Blockchain Lexicon

I discovered that designers, engineering, and marketing used different terms for the same thing and the same word for different things.

First Challenge

This project originated from a conversation I had with several engineers, designers, and blockchain users; when I asked, "what is the correct alternative term for "wallet?" everyone had a different answer, with caveats.

The research

I started posting related terms on the wall near my desk. What I initially thought was going to be a quick terminology exercise quickly grew.

It didn't stop there. As the list grew, I had to move it to another wall. As I did, engineers began stopping by and asking what I was doing.

I identified something powerful because more engineers and marketing folks stopped by. And when they did, they stood by the terms discussing a disputed term.

I moved all of the terms and groupings to an enormous wall, and the sorting process began.

All engineering teams came in and reviewed the terminology, rank-ordering terms to align with specific definitions. In some cases, teams decided to rewrite the definitions.

After narrowing the scope, I sent out a questionnaire as a Google Form to the whole company. The response was outstanding.

We took all the terms and conducted another review and rank ordering of the results.

I shared a final results doc with the whole company on the internal system. I also left the results on the wall for several months, and several times a week, a couple of people would stop by and consult the post-it notes.

Reflection

While attempting to get feedback from engineering teams and users, I often found that people were too busy.

By sharing my interest in the project and posting it for everyone to see and discuss, interest grew. Putting it on the wall made it accessible.

By being responsible for what we create in our environment and standing for communication, small things can grow big and take on a life of their own. We can use qualitative and quantitative research together to build valuable insights. Insights that come out of listening to a misunderstanding.