UX/UI Design Principles Study Guide: 101 Flashcards on EDIPT, ISO 9241, WCAG and Usability Testing

UX and UI courses throw acronyms at you from the first week: EDIPT, ISO 9241, WCAG, POUR, IFIP, HCI. The UX/UI Design Principles deck (code AL7465, 101 cards) on Flip It turns all of them into question-and-answer pairs, so the frameworks stick before the exam or the interview.

Sample cards

Each card asks for a definition, a list or a distinction and answers in one or two sentences:

Everything the 101 cards cover

• Foundations: UI design, UX design, the UI-vs-UX distinction (look and feel vs the whole experience), the three interface types (GUI, voice, gesture), human-computer interaction, human factors and ergonomics as the historical root of UX, customer experience (CX).
• Design thinking: the five EDIPT stages one by one, iteration, semi-structured interviews in the Empathize stage, why designers set aside personal beliefs.
• ISO 9241 in depth: the seven dialogue principles (suitability for the task, self-descriptiveness, controllability, conformity with user expectations, error tolerance, suitability for individualization, suitability for learning), the seven presentation attributes, the five means of user guidance, what good feedback should be (timely, perceptible, non-intrusive), the four dimensions of the IFIP reference model.
• Usability evaluation: usability testing, cognitive walkthrough, heuristic evaluation, pluralistic walkthrough, think-aloud protocol, A/B testing, user experience evaluation, and the reminder that you test the design, not the user.
• UX practice: information architecture, findability, metadata, interaction design, visual design, personas, user flow diagrams, storyboards, wireframes, mockups, paper prototyping, contextual inquiry, field studies, artifact models, the four UX specification deliverables.
• Approaches and roles: user-centered, activity-centered and participatory design, user advocacy, interaction designers (IxD), UX writers, visual designers, UX researcher and information architect job titles.
• Accessibility: WCAG and POUR, screen reader compatibility, learning curve, attentive user interfaces, Gestalt psychology in visual communication.

Two study tips for this deck

Learn the ISO 9241 lists as sets of seven, seven and five. The deck has 7 dialogue principles, 7 presentation attributes and 5 means of guidance, and exam questions mix them up on purpose. Before flipping, say which list the term belongs to: controllability is a dialogue principle (feel), discriminability is a presentation attribute (look), prompts are user guidance. Sorting by list first makes the individual definitions almost self-evident.

Pair the four inspection methods by who does the inspecting. Heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough are done by experts without users; think-aloud protocol and pluralistic walkthrough involve real users or a mixed group. That single axis separates four cards that otherwise read alike.

How to run it

Do the 101 cards in two sittings: foundations, design thinking and ISO 9241 first (about half the deck), then evaluation methods, UX practice and accessibility. Cards you miss, typically the seven-item lists, resurface sooner through spaced repetition until you can recite them in order.

Log in to Flip It, search deck code AL7465 in the library, and start with EDIPT.