The attack of the design weenie
Zeldman wrote, in an excellent post on Vocabulary vs. Storytelling:
AFTER ALL THESE YEARS designing websites and applications, I still don’t think in words like “affordance.” And when my colleagues use a word like that, my mental process still clatters to a halt while I seek its meaning in a dusty corner of my brain…
Should you ask B.B. King if the lick he just played was in Lydian Mode, he could probably answer you after stopping to think about it. But after all these years playing blues guitar, B.B. King doesn’t say to himself, “I’m going to switch to a Lydian scale here,” he just plays blues. Scales and vocabulary are necessary when we are learning the craft behind our art. But the longer we practice, the more intuitive our work becomes. And as it becomes more intuitive, it disconnects further and further from language and constructs.
My singular divergence from his theme is the notion that intuition and language are mutually exclusive. They are more a set of different lenses than competitors, as you see different things depending on which lens you use. Knowledge of theory can inform intuition and vice-versa – a true master sees value in both, as there are things you can learn from each you can’t learn from the other.
However my primary reason in writing is to call out the class of people in all fields that only feel smart when they are making others feel dumb. I call them weenies, and there are plenty of design and UX weenies out there, just as there are geek weenies, marketing weenies and writing weenies. They’d rather talk than do, which biases them towards unnecessarily sophisticated language. They make lots of diagrams and offer lots of advice, preferring to be in the abstract than to offer their own specific ideas.
Even in cases where they are great designers, they can fall into weenie mode. Their ego blinds them into thinking their talent gives them the license to bludgeon others with theories and names the other person couldn’t possibly know. And the corollary is they assume anyone who doesn’t know the exactly facts and theories they know couldn’t possibly be a good designer. Task analysis, kerning, information architecture, composition, Paul Rand, contextual inquiry, Dieter Rams… anything said with disdain for those who don’t understand says more about the speaker than the listener.
True designers, or experts of any kind, should be ambassadors for their ideas and their craft. An expert has to know that most of the world is ignorant of their expertise, and the only way for great design, or UX, or whatever, to be more valued in the world is if the experts make the ignorant feel good about learning what they don’t know. Big words and fancy concepts are intimidating by design and any designer who uses them under the guise of teaching / inspiring / motivating should know better. All they are likely doing is intimidating the other person out of the conversation. This strokes a weenie’s ego as they think it’s a victory, but in truth there is no progress.
If you really want to change the world, don’t be a weenie. Be a teacher. Be kind in helping people overcome their ignorance. If you’re so talented, you shouldn’t be surprised or angry at how stupid everyone else is. Make it fun and safe for them to learn. And in your professional circles, don’t bet on vocabulary or name dropping, bet on your ideas. A sketch of a good idea doesn’t need $10 words or 20 layer Venn diagrams to be understood. If you don’t have the confidence to let your ideas stand tall, and you dismiss the discipline of learning to communicate your ideas well, theory and intimidation are not going to save you from yourself.
Q: What UX / design jargon to you think is most abused, unnecessary or counterproductive?
Weenie syndrome explains why there are sooooooo many poorly-selling tech books. I do, though, think you are comparing apples to oranges. While experts do not generally *think* in “jargon, they DO use it to communicate, and it is one of the most rewarding aspects of expertise.
I would not expect a designer to think in a word like “affordance”, yet for most designers, the word unpacks to a rich, powerful concept that is deeply meaningful and useful. To listen in on a conversation between two highly skilled practitioners in a domain is fascinating *because* they have this powerful shorthand with which to convey ideas that would take for friction’ ever to explain without the words and, in some cases, would still lack the special subtle something…
For me, the problem is never the jargon but the context in which it is used. But we should not shy away from using useful jargon in front of the newbies just because they have not yet learned it. The best ambassadors are not the ones who just don’t go there… The best are those who form the bridge and walk you across, giving you the higher resolution so that you can begin to appreciate the richness of what sounds like jargon to everyone BUT the experts.
So, showing off for ego at the expense of understanding == bad, but I would not want to throw out powerful and efficient jargon babies with the weenie’s bathwater.
True experts “talk different”. One of the greatest rewards of coming up the expertise curve in a domain is to be able to converse with others who Just Get that what sounds like jargon to others evokes a beautiful and hi-resolution concept. I believe jargon gets a bad rep the same way PowerPoint does… It is not the tool but how it is used that makes the difference.
Very good point. I agree.
I also love to listen in on two experts in a field I don’t know about talking. But I’m partial to metaphors and anecdotes more than jargon. The phrase “flying behind the plane”, which pilots use to describe when they are out of control, isn’t intimidating in the way plane jargon is, but is an expert term to compactly describe a real situation.
Bringing insights and terms from one field to another is a powerful way to make progress happen.
Having thought about it a bit more… I guess I make a huge distinction between meaningful, rich domain jargon vs. semanticallly-empty buzzwords :).
Then of course there is that third category… a horrible place where words like “gamification” live. They are the high fructose corn syrup version of jargon… not *semantically* empty, but loaded with ultimately damaging poor-value calories that — once the sugar rush is over– lead to a crash.
Ah…one thing about game devs… whichever side of the “gamification” side we come down in, we do have strong feelings about THAT word! ;)
As for UX words that might be counter-productive, some are simply too overloaded now to be used without disambiguation… Like “flow” and even “engaged”, though both are words I still like and use, but feel compelled to define how I am using them. For that after, I have almost quit using one of my most treasured words because it, too, has been abused and nearly rendered meaningless: “passion”.
I do believe design weenies can also just take an awesome thing and totally miss the point as with, for example “a/b testing” and “microcopy”. I sat in a meeting with some amazing designers who could not wait to jump in and a/b the crap out of a page of buttons when nobody had ever stopped to ask if the page, let alone the buttons, ought to be rethought entirely. All tree, no forest. But if I had made a final decision on something, these were the folks I would want to be doing the tweaking and wringing every last drop of “conversion” potential.
Awesome post, and Kathy’s comments, too! I spend a lot of time and effort with the scientists in my lab helping them learn how to explain their research to people who don’t already understand what they are doing. It is a surprisingly difficult task.
Citing SICP :
And this applies to human language too, essentially when talking about any tech/science matter. Jargon could be beneficial when a particular word is clearly defined to represent the combination of many things. It helps saying more with fewer words.
If the definition is not clear, a jargon word transforms itself into a weapon to divide people between those that are following you (by faith), and those that are not.
Some disciplines like medicine seem pretty well suited to the definition of many jargon words (often expressed in Latin) because the things they represent are very concrete (a disease, a symptom)
When jargon words try to describe an abstraction, care should be taken to the definition of the words (like in mathematics) or else the words will only add complexity to the world.
Every adjective is suspicious : “Agile”, “Positive”, “Dynamic”, “Efficient”, “Innovative”…
In the Software Industry, there’s no such thing as the Waterfall Approach (and there never was).
Communication is important and difficult at the same time. Specialized vocabulary of any field are formally recognized technical terms that are well documented and with a particular meaning. Experts should use these to stipulate and formalize their arguments – but the weenie abuses through ignorant use. That’s what gets me mad.
Sure, it’s tough to be an expert in any field and it’s even tougher not to be one. Love the term “weenie”, hope it doesn’t get overused ;) Hey weenie, I’m watching you.
Thanks Scott. I just sent this to my whole company (a digital design and marketing firm) and got a lot of positive feedback. This is a great reminder for a lot of people I know.
True, but not entirely. Scott, design is as specialized a skill, body of knowledge, and profession, as any other. Thus, it has a vocabulary of its own, and yes, jargon too. It is a unique profession of process and practices. And unlike business and technology, it seems visible (most of what makes a design effective is not visible, however).
Business and technology have their vocab., lingo, and jargon, and use them liberally. Indeed, some org’s (most?) are like some sort of “weenieville,” it’s true.
In reality, where there is little understanding of the designer’s training and profession, a little measured use of specialized jargon at least communicates to people that there are things they don’t know about design, but can if they take the time and efforts to learn it. And that is useful to designer and non-designer alike.
Design is NOT for everyone, however. Even though everyone believes they can immediately apprehend design artifacts.
That said, designers should be as well versed in the lingo of business and technology, and biz and tech should be in design, for these three core domains to best collaborate. And collaboration, we can certainly all agree, is the key to our collective success.
no answer to the question.
i’ll have to admit tho that i have been a weenie in the past.
love the post!
Wow, great post. As a former performing magician, I was always mystified by fellow magicians who constantly jabbered about specific sleights or methods but were hopelessly awkward on an actual stage.
Now that I’m an engineer, I’m even more convinced it’s better to have an intuitive ability to perform, rather than an academic ability to use big words.
On that note, you might get a kick out of a short article I published titled “Weird Leonards In History.” It looks at the role of intuition & experimentation in aircraft development (as opposed to the weenies who never got off the ground). The article was in Defense AT&L magazine and is available here: http://www.dau.mil/pubscats/PubsCats/atl/2008_01_02/war_jf08.pdf
Interesting piece, although I had to stop reading to look up ‘corollary’.
Weenie syndrome is actuaay catching up very fast as it ends up satisfying ur ego. Wen v friends were yapping a friend very casuaaly commented that ” If there was TAXES on advice than v all would b a happierr lot.” I also strongly feel each person. Behaves separately in different circumstances. But actually u need to blow ur trumphet to let the world u r around.