Interactions - January/February 2009

identified the most desirable label but failed to accurately set expectations, thus setting up a disappointing experience. I can hear Carlin’s self-satisfied character intoning, “But these aren’t outtakes, these are minisodes…”

As professionals with titles on business cards, departments we deliver to, and professional organizations to which we seek legitimizing memberships, we’re probably quite familiar with the death spiral of naming just what it is we do. Maybe you’re fat and sassy as a “senior interaction designer,” but pretty soon you’re going to need to become a “senior user experience designer,” and not that long ago you may have been a “junior human factors engineer” a “junior interface designer” or a “usability specialist.” One firm I worked for insisted on branding the practice as HID (for Human-Interface Design), which really was a pretty useless (confusing, nonstandard) branding, especially if we had to say it out loud. The struggle to respin discipline/depart-

ment/professional organization nomenclature does very little beyond giving administrators something they can sink their teeth into amidst so much of the ambiguity that is necessary given the nature of our work.

Now once we agree with our hearts, minds, or wallets on a word that has the right associations, we can be prepared to have that word jammed down our throat. When plastic bottles of drinking water (a disastrously evil product on several levels) are presented as green (i.e., the Eco-shape™ bottle from Arrowhead), well, it’s time for another word: greenwashing. Or how’s about the latest whipping boy: innovation? Innovation seems like a valid pursuit and a value that we want to believe in, but it’s been overused so ridiculously that it has lost most of its meaning. Maybe we need regulatory controls on buzzwords to keep them at their original potency once they are unleashed into the environment. We’re gradually realizing that

the overuse of antibiotics turns penicillin into pea soup. But will we ever clue in that labeling everything from an iPhone knockoff to a flavor of cupcake frosting to tire treads as innovative is simply creating tomorrow’s faded, jaded concept (TQM, anyone?). And if we can’t talk about it without evoking winces, we will have a harder time championing it.

Making the right choices in terms of wording are often not obvious. But we should be mindful of the power that our choice of language can have on interactions, whether our goal is to unblock, inform, inspire, reassure, or influence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Steve is the founder of Portigal Consulting, a boutique agency that helps companies discover and act on new insights about themselves and their customers. He is an accomplished instructor and public speaker, and an avid photographer who curates a Museum of Foreign Grocery Products in his home. Steve blogs regularly for All This ChittahChattah, at www.portigal.com/blog.