Domain-specific weasel words

Monjur Hasan

Every subject matter domain has its own weasel words, that people use to avoid having to say what they actually mean. In some cases, a generic term becomes so acceptable that practitioners invent frameworks to push back against systematic vagueness.

Product design

Only two kinds of people talk about users: software vendors and drug-dealers. In the case of software, it might have made sense to talk about a user in the context of pre-Internet single user software. However, when modern business software caters for diverse people, in different job roles, treating them all as a single group of users works against addressing their different needs.

User experience designers use a framework of user types: personas. Each persona has a name and description, which sometimes become detailed enough to make defining personas a whole project.

Rich Mironov argues for a simpler approach: Let’s Abandon Customers and Users advises product people to use domain-specific terms, such as shopper or doctor, instead of customer or user.

Let’s set up a Venmo tip jar, and fine ourselves $5 for every story that starts ‘As a user…’ or ‘As a customer…’

He doesn’t literally mean that product teams should have a swear jar, though. That would make his advice a framework.

Object-oriented programming

Programmers face a similar issue when they call a software component a manager. Ideally, they would name each component in a consistent and meaningful way, such as with a noun-phrase that describes its responsibilities. In practice, lazier naming combines manager with a broad topic, such as authorisation, to get a vague name like AuthorisationManager.

I used to tell developers not to use the weasel word manager in my presentation on how to name things, and would get a reliable laugh when I pointed out the vagueness of a name like AuthorisationManager by saying:

After all, who even knows what a manager does?

Domain-driven design practitioners use a framework of names: bounded contexts. Each bounded context uses domain-specific language to define its own model, which in turn provides better jargon for naming software components.

Scientific research

Outside software development, the authors of scientific papers have their own weasel words, such as when they use the phrase ‘The literature says…’ to introduce a claim. A field’s body of literature may indeed universally support the claim, but this phrase may equally mean that the author read a similar claim in a single unpublished and unreviewed pre-print.

Scientific publishing uses a framework when referring to earlier work: citation. These citations refer to specific published work, typically peer-reviewed journal articles. A phrase like the literature says should cite a systematic review that consolidates results from earlier work – collectively, the literature.

Example-first explanations

A common thread ties these examples from product design, programming, and scientific research. People understand explanations better when concrete examples should precede abstraction.

Weasel words use overly vague or abstract ideas to avoid actual communication. If you have something to say, then put in the extra effort to say what you mean.