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On Acronyms, Abbreviations, and
User Experience
I may be taking a risk here, guessing that you know exactly what my title means. But I’m willing to bet that you understand the abbreviations I’ve chosen because of the audience this blog reaches.
Abbreviations and acronyms have become part of our natural vocabulary. Both are useful in quickly communicating a big idea using a small space: fewer letters and syllables, smaller visual blocks in a design, and less time to speak or read.
If your company is like most companies, you and your coworkers have developed your own “shorthand” vocabulary. You have reference documents, processes, and systems known by the first letters of the actual name or phrase. You may work with clients or vendors whose names have been simplified to their initials and many clients have specific company-used abbreviations.
Abbreviations are, basically, linguistic shorthand constructed of ideas known by a shared group of people. Some abbreviations are easily adopted, and others (for me it’s the text phrase “smh”) never seem to sink in and fail the quick comprehension test.
Acronyms are abbreviations that can be pronounced, triggering audio recognition and the mouth feel of a tangible idea. In English, this is achieved by a combination of vowels and consonants that create the mix of hard and soft sounds our brains identify as words. Mignon Fogarty of Grammar Girl provides a great overview of acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms.
The differences between the two are important, and relevant to user experience considerations and decisions we make on every client project. Consider the following:
ABBREVIATIONS:
ASAP, ETA, EOD, CSR, CSS, SME, IBM, DIY, SOW, CMS
ACRONYMS:
NASA, SONAR, NULL, FAQ, CAT, FIFA, UNICEF, RADAR, TARDIS, FedEx
How many of the above have a single, quickly defined meaning for you?
Acronyms and abbreviations are helpful communication tools, but does that mean they are the best way to communicate with your audience? What if English isn’t their first language? What if they were raised in a family that couldn’t fit multiple smartphones in their budget? What if they were born before cellphones were commonplace?
The key benefit of acronyms is they are structured for recognition and easy recall by an audience. As the list above demonstrates, acronyms are frequently successful for naming a product or key concept or business. On the other hand, the use of commonly understood abbreviations can quickly communicate audience and industry relevance to the people looking for you online.
Recently, I’ve also been hearing my coworkers voice their frustration with the overuse of acronyms. Combined with our use of social media channels, part of this frustration may be “translation fatigue,” the resulting mental, and sometimes physical, lack of energy people experience when language – and any content – is not clear to them.
Fatigue kills enthusiasm and negatively impacts a user’s perception of a company or brand. It is a particularly important consideration when dealing with very technical information and internal communications. When considering the organization of content from multiple sources or developing a framework for a complex project, we need to provide the reader with an easy path to clarity.
Glossaries that include the most commonly used abbreviations and acronyms can be quite helpful and need to be developed with a plan for updates and review. Duplicate abbreviations should be identified and resolved as quickly as possible. Then deliver definitions and assistance in context, on an as needed basis. As a user experience team, we must research and understand the audience reaction to the use of abbreviation.
Check that abbreviations aren’t easily confused with or fighting against already established definitions. The abbreviation CSR, for example, has multiple definitions: Customer Service Representative, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Customer Sales Receipt, to name a few. If our client has a “Conductive Solar Responder” product to promote, we need to encourage them to explore other variations and recommend against simple abbreviation.
When working with clients and considering the use of contextual shortcuts, testing and contextual review are important, but should be augmented by our combined experiences in and out of the office. People are accessing your content as part of their daily routines; there are distractions, tasks and other conversations to compete against. We need to consider whether the user will have the same understanding of the abbreviation as we intend. We’re busy people, too, and so are our clients. We can all relate, and we should relate. TTYL.