Vocabulary inflation in digital design
Injecting unnecessary ambiguity in our design discipline
I started my years at University in 2000. This first year doesn’t count though, because I thought I could handle something called cognitive artificial intelligence. I could not.
It was 9 months of logic, imperative programming, Prolog and linguistics (I really don’t like linguistics), that I had to force myself to care about. I did not.
It was time for me to find something else. Coincidentally, it was during the first lecture at University that I discovered my passion for designing for people. During the course cognitive psychology, the professor discussed the brake lights of cars and blew my mind by asking one simple question:
“Why do you think brake lights are placed where they are?”
So, 9 months later, when it was time for me to make a decision about my future, I remembered that first lecture and the excitement I felt. And I chose to focus on something that, like me, didn’t communicate in Java or Prolog. Something that had linguistics and logic built into it. Something human.
Now with my background and lack of technical skills, the only option I had back then was to start a bachelor’s in information science. This was the only degree that covered something called “human-computer interaction”. And the first course that had anything to do with designing for people was called usability engineering. Named after Jakob Nielsen’s bestseller. In this book he had validated 10 usability heuristics for user interface design. And even though he’s refined the language of the definitions throughout the years, the 10 heuristics themselves have remained relevant and unchanged since 1994 [1].
So after years and years of working with the theory behind human computer interaction and researching extremely specific hypotheses, it was time for me to step into the real world. A world in which the human interacting with the computers was often forgotten.
What’s up with all these new “old” ideas?
Flash forward to 2018. I’d been designing for some time and slowly but surely I started to notice a trend in our design field. I was hearing new phrases being used, and updated frameworks being proposed and all I kept thinking was, what’s wrong with the current ones? And diving into these new ideas, I realised they’re not new at all. They’re no different than the ones we were already using. And yet, whenever someone used the phrase “design” when referring to a digital product, I started to feel anxious. Especially when it was combined with an additional adjective or, God forbid, a verb. My initial thought always was:
”Why haven’t I heard about this? How dare I call myself a leader? Should I know this?”.
And to this day, new sub-disciplines, methodologies, and frameworks are still popping up faster than LinkedIn posts about: “Which interaction is better?”. Ironically, those are often phrased as: “Which UX is better?”. So why not just ask your “U” about your “X”?
I digress. Let’s get back to the point.
I was trying to find an expert opinion on the matter, but I didn’t really know how to refer to this phenomenon. I mean, what’s the search phrase you would use without getting snarky and cynical? “UX Design why so many phrases”? or “really a difference design thinking and double diamond”?
Then I stumbled upon a speech by none other than Jakob Nielsen where he mentions this trend. Unfortunately, I can’t find this video anymore. But in it, he referred to this phenomenon as “vocabulary inflation”. Back then his explanation helped me calm down and put things into perspective. His point was that one of the rules of linguistics (there it is again) is that language changes because of the changing needs and context of the speakers. What a refreshing and non-cynical way to look at things right? I finally felt at ease. For just a moment though because Mister Nielsen hadn’t shared the way he truly felt about this matter…
Tell me how you really feel Mister Nielsen
A couple of weeks later I was asked about the difference between a UX/UI designer and a product designer. It was a recruiter working for our team, and he was wondering what we were looking for. I replied with a list of responsibilities. He said, “Ah, that’s clearly a UX/UI Designer”. I didn’t understand why.
Amy Arden mentions “UX/UI” as one of the 5 UX buzzwords we need to retire in our job descriptions. She argues that these buzzwords “do a disservice to both usability professionals and the way non-practitioners perceive the field of user experience”[2]. I couldn’t agree more, and yet, the recruiter did a wonderful job finding a great designer for our team. Someone that is capable to handle all the responsibilities I’d mentioned to him before. But again, I did feel anxious when the question popped up about the difference between a UX/UI designer and a product designer.
“I should know the answer to this question, right?”.
And it was around this time where I stumbled upon yet another video from Jakob Nielsen [3]. But this time, he wasn’t trying to put things into perspective. This time, he wanted to make a point about the negative effects of vocabulary inflation.
In this mini-keynote he provides three reasons for vocabulary inflation within our field:
- Ignorance. Sometimes you just don’t know.
- Some people feel that fancy phrases help them sell the added value of design.
- Companies want their own branded terms that sell well. It’s the same process, with just a different name.
He then mentions two negative side-effects regarding this trend:
- Adding ambiguity to our discipline won’t serve the purpose to be better understood as a discipline.
- It reduces “cultural transmission”, i.e. learning from what has been done before. Constantly re-inventing the wheel without a reason to do so.
And there it was. Finally, someone with clout verbalising exactly what’s been bugging me for years. My own explanations always ended up in an emotional rant which made me seem more like a man in the midst of his midlife crisis than a passionate designer. But now I feel comfortable to share my two cents.
A plea for keeping things simple
Can we all just stop? Just stop with the buzzwords, empty phrases and more specifically, stop re-inventing the wheel when it’s not needed. Can we just let the different skillsets of designers speak for themselves without feeling the need to invent yet another buzzword? If a project needs a designer with interaction design and visual design skills then I don’t care what that person wants to call themselves, as long as they’re excited to join the team. But personally, I’ll probably refer to them as “designer”. “Designerd” if they’re really good.
I can’t keep up anymore with all the design thinkers, conversational design specialists and strategic service designers. All I know is that every single designer has the same goal:
We strive to design solutions, based on our insights about the needs and motivations of our “users”. This allows us to minimise the risk of building the wrong thing, i.e. something that doesn’t fix an existing problem. And we minimise the lack of adoption of the built solution by the “user”, i.e. something is difficult to use.
And that’s it. And all this is still, to this day, guided by the 10 usability heuristics where it all started back in 1994 [1]. And no matter what framework you use, or which title you go by, at the end of the day it is our responsibility to reduce the aforementioned ambiguity in our field. Not only for ourselves, but also for the next generations of designerds.
As an added bonus, clarifying our processes and methods will also ensure easier collaboration with other disciplines. No matter the framework, we need other disciplines in our process to be able to have any kind of impact. Using ambiguous phrases will only alienate them and make it so much harder to join forces. Josh Munn has written some wonderful articles on “design-isms: A word or phrase designers use that most people don’t understand” [4]. Personally, I think we’re now in a situation where even we as designers don’t always understand the design-isms we’re using.
This article has been a long time coming and I would love to hear any type of feedback on this. Because I’m fully aware of the fact that even though Jakob Nielsen has given this phenomenon a name, there is still a chance that it’s all my mid-life crisis talking.
