Posts Tagged taxonomy & nomenclature
Anti-Pattern: Competing Meanings in Website Nomenclature
Posted by Todd Toler in Interaction Design on October 29th, 2009

Yes. A love of words makes you a better IA.
Wordnik.com doesn’t jump to mind as an obvious resource for an interaction designer. For a dedicated Sunday puzzle solver? You bet. Or if you have a grandiloquent and sesquipedalian consulting style (pompous and prone to long words), then this is your place – btw, remind me not to hire you. I read Wordnik fairly regularly and am now a self-diagnosed cremnophobic (one who has a morbid fear of being near the edge of a cliff, precipice, or abyss) and I also know the difference between an acronym, like ACORN, and an initialism, like NAACP (one spells out a word and one doesn’t). But geeking out on words sharpens an important instinct for anybody who trades in the design of screens- a fetish for precision in language. Obsessing over language will keep you from repeatedly stumbling into what is perhaps the most common antipattern of all – vagueness and ambiguity. Here’s three main themes to keep in mind when choosing words for your wireframes or designs:
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