How to Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert

Chapter 4: Choose a Direction | Page 104

Control your vocabulary.

Are you facing a mess like Rasheed’s? Do your stakeholders speak the same language? Do you collectively speak the same language as your users? What language might be troublesome in the context of what you are doing? What concepts need to be better understood or defined?

To control your vocabulary:

• Create a list of terms to explore.
• Define each term as simply as you can.
• Underline words within your definitions that need to be further defined, and define them.
• Document the history, alternatives, and myths associated with each term.
• Review your list of defined terms with some of your users. Refine the list based on their feedback.
• Create a list of requirements that join your nouns and verbs together.

Chapter 4: Choose a Direction | Page 98

Think about nouns and verbs.

Nouns represent each of the objects, people, and places involved in a mess.

As an example, a post is a noun commonly associated with another noun, an author.

Verbs represent the actions that can be taken.

A post (n.) can be: written, shared, deleted, or read.

Verbs don’t exist without nouns. For example, an online share button implies that it will share this post.

Nouns are often created as a result of verbs. A post only exists after posting

It’s easy to adopt terms that are already in use or to be lazy in choosing our language. But when you’re deciding which words to use, it is important to consider the alternatives, perceptions, and associations around each term.

How would your work be different if “authors writing posts” was changed to “researchers authoring papers,” or “followers submitting comments?”

Chapter 4: Choose a Direction | Page 99

Think about relationships between nouns and verbs.

When you combine nouns with appropriate verbs, the resulting sentences can be referred to as requirements for what you’re making.

From the previous example:

• An author can write a post.
• An author can delete a post.
• Any user can share a post.
• Any user can read a post.

This list of requirements defines the ideal solution. Each requirement tells us who should be able to do what in the eventual state.

When you take the time to make requirements concrete and prioritize them, you can better understand what you’re actually making.

If you’re designing an interface that prioritizes reading, it will be fundamentally different than an interface that prioritizes writing, even with the exact same list of requirements.

Chapter 6: Play with Structure | Page 143

Meet Joan

Joan is the social media coordinator for an airline that recently merged with another airline. Overnight, her team became responsible for twice as much work as before. She’s also now responsible for managing twice as many people.

As the details of the merger iron out, duplicative channels have to be dealt with. For example, they now have two Twitter accounts and two help directories on two different websites. To tie everything together, Joan:

• Conducts user and stakeholder research
• Develops a controlled vocabulary to identify the nouns and verbs of both companies across their existing channels
• States the intent of each channel and determines the best direction to serve users
• Develops specific goals and baselines
• Identifies a set of flags to keep her informed
• Maps out the channels that she manages and how the merger will affect each over time
• Organizes each channel to better serve stakeholders and users