Part Three: The details · Words and feedback
The company's own terms are precise for the people who work there. People do not recognize their work in them.
Every team grows a private language. The database has "entities" and "instances." The business has "seats," "workspaces" and "engagements." Marketing coined a name for the main feature. Inside the building these words are useful, and after a year nobody hears them as jargon.
Then they leak onto the screen. A florist opens her new shop software and is asked to "configure a fulfillment workflow." She wants to know how to mark an order as delivered. A parent opens a school app and finds "learner artifacts" where the homework should be. Each has to translate before they can act, and some decide the product is not meant for people like them.
Use the word the person already uses for the thing. Librarians say "hold." Nurses say "handover." Payroll clerks say "pay run." If two groups of customers use different words, pick the commoner one and let search understand both.
Plain also means short. "In order to proceed, please ensure that you have selected a payment method" is "Choose how to pay." And plain means one name per thing. If it is a "project" on one screen and a "job" on the next, people will assume those are two different things and go looking for the difference.
The makers who resist this usually worry about precision. A plain word that is slightly loose is still better than an exact word nobody understands.
Configure fulfillment workflow
Entity status
DispatchedApplyOrder #204
12 white roses, for A. Mendes
Mark as deliveredTherefore:
Inside the product, call everything by the name the person using it already has for it. Use one name per thing, everywhere, and keep the company's internal vocabulary off the screen.
In practice. Record three customers describing their work, and write down the nouns and verbs they use. Compare that list with the labels in your navigation. Change every label that does not appear on their list.
Goes with. Outside the product the same words serve THEIR WORDS, NOT YOURS (10), and you hear them in THE LAST TIME THEY SWITCHED (19). Where customers use two words for one thing, SEARCH THAT FORGIVES (70) should know both.