Have you ever wondered why some products use different language for what appears to be identical functionality? Why is it that we have so many ways of saying the same thing? Is it an artefact of English being the Internet's lingua franca1? Does it matter?
Bookmarks vs. Favourites2 and the power of language to shape your experience
There's more behind this than you might think. In prehistoric times, Netscape Navigator used bookmarks and Internet Explorer used favorites.
Bookmarks are a familiar concept to many older people. You know, people who read dead-tree books when they were growing up, and know why the "save" icon is a floppy. It's a word that's partially lost its meaning nowadays, apart from as a semi-synonym for favourite.
At its simplest, a bookmark is something you use to mark your place in a book. It doesn't infer any sense of approval. You can go through a terrible textbook and bookmark all the worst bits.
Bookmarks show interest, but are fundamentally impartial.
Favourite, however, comes with baggage. If you favourite something - he says, verbing the noun with near-Millenial abandon - you imply that you like it, that you approve of its content.
If your favourites are public, then you might hesitate to press the button, cautious of what other people might make of it.
If your favourites are private, then you still might worry that someone will see them one day.
I deliberately didn't use the word "like" earlier, but we all feel its presence. The little star reaction on site A is a heart emoji on site B. They are not the same.
tl;dr: You can influence how people behave by using leading language.
Followers vs. Friends and social pressure
"Don't think 'cause I understand, I care. Don't think 'cause I'm talking, we're friends."
-- Sneaker Pimps
In a similar vein, there's the "buddy" problem.
If I'm on a site or app where I am interested in a particular topic - a political issue, or a fandom, say - I might follow accounts around that topic. It doesn't mean I endorse them, but if your site calls that mechanism, "friends" then there's yet more baggage.
As a side-note, if your site calls it "buddies" then it flags your service as US-centric as this term isn't widely used elsewhere. That may or may not be what you want.
Follow-back culture.
I probably don't need to mention this, but there's a "follow-back" culture online, especially amongst younger people wanting to up their numbers.
It's a whole mess, and feeds into these parasocial relationships we keep hearing about, and probably contributes a lot to vulnerable people feeling even more inadequate. It's not something that's as controlled by language as my other points, but there are a variety of things you can do in terms of UX when presenting people with notifications or "follow" actions.
Use your imagination: if it feels like it's leading someone down an unnecessary path or pushing a certain behaviour, maybe don't make that component in the first place.
TODO: insert picture of give-a-shit-ometer3
Likes and favourites and peer pressure
Again, we all feel the presence of the like button.
Sometimes this is what we want. Calls-to-action can help users navigate an unfamiliar interface. The "like" is familiar in all of its forms. But they're not interchangeable.
Gamification
We know gamification pushes users in one direction or another. But gamification is the last resort of a system that doesn't have a real reason to exist.
If there's no benefit to the end users to have awards, for example... don't have them. It's not rock surgery.
Relevance to DEV
Sometimes I try to bring the context of this platform back into my posts. I think DEV does it pretty well: there's a variety of different reactions you can add to a post as well as leaving comments, including:
- neutral iconography (exploding head)
- a bookmarking feature neutrally labelled, "save"
- a discrete "boost" option to separate promotion from reaction
Stats, follower counts and social influence
Some sites lean heavily on stats. They show people's follower count in little tooltips or next to the person's name. It's placed as more important than the person's bio, because it's seen more frequently.
Imagine that: it's more important to show you that 800 people follow Alice and 5,000 people follow Bob than it is to mention that Alice shares similar interests with you, while Bob mostly rants about sportsball.
I could write a lot about numbers. I have, in other places, but it's a little off-topic for here, so I'll try to stick with the context.
I said it's more important to show you the stats, but what I mean is that they fit into a conveniently small area, are quick enough to generate and, well, big numbers generally impress people. They make you feel inadequate and get you all gamified. There's no real reason that a user should care what they are, but by including them, you're telling visitors that popularity is rewarded on the site - and probably popularity for its own sake.
In my opinion, this might not be a smart move.
Ultracrepidarianism
The title of this post is a little in-joke because I'm not very good at talking to people. Whatever.
Cover photo by Brett Jordan from Pexels
Top comments (0)