UX Encyclopedia

Platforms & devices

From responsive web to cockpits: what changes when the screen, the context, or the user changes.

Responsive Web Design

Fluid grids + flexible images + media queries. Modern additions: container queries (style by component's own width), clamp() fluid type, logical properties (RTL-safe),…

Mobile App Design

Read with the relevant design-system summary (04-design-systems/) when matching platform conventions closely.

Desktop Software & Professional Tools

Desktop = precision pointer, physical keyboard, big/multiple displays, long sessions, multitasking. Design for throughput and mastery.

Designing AI-Powered Interfaces

Chat assistants, copilots, generative tools, and agentic products share one defining property: probabilistic output. The system will sometimes be wrong, and unlike a broken…

Voice & Conversational Interfaces

Voice is invisible, linear, and ephemeral: users can't scan, can't see options, and can't re-read. Everything must be carried by dialog design. (For chat/LLM product UX…

Wearables & Smartwatch Design

The watch is the most interruption-driven, lowest-attention screen a person owns. Design for interactions measured in seconds, on a screen measured in millimeters, worn on…

TV & 10-Foot Interface Design

Viewers sit ~3 m / 10 feet away, hold a remote with five useful buttons, and are in lean-back mode — often with other people in the room. Every TV design decision derives…

Virtual Reality Design

VR replaces the user's entire sensory environment. The stakes are physical: bad VR design causes real nausea and fatigue. Comfort is requirement zero.

Augmented Reality Design

AR overlays digital content on physical reality (phone/tablet passthrough, or headsets/glasses). The physical world is an uncontrolled variable in your layout — design for…

Smart Glasses & AI Wearables

Everyday-wear glasses with cameras, mics, AI assistants, and sometimes a small heads-up display — worn all day in public, unlike the immersive headsets in Virtual Reality…

Automotive UX

Driving is the primary task; everything in the cabin is secondary, competing for a safety-critical resource — the driver's eyes and attention. Design for glances and…

Aviation, Marine & Drone Interfaces

Cockpits, helms, and ground control stations: trained operators, real weather, real consequences. Design for the worst hour, not the demo. (For cars and driver distraction,…

Human-Robot Interaction & Designing for Machine Users

Part 1 covers human-robot interaction (HRI) — a mature research field (its own ACM/IEEE conference since 2006) about humans sharing physical space with embodied machines.…

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