When Product Language Alienates Users

Way back in 2017, Stack Overflow thought it would be a good idea to standardize their documentation language. As a result they watched a $60 Million initiative collapse. When Adobe forced their “Creative Cloud” concept into designer vocabularies it sparked a $180 Million exodus of subscribers. How users develop and evolve a vocabulary and terminology around digital products can either propel revenues or sink a product.

The bigger a product or service becomes, the more likely it is to develop not just slang and buzzwords, but sophisticate communications systems that emerge organically over time. They can carry deep cultural significance and play into product expectations.

Understanding the language your users have and are evolving can be a hidden goldmine of product intelligence, not just for product development and new features, but for marketing for campaign creative and improved customer satisfaction. Users (humans) don’t adapt to your product’s language, you have to adapt to theirs.

Keep in mind that the language and terms your customers create usually happens in digital spaces and despite all your hard work at creating clever marketing terms, your customers will ignore them, or adapt them into their own. This is a common habit we’ve seen in multiple UX research and netnography studies we’ve conducted for clients.

The upside is that the majority of this language develop evolves in public digital spaces. Especially if you’ve developed a Slack or Discord community for your customers. Other places you can find evidence of language development are Reddit communities, ProductHunt discussions, BlueSky and X threads among others.

Sometimes products in highly competitive categories create their own terms as differentiators. Much like Instagram “stories” vs Snapchat “snaps” or LinkedIn “connections” vs Twitter (X) “Followers” or Figma’s “Frames” vs Adobe XD’s “Artboards.” These do tend to stick, but customers almost always develop other terminology around a product.

Why Users Create Their Own Product Language

So it of course begs the question as to why users (humans) develop their own terminology and languages? In some cases it is to shorten complex process into quicker terms that are easier to type. At other times to create shortcuts for some features or developing rapid communications patterns for messaging and forums.

Humans form cultural groupings around products as they become more successful, so it is natural to create terms that create a sense of group belonging. Too often I see product researchers, marketers and managers think only in the abstract term of “user” individually and either cohorts or segments that are still seen in more individualistic ways, or defined purely in economic terms, entirely missing cultural behaviours that are human, not user, driven.

Sometimes languages will evolve if product documentation is overly technical or unclear. Or for filling out gaps in documentation and at times to address specific cultural needs. Power dynamics are also a part of this behaviour. The larger the product market and user base, the more likely they are to resist what they see as corporate imposed terminology. There are other reasons.

How To Assess User Language In Digital Products

User language evolves over time and can change. What we recommend is the creation of a knowledge base for tracking language development, so you have a repository to refer to. This also captures tactic knowledge of UX researchers and product marketers.

Set up this knowledge base then conduct some netnographic research. Conduct sentiment analysis of support tickets and community forums. Do a word cluster analysis. Look for certain words being repeated or weighted in customer interviews. Look for geographical and cohort differences as well.

Incorporate language analysis into your regular UX research workflows. We recommend this being done every two quarters or just twice a year, however your processes are set up.

You can then set up a shared glossary of terms for technical writers and the dev team and improve ticket confusion rates over time.

The Benefits of User Language Analysis

Not only can it be a goldmine for marketing creative from ads to product videos and feature launches, it can open up markets and lead to greater revenues. And mitigate the risk of a disastrous use of terms with product development.

A shared language with your customers is a powerful way to show that you are both listening to your users and that you care. This can tighten the brand relationship with users.

This approach can also help reduce your cultural debt, which I wrote about before and that often aligns with technical debt.

You can measure effectiveness through time-to-value with new users, support ticket resolution times, feature adoption rates, community engagement metric and documentation effectiveness scores among other metrics.