People often use terms such as UX, UI, CX, and visual design interchangeably, even though they refer to different fields of practice. This glossary focuses primarily on what each kind of work involves. Some of these terms (such as user experience and customer experience) also have other common meanings. For example, user experience can refer to the field of user experience or to the experience of users interacting with a particular product, while information architecture can refer to the field of information architecture or the content organization on a specific site. Where useful, we note these additional meanings.

Job titles in our field are not standardized. In our UX-careers survey, respondents reported 134 unique job titles related to UX. As a result, the boundaries described here are the typical ones; in any given organization, one person may do the work of several of these areas, and the same title may mean different things.

Some fields in this glossary (e.g., market research) are not traditionally part of UX but are adjacent to it and often confused with it; others (e.g., UX research) are subfields of UX.

Agent Experience (AX) Experience Design (XD) Marketing User-Interface (UI) Design
Content Design Graphic Design Motion Design UX Design
Content Strategy Human Factors and Ergonomics Product Design UX Research
Conversation Design Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Product Management UX Writing
Customer Experience (CX) Information Architecture (IA) Research Operations (ResearchOps or ReOps) Visual Design
Design Operations (DesignOps) Interaction Design (IxD) Service Design  
Employee Experience (EX) Market Research User Experience (UX)  

Agent Experience (AX)

Agent experience (AX) is the practice of designing digital products and services so that they can be effectively understood and operated by AI agents when acting on behalf of people. Agent experience can include structuring information so that agents can interpret it reliably, tool descriptions and permissions that enable agents to operate, and APIs that allow agents to directly access an offering, without relying on a human-facing user interface.

Content Design

Content design is the practice of determining what information users need, when they need it, and how to best provide it. It involves selecting, structuring, formatting, and presenting content based on user needs and context. Content designers usually have skills in both writing and design and may be responsible for information architecture, wireframing, and prototyping. Content design is broader than UX writing, which focuses on the words in the interface.

Content Strategy

Content strategy is the ongoing practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable, and effective content. A content strategy specifies the purpose of the content, who owns and maintains it, its format and distribution, how it is organized, and how it fits into the overall user experience. In other words, content strategy is concerned with the processes around content, whereas UX writing and content design produce the content.

Conversation Design

Conversation design is the discipline of designing the exchanges between users and systems that communicate in natural language, such as chatbots, voice assistants, and AI assistants built on large language models. It covers what the system says, how it asks for and confirms information, and what happens when it misunderstands the user. Conversation design combines interaction design and UX writing for interfaces in which the conversation is the main (or only) UI.

Customer Experience (CX)

Customer experience (CX) has two meanings. As a discipline, CX is the practice of studying and improving the relationship between customers and an organization over the lifetime of that relationship.

As an experience, CX is the totality of a customer's interactions with an organization over time, across every touchpoint: advertising, purchase, customer support, post-purchase followup, and so on. UX and CX overlap considerably. Today, some people use “UX” to refer to the experience of a single type of interaction with a product (e.g., registering on a mobile app) and “CX” to refer to all interactions throughout the customer relationship.

Design Operations (DesignOps)

Design operations (DesignOps) is the orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft to amplify design's value and impact at scale. In other words, DesignOps creates the team structures, workflows, and measures that allow a design team to do good work as it grows, so that designers can focus on designing. Common DesignOps roles include design program manager and design producer.

Employee Experience (EX)

Employee experience (EX) has two meanings. As a discipline, EX involves studying and improving employees' experience of working for an organization, including the internal tools, processes, policies, and physical spaces they deal with.

As an experience, EX refers to employees' perceptions of their interactions with the organization. EX applies to employees the same approach that CX applies to customers. It is often owned by human resources; UX teams usually contribute through service design and through the design of internal software and intranets.

Experience Design (XD)

Experience design (XD) is an approach to creating high-quality, optimized experiences that encompasses all levels of the user's experience: individual interactions with specific products, the user's journey over time, and the customer's lifetime relationship with the organization. The term is used as an umbrella for UX, CX, service design, and product design, which share a focus on people, structured problem solving, iteration, and methods such as user research and journey mapping. In practice, experience designer is often an alternative job title for UX designer.

Graphic Design

Graphic design is the discipline of communicating information visually through typography, imagery, color, and layout, in any medium: print, packaging, signage, advertising, and digital. Graphic design is much older than digital interfaces. Visual design in UX applies many of the principles of graphic design to interactive products.

Human Factors and Ergonomics

Human factors and ergonomics is the discipline that studies how people interact with the systems, tools, and environments around them. It applies what it learns about human physical and cognitive capabilities and limitations to the design of equipment, systems, and environments, with the goal of improving both human and system performance. It is often practiced in safety-critical domains such as aviation, healthcare, automotive design, and industrial control. The discipline of human factors predates UX, and several UX methods (such as task analysis) originated at least partly in human-factors work.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the academic discipline that studies how people use computers and how to design computing systems that people can use. It draws on computer science, cognitive psychology, and design. HCI is primarily an academic-research field; UX is mainly a professional field. The two overlap substantially, and UX draws heavily on HCI theories and methods.

Information Architecture (IA)

Information architecture (IA) is the practice of deciding how to organize and maintain the content of a website or application, the relationships among pieces of content, and how content is displayed in the navigation UI. IA is not part of the on-screen user interface; rather, IA informs the UI.

IA also refers to how the content and functionality of a particular site or application are organized and related.

Interaction Design (IxD)

Interaction design (IxD) is the discipline of designing how a product and its users respond to each other: what actions users can take, what feedback the system gives, and how the system’s state changes as a result of a user action. Interaction designers work on flows, controls, states, and behaviors. In contrast, visual design determines how these elements look.

Market Research

Market research refers to collecting information about markets, customers, competitors, demand, and attitudes to inform business decisions such as segmentation, pricing, positioning, and market strategy. In contrast, UX research studies users — their needs, behaviors, and interactions with a product or service — to inform design decisions. The two fields use many of the same research methods.

Marketing

Marketing is the discipline of positioning, communicating, and delivering products or services that provide both customer and business value. It includes understanding the market (i.e., market research), attracting potential customers, and engaging existing customers.

Motion Design

Motion design is the discipline of designing animations and transitions. In UX, motion is used mainly to give feedback that the system recognized an action, to communicate state changes, to help users understand where they are in a hierarchy, and to signal how users can interact with an element. Outside UX, motion design also includes animated graphics for video and advertising.

Product Design

Product design, in the software industry, refers to designing a digital product from end to end, with attention to business goals and product strategy, as well as to users. Product designer is often a job title for work that is similar to UX design but is concentrated on a single product; in some organizations, it implies more responsibility for the UI or a closer partnership with product management. (Outside software, product design usually refers to the design of physical objects.) Product design is different from product management, which is responsible for deciding what product to build and why (for example, setting the product strategy, roadmap, and priorities).

Product Management

Product management is the discipline responsible for creating a product strategy that delivers value to the business and to users, communicating that strategy to partners, and seeing it through to execution. Product managers decide what the product should do and why: they set the product vision and roadmap, prioritize features, and are usually accountable for the product's business results. Product management is different from product design and UX design, which determine how the product works for its users; the roles overlap in areas such as discovery and prioritization, and in most organizations product managers and designers work closely together.

Research Operations (ResearchOps or ReOps)

Research operations (ResearchOps) is the orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft to amplify the value and impact of research at scale. ResearchOps covers 6 areas: participants (recruiting, screening, scheduling, and compensating), governance (consent, privacy, and information storage), knowledge (collecting, synthesizing, and sharing insights), tools, competency (educating and onboarding others to do research), and advocacy (communicating the value of research in the organization). ResearchOps is often considered part of DesignOps.

Service Design

Service design is the discipline of planning and designing how people, processes, systems, and touchpoints work together to deliver a service. It considers the customers’ experience, the employees’ experience, and the organizational processes that make that experience possible. Service designers usually document a business’s resources (people, props, and processes) and how they relate to each other in service blueprints. Whereas UX is primarily focused on what the end user encounters, service design also considers how that user experience is created behind the scenes, inside the organization.

User Experience (UX)

User experience (UX) has two meanings. User experience as a discipline is focused on designing and enhancing the interactions and overall experience for all users of a product, service, or brand; it includes UX research, UX design, content design, information architecture, and several other specialties in this glossary.

User experience is also traditionally used to refer to the holistic relationship — encompassing perceptions, emotions, and interactions — between a person and a product, service, or organization. UX can exist at different levels: a single interaction, a journey involving multiple interactions, or the person’s overall relationship with the organization over time. Some use the term user experience to refer to the interaction-level experience, and customer experience to refer to the broadest, relationship-level experience.

User-Interface (UI) Design

User-interface (UI) design refers to designing a product's user interface: the set of components (e.g., buttons, clickable links), design elements (e.g., images, icons, headers), and interactions that comprise a product such as a website or application. UI design combines interaction design and visual design. The UI is one part of the user experience: a product can have a well-designed UI and still offer a poor experience if it lacks the content or functionality users need.

UX Design

UX design is the design practice within the UX field: designing products and services so that they are usable, useful, and appropriate for users' needs and context. UX designers may do interaction design, information architecture, prototyping, and some research; the exact scope varies by organization. UX design is one part of UX, alongside UX research, content design, and other specialties.

UX Research

UX research (also called user research) is the discipline of studying users' behaviors, needs, and motivations, as well as the context in which they might use a product. It can include actual users of a product or service, as well as prospective users. The goal of user research is to inform product-design decisions based on evidence rather than opinions. UX research uses qualitative and quantitative methods such as usability testing, interviews, field studies, diary studies, surveys, and analytics, and it can be done at any stage of product development. UX research can also be used to refer to a particular research effort or study involving data from human participants.

UX Writing

UX writing is the practice of writing carefully considered information that addresses people's contexts, needs, and behaviors. In other words, UX writers create clear, concise, and contextually appropriate copy (labels, buttons, error messages, instructions) that guides people through an experience. UX writing is narrower than content design, which also covers how content is structured and presented.

Visual Design

Visual design is the discipline of determining how design elements such as line, shape, color, grid, and space go together in a product's interface. When applied well, visual design can increase usability, provoke emotion, and strengthen brand perception; it goes beyond making layouts look aesthetically pleasing. In UX, visual design applies the principles of graphic design to interactive interfaces: visual design determines how elements look, and interaction design determines how they behave.