{"id":1155,"date":"2013-03-28T07:29:49","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T14:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2013-03-18T13:40:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T20:40:06","slug":"qa-about-the-use-of-jargon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/28\/qa-about-the-use-of-jargon\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: about the use of jargon"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my DevFest talk<\/a> a couple of weeks ago, I cautioned developers about using jargon. \u00a0I got a question about the use of jargon via email, which I’ll paraphrase like this:<\/p>\n

I often use jargon when I talk to my customers. \u00a0I wanted to show them my IT skills and build trust. \u00a0Should I always avoid jargon?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is an awesome point. \u00a0One of your goals when you are talking to users is to build rapport with them. \u00a0By building rapport, you make them more comfortable in sharing information with you, and it’s information that you need.<\/p>\n

I think that you should use jargon with users, but you need to be careful about it. \u00a0You should avoid introducing jargon into your conversation with your user yourself. \u00a0You don’t want to lead them to using a term that they know but don’t naturally use themselves. \u00a0You want to hear the term that they naturally use. \u00a0If you hear that enough people don’t use the jargon that you use, but instead use something else, you might want to change how you refer to this item to match their own terminology.<\/p>\n

You should listen closely to how they refer to something. \u00a0If they use jargon to refer to that thing, use that same jargon to refer to the same thing. \u00a0Be careful to ensure that you understand exactly what they mean when they use that term. \u00a0One of the examples that I gave was in the case of looking through log files: “event”, “alarm”, and “alert” are often used in log files. \u00a0Different log files use those terms in very different manners. \u00a0I’ve seen log files where “event” meant “something very bad has happened”, and I’ve seen log files where “event” meant “something has happened; could be good, could be bad, could be neutral”. \u00a0If you were talking to users about troubleshooting and they used the word “event”, you should clarify with them what “event” means to them to ensure that you are using “event” in the same way that they are. \u00a0 \u00a0If you assume that you’re using “event” in the same way, but they mean something different than you do, you could make erroneous inferences based on that misunderstanding.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my DevFest talk a couple of weeks ago, I cautioned developers about using jargon. \u00a0I got a question about the use of jargon via email, which I’ll paraphrase like this: I often use jargon when I talk to my customers. \u00a0I wanted to show them my IT skills and build trust. \u00a0Should I always … Continue reading Q&A: about the use of jargon<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-qanda","category-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1155\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nadynerichmond.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}