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Crooked Pixels

Musings about design, technology and everything in between.

Written by Charles Lim aka Ched

The Crooked Lexicon

A glossary for people who build things.

My favourite terms with definitions for the concepts behind design, technology, and human behaviour.

Common Fate
Design

Common Fate

Common fate is a Gestalt principle of perception stating that visual elements moving in the same direction and at the same speed are perceived as a single group, regardless of differences in their colour, shape, or position. It is regarded as one of the strongest grouping cues in visual perception.

Figure/Ground
Design

Figure/Ground

Figure/ground is a Gestalt principle of perception describing how the visual system separates a scene into a focal object, the figure, and its surrounding background, the ground. The relationship can be stable or ambiguous, as in reversible images like Rubin's vase, where figure and ground compete for the viewer's attention.

Proximity
Design

Proximity

Proximity is a Gestalt principle of visual perception stating that elements placed close together are perceived as a related group, while elements spaced further apart are seen as separate. In interface and graphic design, spacing alone can communicate grouping and hierarchy without borders, lines, or explicit labels.

Constraint Design
Design

Constraint Design

Designing around limitations rather than removing them, treating constraints as features that shape better outcomes.

The Manipulation Loop
Technology

The Manipulation Loop

The learning feedback cycle of making, observing the result, and adjusting: understanding comes from interaction, not instruction.

Friction as Failure
UX

Friction as Failure

When the process of accessing an experience degrades the experience itself, extending UX responsibility to everything before and after the product.

Chesterton's Umbrella
Design

Chesterton's Umbrella

The impulse to redesign a functional object when the real problem is how people use it.

Habit Loop
Humanity

Habit Loop

The self-reinforcing cycle of cue, routine, and reward that sustains behaviours by tying them to identity rather than just action.

Design by Convention
Design

Design by Convention

Leveraging established interaction patterns users already understand, rather than relying solely on data to validate design decisions.

Input Fidelity
Design

Input Fidelity

The degree to which a tool captures a user's intention without introducing friction, lag, or distortion.

Tool Fluency
Design

Tool Fluency

The state where a tool becomes transparent through mastery, allowing the user to focus entirely on the task rather than the interface.

Platform Literacy
Technology

Platform Literacy

The ability to distinguish between a platform and the content that runs on it, avoiding conflation of containers with what they carry.

Productive Churn
Design

Productive Churn

The unavoidable iteration cycle in creative and product work where changing requirements are a form of discovery, not inefficiency.

Invisible Service
Design

Invisible Service

Service design so effective it goes unnoticed, where quality is measured by the absence of friction rather than the presence of features.

Familiarity Fatigue
Humanity

Familiarity Fatigue

The erosion of wonder that occurs when a mechanism becomes understood, permanently closing the gap between experience and knowledge.

Ambient Discovery
Humanity

Ambient Discovery

Finding something valuable through unstructured browsing in a physical or curated environment, as opposed to algorithmic recommendation.

Glanceable Design
UX

Glanceable Design

Interfaces designed to communicate essential information in under two seconds, prioritizing clarity over completeness.

Gorilla Arm Syndrome
UX

Gorilla Arm Syndrome

Physical fatigue caused by interfaces requiring sustained arm elevation, first identified in the 1980s and still present in modern touchscreen and gesture-based systems.

Wayfinding
UX

Wayfinding

The design of environments that help people orient, navigate, and reach their destination without conscious effort or external aids.

Progressive Disclosure
UX

Progressive Disclosure

A design principle that introduces complexity gradually, letting users build competence with simple mechanics before raising the stakes.

Digital Skeuomorphism
Design

Digital Skeuomorphism

Forcing a new medium to replicate the constraints of the medium it replaced, rather than leveraging what the new format makes possible.

Crooked Pixels

Charles Lim is Head of Brand & Communications at PartnerStack — a designer who codes, a strategist who ships, a brand leader who drives pipeline. Crooked Pixels is his field notes on building with AI.

Learn more about Charles at charleslim.net