Buzzword Culture

In the past week I was writing a blog post titled "Design and Future-proof Perfection Through Errors". The title, as you can see, has three business buzzwords, taboos or clichés, which made me remember Ed Catmull's, "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration." where he talks about the whole "Story is King" idea/principle.

“Merely repeating ideas means nothing. [The] guiding principle, while simply stated and easily repeated, [doesn't] protect [you] from things going wrong. In fact, it [gives you] false assurance that things would be okay.”

Think about the hundreds of times that you've heard platitudes like: "Content is King" or "Let's not do it perfect". Or all those times that somebody has tried to look smart in a meeting by mentioning the "future-proof" aphorism. Or even maybe, some other times when companies had committed company-culture-genocide by being unable to handle human error. You all know what I'm talking about, because we all have been exposed to it in one way or another.

So I put myself to the task of:

• Unveiling what it takes to "Future-proof" something.
• De-mystifying what "Perfection" means for the business, and why it is dogmatically eluded.
• Refreshing the perspective that "errors" are there for a reason.

To do this I tried to visualize the meaning of the word quoted in the sentences above, within the context in which it is said, and the result looks something like this (clicking will take you to my blog, which has a larger version of the image).

In hindsight, Buzzwords or Buzzphrases may not bad at all, if instead of parroting them, we use their actual depth to our advantage. After all, it was that advantage that made them a buzzword or buzzphrase; it just make sense.

You can read more about this here.

Edgar Anzaldúa-Moreno is an UX Designer, with passion for User Centered Design, Music, Photography and Tacos. He constantly updates his blog, EAM.MX with topics related to UX and Data Viz.