Posts Tagged taxonomy & nomenclature

Anti-Pattern: Competing Meanings in Website Nomenclature

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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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