Ontology

“Ontology” is probably the fanciest of all the UX terms—its original meaning is the philosophical study of being. From a design perspective, though, ontologies are a great way to map concepts or content to each other while capturing additional useful information along the way. It’s one of the ways that we make sense of what we’re working with, whether it’s how poems, poets, and schools of poetry are related or what pieces of metadata we’re going to show on a detail page.