User interface design in the context of Paper prototyping

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design (UX design); and search engine optimization. Often many individuals will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term "web design" is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing markup. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

Ergonomics, also known as human factors or human factors engineering (HFE), is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goals of human factors engineering are to reduce human error, increase productivity and system availability, and enhance safety, health and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and equipment.

The field is a combination of numerous disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, engineering, biomechanics, industrial design, physiology, anthropometry, interaction design, visual design, user experience, and user interface design. Human factors research employs methods and approaches from these and other knowledge disciplines to study human behavior and generate data relevant to previously stated goals. In studying and sharing learning on the design of equipment, devices, and processes that fit the human body and its cognitive abilities, the two terms, "human factors" and "ergonomics", are essentially synonymous as to their referent and meaning in current literature.

In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine from the human end, while the machine simultaneously feeds back information that aids the operators' decision-making process. Examples of this broad concept of user interfaces include the interactive aspects of computer operating systems, hand tools, heavy machinery operator controls and process controls. The design considerations applicable when creating user interfaces are related to, or involve such disciplines as, ergonomics and psychology.

Generally, the goal of user interface design is to produce a user interface that makes it easy, efficient, and enjoyable (user-friendly) to operate a machine in the way which produces the desired result (i.e. maximum usability). This generally means that the operator needs to provide minimal input to achieve the desired output, and also that the machine minimizes undesired outputs to the user.

User experience design (UX design, UXD, UED, or XD), upon which is the centralized requirements for "User Experience Design Research" (also known as UX Design Research), defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user's experience when using a product or platform. Research, data analysis, and test results drive design decisions in UX design rather than aesthetic preferences and opinions, for which is known as UX Design Research. Unlike user interface design, which focuses solely on the design of a computer interface, UX design encompasses all aspects of a user's perceived experience with a product or website, such as its usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. UX design is also an element of the customer experience (CX), and encompasses all design aspects and design stages that are around a customer's experience.

Vision science is the scientific study of visual perception. Researchers in vision science can be called vision scientists, especially if their research spans some of the science's many disciplines.

Vision science encompasses all studies of vision, such as how human and non-human organisms process visual information, how conscious visual perception works in humans, how to exploit visual perception for effective communication, and how artificial systems can do the same tasks. Vision science overlaps with or encompasses disciplines such as ophthalmology and optometry, neuroscience(s), psychology (particularly sensation and perception psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, biopsychology, psychophysics, and neuropsychology), physics (particularly optics), ethology, and computer science (particularly computer vision, artificial intelligence, and computer graphics), as well as other engineering related areas such as data visualization, user interface design, and human factors and ergonomics. Below is a list of pertinent journals and international conferences.

Cut, copy, and paste are essential commands of modern human–computer interaction and user interface design. They offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The cut command removes the selected data from its original position, and the copy command creates a duplicate; in both cases the selected data is kept in temporary storage called the clipboard. Clipboard data is later inserted wherever a paste command is issued. The data remains available to any application supporting the feature, thus allowing easy data transfer between applications.

The command names are a (skeuomorphic) interface metaphor based on the physical procedure used in manuscript print editing to create a page layout, like with paper.The commands were pioneered into computing by Xerox PARC in 1974, popularized by Apple Computer in the 1983 Lisa workstation and the 1984 Macintosh computer, and in a few home computer applications such as the 1984 word processor Cut & Paste.

In computing and user interface engineering, a selection is a list of items on which user operations will take place. The user typically adds items to the list manually, although the computer may create a selection automatically.

Selections are enacted through combinations of key presses on a keyboard, with a precision pointing device (mouse or touchpad and cursor, stylus), or by hand on a touchscreen device. The simultaneous selection of a group of items (either a subset of elements in a list, or discontinuous regions in a text) is called a multiple selection.

In user interface design, an interface metaphor is a set of user interface visuals, actions and procedures that exploit specific knowledge that users already have of other domains. The purpose of the interface metaphor is to give the user instantaneous knowledge about how to interact with the user interface. They are designed to be similar to physical entities but also have their own properties (e.g., desktop metaphor and web portals). They can be based on an activity, an object (skeuomorph), or a combination of both and work with users' familiar knowledge to help them understand 'the unfamiliar', and placed in the terms so the user may better understand.

An example of an interface metaphor is the file and folder analogy for the file system of an operating system. Another example is the tree view representation of a file system, as in a file manager.

In user interface design, a menu is a list of options presented to the user.

Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act "human," alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly.

The field of study surrounding interactive storytelling encompasses many disparate fields, including psychology, sociology, cognitive science, linguistics, natural language processing, user interface design, computer science, and emergent intelligence. They fall under the umbrella term of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), at the intersection of hard science and the humanities. The difficulty of producing an effective interactive storytelling system is attributed to the ideological division between professionals in each field: artists have trouble constraining themselves to logical and linear systems and programmers are disinclined to appreciate or incorporate the abstract and unproven concepts of the humanities.