Stop! Halt! ✋

Have you finished the crossword yet? Are you prepared for spoilers? If not, scroll back up and finish playing before you read what's next.

Otherwise, keep reading for more information and useful resources related to the UX clues in this crossword.

UX terms to know

• Analysis paralysis (49 across) — Analysis paralysis happens when people overthink a problem so much that they become unable to make a decision or move forward. This can happen for many reasons, including an excess of choice (see: Hick's Law).
• API (10 across) — An Application Programming Interface (or API for short) is a type of software interface that enables two or more products to communicate with each other. For example, User Interviews's Hub Participant API lets you connect Hub to other CRMs, data warehouses, analytics tools, etc.
• Atomic nugget (52 down + 29 across) — Atomic UX research is an approach wherein research insights are broken down into their smallest parts. An atomic research nugget (or atomic insight) is a single insight or observation from a study, which typically gets stored and tagged in a research repository. One of the minds behind this approach, Daniel Pidcock, discussed atomic research in this episode of Awkward Silences.
• Breadcrumbs (39 across) — Breadcrumbs are secondary navigational aids on webpages. They usually appear in the top righthand corner, for example: "Resources > Special Features > UXWords > UX Crossword Puzzle - #5 So Much Pun."
• Card sorting (27 across) — Card sorting involves having study participants group information by sorting cards into categories. It is a useful research method for uncovering users’ mental models and better understanding how people naturally categorize information. Planning an card sorting study? Here are 19 tools to consider.
• Guerrilla testing (30 down) — Guerrilla usability testing (also called hallway usability testing) has nothing to do with armed revolutionary activity. It is an informal UX research method that involves going out in public—to a cafe, for example—and asking people to participate in a quick usability test.
• Hick's law (61 across) — Also called the Hick-Hyman law after psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman, this describes the relationship between the number of choices given and the time it takes for people to make a decision. In short, the law states that the time it takes to make a decision increases logarithmically with each additional option.
• Hypothesis (43 down) — A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon, often based on limited evidence. It is, in other words, an assumption—or the predicted answer to your guiding research question.
• IxDA (50 down) — Launched in 2003, the Interaction Design Association is a network of 150k professionals focused on improving the human experience through better interaction design. IxDA hosts World Interaction Design Day and presents the Interaction Awards each year to celebrate global design thought leadership.
• Prototypes (7 down) — A prototype is an early design or sample of an in-development product. They may be used to present ideas to stakeholders, or to test designs with users before further development.
• Research CRM (40 down) — CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Most CRM software is used by sales, marketing, and CX teams for a wide variety of use cases. Research CRMs, on the other hand, are tailor-made to the needs of UX Researchers and Research Ops specialists looking to manage a panel of participants. Research Hub is the #1 panel software on the market and was built to support ReOps at scale.
• Stakeholder (1 down) — Stakeholders are the folks who have a stake in the outcomes of your work. This could be your CEO who is looking for strategic insights, UX designers who need tactical feedback, fellow researchers, clients, or customers. Understanding who these people are, what they need from research, and how to talk to them is a super important part of effective user research.

Researchers mentioned

• Ivan Pavlov (32 down) — Pavlov (1849 - 1936) was a Russian Soviet experimental neurologist and physiologist who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of classical conditioning. His work famously involved experiments with dogs who were trained to associate the sound of a buzzer with food, and who would then salivate on hearing the sound even when food was not present.

Tools mentioned

• Asana (26 down) — Asana is a popular project management tool. We use it a lot here at UI! (The word "āsana" in Sanskrit (आसन) refers to a body position assumed in hatha yoga).
• Chameleon (9 down) — Chameleon is a tool for building UX flows that drive product adoption. Look for their logo in the Archipelago of Ongoing Insight Collection on the 2023 UX Research Tools Map, and check out what their co-founder Pulkit Agrawal had to say about researching the user onboarding experience on the blog.
• Figjam (44 across) — On average, there are 13 different tools in a UX researcher's toolkit. For most UXRs (81%), that toolkit includes Figma and/or Figjam, the company's popular whiteboarding tool—together, these tools lead the pack in popularity according to our 2023 survey.
• Hotjar (13 across) — Hotjar is a behavioral user analytics and heatmapping tool. After Google Analytics, Hotjar is the most popular analytics tool among researchers, according to our 2023 UX Research Software Report.
• Lookback (12 down) — Lookback is a qualitative user research tool that supports video interviews, usability testing, and ethnographic studies. They're also a User Interviews integration partner!
• Loom (19 across) — Loom is a screen recording tool that lets users record themselves talking over a recording of their browser screen. (The Penelope in the clue for 23 down = Odysseus's wife in Homer's The Odyssey who kept unwanted suitors at bay through some loom-based trickery.)
• Miro (6 down) — Miro is the third-most popular general use software among researchers (after Google Workspace and Microsoft) according to the 2023 State of User Research Report. It's popularity is due in large part to it's collaboration features; watch Miro UXR Eduardo Gomez Ruiz explain how to use the platform for more collaborative user research.
• Slack (23 across) — Slack, if you somehow didn't know, is a communication platform for teams and communities. For 1/3 user researchers, it is also a core part of their UXR tool stack.‍
• SurveyMonkey (1 across) — SurveyMonkey is the second-most popular survey software among user researchers (according to our own survey of over 900 UXRs and people who do research).
• Zendesk (54 down) — Zendesk is a leading customer experience software suite. Their Research Ops team introduced UI's Research Hub to help democratize access to customers and enable self-serve research recruiting—head to our Customer Stories page to find out how UI helped Zendesk's ReOps team of 2 support a 200-person product org and saved their team 2.5+ hours per project.