The grammar of user experienceA cognitive grammar to translate the ux research into requrements

1 / 38

About me

PhD in Cognitive SciencesFreelance UX designer: Information Architecture, Interaction Design,UsabilityAdjoint Professor in Human Computer Interaction at the Università degliStudi di Trento

2 / 38

The insight

During my last project as ux designer (the redesign of an internet and mobilebanking) I noticed that I unconsciously applied a grammatical distinction ontothe main information architecture organization.

The first menu of the app is a list of objects:

the list of the accounts of the client

The second and third menu is a list of nominalized verbs:

payments and refills (to pay, to refill)trading (to trade: to buy and sell actions)

3 / 38

4 / 38

5 / 38

The questions

Can this grammar distinction be generalized as a design approach?Can we image a grammar of user experience?Can this approach help us to improve the design process?

6 / 38

What is a grammar?

7 / 38

The classical grammar

Set of rules of a language to which speakers and writers must conform.Online Etymology Dictionary

The whole system and structure of a language ... consisting of syntax andmorphology (including inflections)Oxford dictionary

8 / 38

Parts of speech

A part of speech is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items)which have similar grammatical properties.

nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions,interjections, and sometimes numerals, articles or determiners.

Wikipedia

9 / 38

Formal grammars

A set of explicit rules to generate strings in a formal languageWikipedia

Formal languages, like programming languages, are machine-readable

Example: Java Syntax

10 / 38

Cognitive grammar

Cognitive grammars have been developed in the context of cognitivelinguistics. Some assumptions:

Language is meaning and meaning is conceptualization

Language is rooted in experience, shapes our wiew of the world, reflects ouroverall experience as human beings

The cognitive grammar maps a language to the conceptualizationsof the mind

11 / 38

Interfaces are languages

An API is a subset of a language

A command-line interface or command language interpreter (CLI) is alanguage

HTML is a language, with a grammar (XHTML has a strict grammar)

12 / 38

UI as language

Which are the advantages to see the UI as a language?

Features of languages:

can represent a conceptual worldhas a set of rules (the grammar)the rules should be used both to build a representation and to evaluate ifa representation is correctit has a hierarchy of components (letters, syllables, morphemes, words,phrases, periods, texts ...)it should be possible to translate from another language, and to anotherlanguage

13 / 38

14 / 38

Similar approaches

15 / 38

Atomic design

Atomic design is an approach partally similar. The metaphor is chemistry

need for modularity: "We’re not designing pages, we’re designing systemsof components." - Stephen Haya better workflow and a shared vocabulary

Modeling Structured Content - IAS13 workshop

16 / 38

Ooux

A design methodology organized around objects rather than "actions" anddata rather than logicObject Oriented UX

17 / 38

The AOF Method

AOF stands for Activity, Objects, and Features.

First you determine and research the activity you’re going to support. Thishelps you identify the social objects within that activity and the actions peopletake on those social objects. These objects and actions become your featureset.

Joshua Porter

18 / 38

The process

19 / 38

How to translate from natural language to concepts

when the participants use a noun, it (probably) is a concept, or a category,or an instance;a plural form of a noun is a seta verb is a functionactions are often nominalizated: registration = to register, payment = topay, submission = to submitnominalization of a verb is a symptom that the action has become a script,and is represented as a concept

when the verbal form is of type "the X of Y", X is a component of Y (if X isan object) or a characteristic of Y

every concept is a node in the ontology

relations among concepts should be represented by arcs

20 / 38

A grammar for the interface

every node in the ontology should have a templateevery object of the main concepts should have a pageevery category should have an indexat every link in the taxonomy should correspond a (bi)directional linkamong the objectsconsider to use the concepts as the first level of the navigation

21 / 38

Example: slack

un tool di collaborazione, funziona cross-device (pc, telefono, tablet) e ricordain parte IRC, ma funziona per progetto/azienda. Apri un profilo slack, inviti lepersone che fanno parte del progetto, poi apri tot canali tematici e ognunodecide a quali partecipare. A quel punto funziona come una chat, concondivisione di file, immagini ecc... Cosa particolare: puoi integrare dei serviziesterni, via webhook. Così quando fai, per esempio, una push su una repo digithub, può arrivare un messaggio ai partecipanti a un canale

A collaboration tool, cross-device, it remembers IRC , for a project or acompany . You open a slack profile , you invite the people that are part of

the project , then you open some thematic channels , and anybody decide towhich partecipate . It works like a chat , with the sharing of files ,images and so on. ... you can integrate some external services , via

webhook. Doing so, if for example you push a github repo , it comes amessage to the participants of a channel .

22 / 38

The conceptualization

Concepts (objects)

projectprofilepeople (a list of individuals)channelsfilesimagesservices

Verbs (functions)

open a profileinvite the peopleopen one or more channelspartecipate to one or more channelsshare files and imagesintegrate

23 / 38

The (extended) ontology

24 / 38

Conference

As an example, I interviewed 9 people (via email or skype or facebook chat)asking them what they would expect on the website of a conference.I've listed the nouns and verbs (or nominalized verbs) the participant used,sorted by frequency

speakers (7) - cv (1) - titles (1)(online) registration (7) (buy the tikets)dates (6) - deadlinelocation (5) - how to reach (3)programme (5)costs (4)submissions (3) - procedure - I send the articlecontacts (3)theme - topics (2)talks (2) - abstract of the tasks (1)affiliations (2)

25 / 38

Conference ontology

26 / 38

An agile approach to ux research

Yes, I'm telling the magic world: it's agile ;)

interview some userscreate an ontologycreate a prototype (involving the stakeholders)recruit some more participants to test the prototype and to interviewthemupdate the ontology, the prototypetest againrepeat untill both stakeholders' and users' feedbacks are positive.

A prototipe vs a real example

27 / 38

Verbs are semantically typed functions

28 / 38

29 / 38

30 / 38

31 / 38

32 / 38

33 / 38

How many verbs in Interaction design?

Grammars distinguish open and closed word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectivesare open, articles, conjunctions and pronouns are closed.

While preparing this talk, I was looking for the most different examples ofverbs. What I realized is that the list is short.

I've identified two dozens of verbs that - I believe - cover 90% of theactions/functions

34 / 38

Most important verbs

RegisterLoginFind - SearchCheckCompareChooseDecideRead, watch, listen toCreateWriteUpdateDeleteBuyDownloadUploadShareLikeCommentGive some information

35 / 38

Verbs, patterns, guidelines

Cognitive linguistics focus their interest in studying the most important,universal semantic rules of language.

What we could do, as designers and developers, is to identify the two dozensof verbs and to draft a corpus of patterns and guidelines for each of the verb.

The same, of course, should be done for the nouns as well: concepts, classesand instances.

36 / 38

To summarize

In my talk I'm doing a list of proposals

Interfaces are languagesLanguage is meaningWe can identify a grammar of meaningWe can identify the implicit conceptualization people have of a domain(the decoding process)We can identify a set of rules to encode the conceptualization in a visual,interactive interfaceWe can consolidate our process, in term of research, conceptualization,design, test, implementationThe process can and should be iterative, agile, lean (at least at thebeginning).

37 / 38

Thank youAre not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what iscalled thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?Sophist - Plato

Let's continue the conversation:

mail: bussolon@gmail.comtwitter: @sweetdreameritlinkedin: bussolon

38 / 38