UX Disciplines: Glossary - NN/G

Find the training option that fits your learning style.
October 23, 2026 2026-10-23
People often use terms such as UX, UI, CX, and visual design interchangeably, even though they refer to different fields of practice. This glossary focuses primarily on what each kind of work involves. Some of these terms (such as user experience and customer experience) also have other common meanings. For example, user experience can refer to the field of user experience or to the experience of users interacting with a particular product, while information architecture can refer to the field of information architecture or the content organization on a specific site. Where useful, we note these additional meanings.
Job titles in our field are not standardized. In our UX-careers survey, respondents reported 134 unique job titles related to UX. As a result, the boundaries described here are the typical ones; in any given organization, one person may do the work of several of these areas, and the same title may mean different things.
Some fields in this glossary (e.g., market research) are not traditionally part of UX but are adjacent to it and often confused with it; others (e.g., UX research) are subfields of UX.
In our self-paced course, Career Growth, learn how to take control of your UX and product career growth and achieve the raises, promotion, and experiences you've been wanting.
Agent experience (AX) is the practice of designing digital products and services so that they can be effectively understood and operated by AI agents when acting on behalf of people. Agent experience can include structuring information so that agents can interpret it reliably, tool descriptions and permissions that enable agents to operate, and APIs that allow agents to directly access an offering, without relying on a human-facing user interface.
Content design is the practice of determining what information users need, when they need it, and how to best provide it. It involves selecting, structuring, formatting, and presenting content based on user needs and context. Content designers usually have skills in both writing and design and may be responsible for information architecture, wireframing, and prototyping. Content design is broader than UX writing, which focuses on the words in the interface.
Content strategy is the ongoing practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable, and effective content. A content strategy specifies the purpose of the content, who owns and maintains it, its format and distribution, how it is organized, and how it fits into the overall user experience. In other words, content strategy is concerned with the processes around content, whereas UX writing and content design produce the content.
Conversation design is the discipline of designing the exchanges between users and systems that communicate in natural language, such as chatbots, voice assistants, and AI assistants built on large language models. It covers what the system says, how it asks for and confirms information, and what happens when it misunderstands the user. Conversation design combines interaction design and UX writing for interfaces in which the conversation is the main (or only) UI.
Customer experience (CX) has two meanings. As a discipline, CX is the practice of studying and improving the relationship between customers and an organization over the lifetime of that relationship.
As an experience, CX is the totality of a customer's interactions with an organization over time, across every touchpoint: advertising, purchase, customer support, post-purchase followup, and so on. UX and CX overlap considerably. Today, some people use “UX” to refer to the experience of a single type of interaction with a product (e.g., registering on a mobile app) and “CX” to refer to all interactions throughout the customer relationship.
Design operations (DesignOps) is the orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft to amplify design's value and impact at scale. In other words, DesignOps creates the team structures, workflows, and measures that allow a design team to do good work as it grows, so that designers can focus on designing. Common DesignOps roles include design program manager and design producer.
Employee experience (EX) has two meanings. As a discipline, EX involves studying and improving employees' experience of working for an organization, including the internal tools, processes, policies, and physical spaces they deal with.
As an experience, EX refers to employees' perceptions of their interactions with the organization. EX applies to employees the same approach that CX applies to customers. It is often owned by human resources; UX teams usually contribute through service design and through the design of internal software and intranets.
Experience design (XD) is an approach to creating high-quality, optimized experiences that encompasses all levels of the user's experience: individual interactions with specific products, the user's journey over time, and the customer's lifetime relationship with the organization. The term is used as an umbrella for UX, CX, service design, and product design, which share a focus on people, structured problem solving, iteration, and methods such as user research and journey mapping. In practice, experience designer is often an alternative job title for UX designer.
Graphic design is the discipline of communicating information visually through typography, imagery, color, and layout, in any medium: print, packaging, signage, advertising, and digital. Graphic design is much older than digital interfaces. Visual design in UX applies many of the principles of graphic design to interactive products.
Human factors and ergonomics is the discipline that studies how people interact with the systems, tools, and environments around them. It applies what it learns about human physical and cognitive capabilities and limitations to the design of equipment, systems,