This document discusses using a cognitive grammar approach to user experience (UX) design. It proposes that interfaces can be viewed as languages with underlying grammars and conceptual models. The author describes their experience applying grammatical distinctions like objects and verbs to the information architecture of a banking app. The document then discusses how UX research can be used to develop an ontology conceptualizing a domain and how prototypes can help test and refine the conceptual model through an iterative process.

1. The grammar of user experience
A cognitive grammar to translate the ux research into requrements
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2. About me
PhD in Cognitive Sciences
Freelance UX designer: Information Architecture, Interaction Design,
Usability
Adjoint Professor in Human Computer Interaction at the Università degli
Studi di Trento
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3. The insight
During my last project as ux designer (the redesign of an internet and mobile
banking) I noticed that I unconsciously applied a grammatical distinction onto
the 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)
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6. 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?
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7. What is a grammar?
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8. 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 and
morphology (including inflections)
Oxford dictionary
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9. 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
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10. Formal grammars
A set of explicit rules to generate strings in a formal language
Wikipedia
Formal languages, like programming languages, are machine-readable
Example: Java Syntax
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11. Cognitive grammar
Cognitive grammars have been developed in the context of cognitive
linguistics. Some assumptions:
Language is meaning and meaning is conceptualization
Language is rooted in experience, shapes our wiew of the world, reflects our
overall experience as human beings
The cognitive grammar maps a language to the conceptualizations
of the mind
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12. Interfaces are languages
An API is a subset of a language
A command-line interface or command language interpreter (CLI) is a
language
HTML is a language, with a grammar (XHTML has a strict grammar)
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13. UI as language
Which are the advantages to see the UI as a language?
Features of languages:
can represent a conceptual world
has a set of rules (the grammar)
the rules should be used both to build a representation and to evaluate if
a representation is correct
it has a hierarchy of components (letters, syllables, morphemes, words,
phrases, periods, texts ...)
it should be possible to translate from another language, and to another
language
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15. Similar approaches
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16. Atomic design
Atomic design is an approach partally similar. The metaphor is chemistry
need for modularity: "We’re not designing pages, we’re designing systems
of components." - Stephen Hay
a better workflow and a shared vocabulary
Modeling Structured Content - IAS13 workshop
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17. Ooux
A design methodology organized around objects rather than "actions" and
data rather than logic
Object Oriented UX
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18. The AOF Method
AOF stands for Activity, Objects, and Features.
First you determine and research the activity you’re going to support. This
helps you identify the social objects within that activity and the actions people
take on those social objects. These objects and actions become your feature
set.
Joshua Porter
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19. The process
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20. 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 set
a verb is a function
actions are often nominalizated: registration = to register, payment = to
pay, submission = to submit
nominalization 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 is
an object) or a characteristic of Y
every concept is a node in the ontology
relations among concepts should be represented by arcs
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21. A grammar for the interface
every node in the ontology should have a template
every object of the main concepts should have a page
every category should have an index
at every link in the taxonomy should correspond a (bi)directional link
among the objects
consider to use the concepts as the first level of the navigation
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22. Example: slack
un tool di collaborazione, funziona cross-device (pc, telefono, tablet) e ricorda
in parte IRC, ma funziona per progetto/azienda. Apri un profilo slack, inviti le
persone che fanno parte del progetto, poi apri tot canali tematici e ognuno
decide a quali partecipare. A quel punto funziona come una chat, con
condivisione di file, immagini ecc... Cosa particolare: puoi integrare dei servizi
esterni, via webhook. Così quando fai, per esempio, una push su una repo di
github, può arrivare un messaggio ai partecipanti a un canale
A collaboration tool, cross-device, it remembers IRC , for a project or a
company . You open a slack profile , you invite the people that are part of
the project , then you open some thematic channels , and anybody decide to
which 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 a
message to the participants of a channel .
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23. The conceptualization
Concepts (objects)
project
profile
people (a list of individuals)
channels
files
images
services
Verbs (functions)
open a profile
invite the people
open one or more channels
partecipate to one or more channels
share files and images
integrate
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24. The (extended) ontology
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25. 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) - deadline
location (5) - how to reach (3)
programme (5)
costs (4)
submissions (3) - procedure - I send the article
contacts (3)
theme - topics (2)
talks (2) - abstract of the tasks (1)
affiliations (2)
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26. Conference ontology
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27. An agile approach to ux research
Yes, I'm telling the magic world: it's agile ;)
interview some users
create an ontology
create a prototype (involving the stakeholders)
recruit some more participants to test the prototype and to interview
them
update the ontology, the prototype
test again
repeat untill both stakeholders' and users' feedbacks are positive.
A prototipe vs a real example
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28. Verbs are semantically typed functions
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34. How many verbs in Interaction design?
Grammars distinguish open and closed word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives
are open, articles, conjunctions and pronouns are closed.
While preparing this talk, I was looking for the most different examples of
verbs. What I realized is that the list is short.
I've identified two dozens of verbs that - I believe - cover 90% of the
actions/functions
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35. Most important verbs
Register
Login
Find - Search
Check
Compare
Choose
Decide
Read, watch, listen to
Create
Write
Update
Delete
Buy
Download
Upload
Share
Like
Comment
Give some information
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36. 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 dozens
of 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, classes
and instances.
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37. To summarize
In my talk I'm doing a list of proposals
Interfaces are languages
Language is meaning
We can identify a grammar of meaning
We 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 interface
We can consolidate our process, in term of research, conceptualization,
design, test, implementation
The process can and should be iterative, agile, lean (at least at the
beginning).
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38. Thank you
Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is
called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?
Sophist - Plato
Let's continue the conversation:
mail: bussolon@gmail.com
twitter: @sweetdreamerit
linkedin: bussolon
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