the events in the story show the evolution of an experience.

Storyboard

An artifact that communicates a story through images displayed in a sequence of panels that chronologically maps the story’s main events.

Style Guide

A piece of documentation that contains specific guidelines, visual references, and design principles.

Survey

A questionnaire that collects participants’ self-reported perceptions and attitudes through a set of multiple-choice or open-ended questions.

Usability Report

A synthesis of findings, insights, and recommendations from a usability test.

User Flow

The typical or ideal set of steps needed to accomplish a common task performed with a product. User flows can be represented with artifacts such as wireflows, flow charts, or task diagrams. 

User-Story Map (Story Map)

A lean-UX map method used by Agile teams to visualize the interactions that the team expects users to go through to complete their goals in a digital product.

UX Roadmap (Roadmap)

A strategic, living artifact that aligns, prioritizes, and communicates a UX team’s future work and problems to solve.

Wireflow

A design-specification format that combines wireframe-style page-layout designs with a simplified flowchart-like way of representing interactions.

Wireframe

A skeletal outline of a design layout used to represent the structure and functionality of an interface before visual design is considered.

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The above notes were curated from the full post www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-deliverables-glossary/.

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