Glossary

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Access as Friction

A disability-studies framing, articulated by Jackson, Haagaard, and Williams, that reframes accessibility work as productive friction rather than seamless accommodation. Rather than smoothing every interaction, "access as friction" calls for designs that make users pause,…

Anthropomorphism(also: Humanization, Anthropomorphization)

The attribution of human characteristics, emotions, intentions, or behaviors to non-human entities such as technology, animals, or objects. In assistive technology and conversational AI design, anthropomorphism raises important questions about how human-like an interface should…

Boundary Object

A concept introduced by Star and Griesemer (1989) for artefacts, documents, or concepts that are flexible enough to be used across different communities of practice while retaining a recognisable identity in each. Boundary objects let disabled people, designers, researchers,…

COM-B Model(also: COM-B, Capability Opportunity Motivation Behaviour Model)

A behaviour-change framework proposed by Michie, van Stralen, and West (2011) that identifies three necessary conditions for behaviour to occur: Capability (physical and psychological ability, including skills and knowledge), Opportunity (physical and social environment that…

Causal Listening

A mode of listening, identified by composer and theorist Pierre Schaeffer, in which the listener focuses on identifying the source or cause of a sound — for example, hearing crumpling paper and recognising it as something being discarded, or hearing a camera shutter and…

Communicational Accessibility(also: Communicative Accessibility)

An approach to accessible design that goes beyond providing access to raw content (content accessibility) to preserving the designer's intended communicative strategy across all modalities and for all users. Where content accessibility asks "can the user access the…

Critical Technical Practice(also: CTP)

A research stance, articulated by Philip Agre in 1997, in which technologists reflect critically on the assumptions built into their own systems while continuing to build. Critical technical practice argues that technologies embody theory—every design choice encodes a…

Design Fiction(also: Speculative Fiction, Diegetic Prototype)

A design research practice that creates fictional but plausible artifacts, scenarios, or narratives set in imagined futures to provoke discussion, surface assumptions, and explore the social and ethical implications of emerging technologies. Unlike traditional prototyping,…

Design Justice

A framework that centers the perspectives of people who are most impacted by design decisions, ensuring that design processes, practices, and outcomes distribute benefits and burdens equitably. Coined by Sasha Costanza-Chock, design justice challenges traditional design power…

Designing with Friction(also: Friction by Design)

An HCI design stance, associated with Matthias Korn and Amy Voida, that argues for deliberately introducing friction into interactive systems to surface politics, provoke reflection, and enable democratic contention — rather than pursuing frictionless user experience as a…

Distributed Cognition(also: DCog)

A theoretical framework developed by Edwin Hutchins that views cognitive processes as distributed across individuals, artifacts, and the environment rather than confined to a single mind. In accessibility contexts, distributed cognition helps explain how people — particularly…

Editorial Enunciation(also: Visual Enunciation)

A semiotic concept describing how the visual layout and organisation of an interface communicates meaning beyond the content it contains. Editorial enunciation encompasses the spatial arrangement, sizing, positioning, and visual hierarchy of interface elements — all of which…

Emotional Design

A framework developed by Don Norman describing how people evaluate and form attachments to products through three cognitive levels: visceral (immediate sensory and aesthetic responses), behavioral (functional performance and usability), and reflective (personal meaning,…

Ergonomics(also: Human factors engineering)

The scientific discipline concerned with understanding interactions between humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data, and methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance (IEA…

Execution Gap(also: Gulf of Execution)

From Don Norman's model of human-computer interaction, the distance between a user's goals and the physical actions required to achieve them using a given system. A system with a wide execution gap forces users to translate what they want into technical commands, parameters, or…

Feminist HCI

An approach to human-computer interaction research and design articulated by Shaowen Bardzell that brings feminist theory, values, and methods into HCI practice. Feminist HCI foregrounds pluralism, embodiment, ecology, advocacy, self-disclosure, and participation; critiques…

Flourishing(also: Developmental Flourishing, Human Flourishing)

An orientation in design and HCI that measures success not by task completion or outcome equivalence but by the extent to which a system supports individuals' subjective well-being, personal significance, agency, and ongoing development. The concept draws on positive psychology,…

Gulf of Execution

A concept from Don Norman's theory of action describing the gap between a user's intention and the actions available to achieve that goal through an interface. When the gulf of execution is large, users struggle to figure out how to operate a system to accomplish their…

Implicit User(also: Model User, Implied User)

A concept from semiotic engineering describing the hypothetical user that a designer envisions when creating an interface — encompassing assumptions about the user's behaviour, experience, competence, expectations, and goals. Every interface carries an implicit user embedded in…

Playful Interaction(also: Playful design)

A design stance that treats play — voluntary, intrinsically motivated, rule-structured activity — as a core property of interactive systems rather than a surface layer of rewards or points. Playful interaction emphasizes the felt experience of users (curiosity, challenge, flow,…

Positive Computing(also: Positive Technology)

A design approach articulated by Rafael Calvo and Dorian Peters (2014) and extended by Riva, Gaggioli and colleagues that intentionally orients information and communication technology toward supporting psychological wellbeing, human flourishing, and positive emotion — rather…

Positive Design(also: Design for Subjective Well-Being)

A design framework, articulated by Desmet and Pohlmeyer, that explicitly targets human flourishing by attending to three components of subjective well-being: pleasure (positive affect in the moment), personal significance (pursuit of meaningful goals), and virtue (acting in line…

Posthumanism(also: Posthumanist Design, More-than-Human Design)

A theoretical orientation in design and HCI that decenters the human as the sole agent of value and instead considers nonhuman animals, plants, ecosystems, and even technological artifacts as participants in design contexts. Posthumanist and more-than-human framings push…

Relational Sovereignty

A framework proposed by Jang, Carrington and Begel (2026) as a new goal (telos) for socially assistive technology, defined as the recognised authority of a disabled person to choose their relational mode — acting independently or interdependently — and to set the terms on which…

Semantic Listening

A mode of listening, identified by composer and theorist Pierre Schaeffer, in which the listener focuses on decoding a coded audio signal to arrive at its intended message — for example, understanding a musical motif as representing a particular region or culture. Semantic…

Semiotic Engineering(also: Semiotics of HCI)

A theoretical framework developed by Clarisse Siqueira de Souza that views human-computer interaction as a form of designer-to-user communication mediated by the interface. In this model, the interface is not merely a tool but a message from designers to users, carrying an…

Slow Design

Slow design is a design philosophy that emphasizes thoughtful, reflective, and sustained engagement over efficiency and speed. Inspired by the slow food movement, it values deeper contemplation, longer development timelines, and meaningful user experiences. In museum and gallery…

Sociotechnical Identity

The aspect of personal identity that is constructed and expressed through the technologies a person uses. In assistive technology research, sociotechnical identity refers to how AT serves as a vehicle conveying both functional ability and social identity. The concept recognizes…

Somaesthetics

Somaesthetics is a philosophical discipline, developed by Richard Shusterman, that treats the living, sentient, purposive body (the soma) as both a locus of aesthetic appreciation and a medium of creative self-fashioning. It integrates analytical, pragmatic, and practical…

Speculative Design(also: Design Fiction, Critical Design)

A design approach that uses conceptual proposals and provocative artifacts to explore possible futures, challenge assumptions, and stimulate debate rather than solve immediate practical problems. In accessibility research, speculative design is used to imagine alternative…

Stage-Based Model(also: Stage-Based Model of Personal Informatics)

A model of personal-informatics use, introduced by Ian Li, Anind Dey, and Jodi Forlizzi (2010), describing how people move through five stages of self-tracking: preparation (deciding to track), collection, integration, reflection, and action. The model made early contributions…

Tactile Semiotics

The study and theory of how meaning is communicated through touch, drawing on broader semiotic principles that every media channel has rules or encodings for conveying meaning. Tactile semiotics examines how physical properties of tactile objects—such as roughness, height,…

Wicked Problem

A problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Wicked problems resist traditional problem-solving approaches because effects cannot be isolated, outcomes are unpredictable,…

World-Making(also: Worldmaking)

World-making, drawing on Nelson Goodman's 'Ways of Worldmaking' and extended in disability scholarship by Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, refers to the active construction of shared social worlds through symbols, practices and routines rather than the passive inhabitation of fixed…

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