53 Tech Terms You Need to Know as a UX Designer

Your A-Z list of tech terms in plain English

When I started working as a Junior UX Designer, I was a fish out of water. My knowledge about technology was limited. In meetings I would keep hearing these words, but had no clue what they meant. I’d get back to my desk and google what I’d heard, hoping no one would spot me!

Overtime, I found there were lots of people new in tech having the same issues. I decided to compile an A-Z list of tech words with explanations in plain English.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” (Albert Einstein)

A/B testing

A/B testing is a when you test two different versions of online content with users to see which one they prefer.

Agile

Agile development is a technique for incremental software development. It is an umbrella term for several different types of methodologies. It focuses on keeping code simple, testing often, and delivering functional parts of the application as soon as they’re ready.

Android

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google. It comes installed on a range of mobile phone and tablets.

API

This stands for Application Programming Interface. An API is how computers and web applications share information with each other. An example: an app finds the current weather in Sydney by sending a message to the weather.com API. The weather.com API then replies with a structured response.