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How Well Do You Speak UX, UXR, and or MRX?

michele ronsen

I’m over the moon to report that Janet Standon and I launched the first version of the UX Lexicon!! at the QRCA conference on February 1st. Our presentation, “You Say Tomayto, I say Tomahto” was extremely well received!

It All Started With a Question

As my practice and teaching grew, so did the realization we (the UX community who devote our days to creating great customer experiences), had inadvertently contributed to making a mess of our own terminology.

  • My students kept asking. “What does this mean?” “What does that mean?” A Ph.D. student asked, “What is the difference between design thinking and ethnography?” This one stopped me in my tracks because these two things are like apples and oranges! Confusion reigned and not just with my students...

  • I had a debate with a close colleague over whether “workflow analysis” was a research method or not!

  • A client spoke for 45 minutes about a “survey” but was actually referring to interviews. (Do you call them IDIs, in-context interviews, in-depth interviews, one-on-one interviews, or something else? See, what a mess this is?)

  • A colleague developed a journey map because the client asked for one. What the client really needed was an experience map. Did you know there is a big difference between the two? There is!

I can tell immediately how seasoned you are by the terms you use in conversation, email, on your resume, and in your case studies. Words REALLY matter. Make sure you understand the nuances so you don't inadvertently mislead, misuse, or misunderstand something or someone.

A Cry for Help!

These kinds of kerfuffles come with real costs. As such, I wanted to point my students, colleagues, and clients to a trusted, free resource so, in the future, we could all self serve. However, I didn't find anything I felt was worthy of passing on. Nothing with the proper context that was interactive and visually compelling. Something had to change! Clear communication is critical, perhaps nowhere more than in the research arena.

I started writing down all the UX terms that could be misunderstood. In just a week, I came up with 100 terms. However, I realized that I couldn’t (and shouldn’t) go at this alone. Part of the problem is that organizations and disciplines, for lack of any better alternative, have constructed their own internal jargon and phrases. Other perspectives and beautiful minds absolutely had to be included! After all, UX is a team sport too! So I decided to crowdsource the terms by soliciting contributors on Linkedin and from an industry Google group.

Globally Crowdsourced

I heard from 50 people in just 72 hours. We gathered via Zoom. The term list grew to 150. I divided the group into five teams, each assigned 30 terms. Every team had a lead and contributors from around the world, most of whom I hadn’t met. Team lead Janet Standon became my partner in crime and came up with the name “UX Lex.”

In the end, over a span of 17 months, people from six continents and more than 40 countries have lent their beautiful minds to this project. Contributors came from all walks of life, a variety of disciplines got together with the goals of reducing confusion in the UX, UXR, MRX, Design, User Experience, and related industries, to create a free, shared vocabulary, and establish an account of our industries’ metamorphoses. An added bonus? Our trusted and credible industry lexicon will help boost the professional status of our industry as a whole.

What About the Acronyms?!

Yep, we got you covered there too. The UX Lex “Acronym Decoder” has 80 entries and continues to grow. Check out the acronym decoder here..

Credit Where It’s Due

Thank you to the 80+ contributors to this impressive body of work!

Janet and I spent dozens of hours honing the first 26 terms, editors have edited (most of) them, designers and developers have laid them out and programmed them, and Mo Goltz and Mia Sara Bruch have mined articles, videos, books, and other reference material to substantiate their context. It's been a labor of love and a time-consuming one at that!

Visit our contributor page to learn more about the superstar crew of designers, developers, editors, researchers, and writers who helped make it happen!

Tell Us What You Think!

Check out the format and the first 26 terms at https://www.curiositytank.com/ux-lexicon. Please send feedback and suggestions to uxlex@curiositytank.com.

What next?

We will be releasing new batches of terms periodically throughout 2021. If you’d like a UX Lex term delivered to your inbox weekly, sign up for our UX-Lex weekly email blast!

And, we are actively looking for sponsors. If you, or anyone you know, would like to learn more about how to contribute to the UX Lex, a free resource for our UX and MRX communities, please reach out.

Speak up, get involved, share the love

And that’s a wrap!

We'll alternate between a theme and UX/UXR jobs, events, classes, articles, and other happenings every few weeks. Thank you for all of the feedback. Feedback is a gift and we continue to receive very actionable input on how to make Fuel Your Curiosity more meaningful to you. Keep it coming!

What do you think? Lmk. We're constantly iterating and always welcome your input.

Stay curious,

- Michele