The Language Problem

Visit a company website and you'll often be presented with an obscure term which is at first glance apparently meaningless. Chances are it's a product name, or possibly a partner program. To those in the company, such terms become so familiar that the idea that users will not understand them is forgotten.

Inappropriate use of language is one of the most common causes of usability issues in interface design. When using a product (either online or offline) the words used to label functions or buttons are of paramount importance to the user attempting to understand how the object works. After all, these labels are often the only differentiator within a row of identical buttons.

If a user has difficulty understanding what these words or labels mean, there is a fundamental problem in mapping functions to their relevant buttons on the interface. If a term is vague, the user is unsure about the resulting action, and if it cannot be understood, it is likely to cause a 'critical' usability error - an inability to complete a simple task. And these difficulties arise surprisingly often - not because users have limited vocabularies, but because designers and developers insist on using terms unfamiliar to them.

How does this happen? The one common factor behind every language difficulty is a failure to conduct a user test, or 'phrase audit', with real end-users.

Visit a company website and you'll often be presented with an obscure term which is at first glance apparently meaningless. Chances are it's a product name, or possibly a partner program. To those in the company, such terms become so familiar that the idea that users will not understand them is forgotten. The design team or copy-writer working on the site is working in this case for the customer, not the end-user.

The CEO who signs off the project is more than likely to be happy with the terminology used - after all, he or she probably thought up the product name in the first place. Perhaps some of the company's customers were asked to take a quick look at the site and gave it the OK. They would - after all, if they've already bought the product, they'll know what it's called. Unfortunately, the most important audience group, the group that is likely to use the website most often, new business, has been ignored. This is a classic case of design subconsciously reflecting the company's priorities rather than the customer's needs.

When you do test on real users, it can be surprising how easily language problems occur. On one user test we found a number of language issues reported by call centre workers, after managers in the same centre had passed the application as suitable. The broader the audience, the more likely these issues are to arise. In the online environment, even terms such as 'download' or 'delete' may be unfamiliar to the new, extended audience moving online. In this sense, the idea of 'jargon' should be broadened to include almost any term that is non-standard English or may confuse - these audiences require clear and unambiguous labels and language.