Dictionary of Experimental Design Factor is a variable whose influence on the response you want to investigate.

Full factorial design, for each factor a low level and a high level is chosen. In a full factorial design, experiments are run at all possible combinations of high and low values of all factors. This allows you to estimate the main effects and all possible interactions and is used for up to 4 factors. Fractional factorial design is a subset of a full factorial design. If you have many factors, a full factorial design requires (too) many experiments and allows you to estimate many, usually not relevant, higher order interaction effects. Therefore you use a wisely chosen subset, called fractional factorial design, such that you can estimate the main effects and optionally the two factor interactions. Look at the alias table to see what you can estimate with the design at hand. Screening design is a very sparse design, used in a situation where you have many factors and you want to investigate which ones have a large main effect and which ones don't. Sometimes you can estimate n main effects with as little as n+1 experiments. Plackett-Burman designs are an important category of screening designs. Main effect of a factor is the change in the response, when changing this factor from its low level to its high level. Two factor interaction effect measures the synergy (positive interaction) or the antagonism (negative interaction) between two factors. It is computed as the difference between the observed change in response due to a combined change in two factors and the sum of the main effects of these factors. A sizeable interaction effect means that the effect of one factor depends on the level of the other factor. Similarly you can define three factor interactions, etc. Higher order interactions are often considered to be insignificant, i.e. about the same size as the noise in your system. 2FI is an abbreviation for 2 factor interaction. Sometimes used to indicate a collection of fractional factorial designs that allows you to estimate all main effects and all 2 factor interactions. Alias. Two effects are aliased (or confounded) if they cannot be estimated independently from each other. This occurs in fractional factorial designs. Blocking is used when a nuisance factor is present, viz. use of two reactors, two lab assistants or four batches of raw material. Blocking will indicate which experiments to run in which reactor, such that the nuisance factor effect becomes aliased with a higher order interaction and does not mess up the estimation of the main effects. Center point is an experiment where all factor levels are set at the midpoint of their high and low value. In a (fractional) factorial design it can be used to detect curvature. Replication of experiments allows you to estimate the experimental error. One usually replicates at least the center point. Curvature is a measure for the departure from linearity in the relation between factors and the response. In a (fractional) factorial design it is detected by running center point experiment(s). Response surface designs are used to quantify the relationships between one or more measured responses and a relatively small number of input factors. (As opposed to estimating main effects and interaction effects in factorial designs.)

The design factors must be quantitative, continuous variables. The objective is to find a desirable location in the design space. This could be a maximum, a minimum or an area where the response is stable over a range of the factors. Goals might include meeting a set of specifications for several responses simultaneously. CCD = Central Composite Design is a special form of a response surface design. It is an extension of a (fractional) factorial design. Therefore it can be used efficiently in a sequence of experiments. Hierarchy means that when a higher order term (like a two way interaction or a quadratic) is included in a model, you also include the lower order terms of these factors (usually the linear terms) in the model. It is advisable to keep your model hierarchical.