Testing, testing. Can u hear me?

A friend posted recently about abbreviations of the word microphone. Apparently, abbreviating microphone to mic gives him a nervous tic. For him, mike is the proper abbreviation. It is not clear if he is in the pronunciation anti-mic camp--their argument is that mic is liable to be mispronounced as "mick" (like "tic")--or if his objection is solely because (his point) we abbreviate "bicycle" as "bike" and, therefore, should abbreviate "microphone" to "mike." Except the
first "c" in "bicycle" is soft and the "c" in "microphone" is hard, making this a specious comparison. If bike is using the sound of the second "c" (and it is), then the type of abbreviation must be completely different. It is a false comparison. Those who take issue with the spelling because of potential mispronunciation make a good point, mic out of context likely would be mispronounced. But that is true of many words in English.

The English language is a harsh mistress. English is built upon and borrows liberally from many languages and cultures and, thus, has many inconsistent forms. There are precious few rules that apply to all of her subjects sweepingly. This is quite evident in our abbreviations.

Mike or Mic?

In fact, the common abbreviation for microphone in audio and engineering is mic. This shorthand of mic for microphone has been used by professional broadcasters and musicians and in equipment labeling for many years. Mic was used in printed texts (remember those?) at least as early as 1961. (It did not start with rap, as has been stated by a few commentators.) Interestingly, the verb form, to express the act of setting up a microphone, seems to be written somewhat interchangeably as both "to mic" and "to mike." Regardless of which spelling is used for the abbreviation as a verb, "mike" is used for its past tense, present third-person singular, and passive voice forms.

Stoddard mikes himself before he goes on air.

The engineer miked him already.

Streisand always is miked.

Who's your daddy?

Not only does English itself have a plethora of standard abbreviations, every field has its own set (and sometimes many sets) of abbreviations. Neither the comparative abbreviations nor comparative pronunciations approach is particularly useful in English to determine how abbreviations should be formed. There are some basic forms for abbreviating, but first, here are a few other interesting abbreviations and comparisons of abbreviations in English.

mother > mom, mommy

but

father > dad, daddy

number > num

but

amount > amt

and

quantity > qty

By the way, if something is countable, use quantity or number; if not, use amount.

telephone > phone

but

television > T.V. (sometimes teevee), now TV

satellite > Sat

but

Internet > Net

worldwide web > WWW > Web > web

I owe you > IOU

Did you think the shortcut of abbreviating "you" to "u" started with text messaging (texting), electronic mail (E-mail > Email > email), or social media (SM or sm, not to be confused with S&M, although SM can be both tortuous and addicting)? Think again. The IOU abbreviation using U for you has been around since the late 18th century.

Types of Abbreviations or Abbreviations of Type?

Dropping the end of a word to abbreviate it (deli, gym, mic) is called clipping. Dropping the beginning, as in telephone to phone, is called apheresis. Dropping letters from the middle (mgmt, fwd) is called contraction. The first two (and, arguably, contracting) are syllabic-based methods of abbreviating words.

Television to TV, International Business Machines to IBM, self-contained underwater breathing apparatus to S.C.U.B.A. (then SCUBA, now scuba), and Worldwide Web to WWW, are letter-based methods of abbreviating, which, typically but not always, abbreviate using the first letter of each significant word or syllable. Examples of exceptions are extensible markup language, which abbreviates to XML, and user experience, which abbreviates to UX. But, I beg you, for all that is holy, please do not write out these using a capital X! If I see one more eX- anything, I may run screaming for the eXit.

Letter-based abbreviations that form a pronounceable word, such as scuba, NATO, and radar are acronyms. Radar actually is a hybrid letter- and syllable-based abbreviation for "radio detection and ranging," forced somewhat in order to make a memorable acronym. Letter-based abbreviations that are not pronounceable as a word (IBM, CIA, WWW) are initialisms rather than acronyms. Note that this distinction is often missed as a result of massive misuse. I suspect that this conflation began with texts that show all abbreviations in a list of "acronyms" rather than in a properly-named list of "abbreviations and acronym" or, simply, "abbreviations." (All acronyms are abbreviations; not all abbreviations are acronyms.) Nonetheless, the distinction remains.

Some shortened words and names may not much resemble their longer forms, such as father shortened to dad or daddy. These particular abbreviations also happen to be hypocorisms. Hypocorisms are words that are for or about children or endearing 'pet' names. Daddy, like many hypocorisms, also adds a softening, singsongy -y sound at the end.

The mutability of English also is apparent in abbreviations. Dropping the periods in abbreviations is common in technology and communications, and it is becoming more common in the mainstream and academia. We now write PhD, NATO, and USA. But keep the periods in U.S. (US is a magazine, not a country.) Similarly, abbreviations, particularly acronyms, that do not represent a proper noun generally now are written in lowercase instead of uppercase letters. Hence, we have radar, scuba, laser, and pin instead of their unnecessarily bulky predecessors. Likewise, proper-name acronyms are moving toward only an initial capital (Unicef, Peta, and Fema).

And about those text shortcuts? That's TMI 4 2nite. BB4N.

Previously published at cherimullins.blogspot.com

"What happened to usability?"

Nicolette L. Davis, PhD, asked this question in the UX Pro group on LinkedIn yesterday. She expanded on her question with the following post.

The term "user experience" seems to have replaced "usability" recently. Why, the Usability Professionals Association even changed its name to the User Experience Professionals Association a couple of years ago! Personally, I think "usability" is a much clearer term than "user experience," particularly for people not familiar with our field. Does anyone know the reason for this change? Some kind of management fad, perhaps?

There does seem to be a trend currently to conflate user experience (UX) and usability. UX is both more and less than usability, but there is significant overlap between the two.

The methods of usability and UX analysis are similar. Usability and UX are not distinguished by "measurability" as one response in the thread implies. Usability assessment is a more established field than UX assessment. As a result, there are more established methodologies for assessment and measurement as well as more established indicators for such assessment and measurement. Nonetheless, both usability and UX most certainly can be measurable. Also like usability, certain UX factors can be qualitatively comparable rather than measurable.

A current trend in companies is to focus usability on research and testing and to limit UX to design. However, both usability and UX have research, analysis, implementation, and testing aspects as well as design aspects. Design is only one aspect of a product, and there are many facets to design, among which are: interface design (IxD), user experience design (UxD), business experience design, and graphic design. None of the individual components of UX equate to UX, which is a very broad area. Even though UX in current practice seems to have an undue focus on design, design is not a differentiator between usability and UX. The UX-design connection is more clearly understood, but even with usability, there should be a focus on usability in design. The gap here may relate to the "convenient acronym" effect that Dave Lull notes. Perhaps "Usability Designer" does not have the same buzz-word ring to it as "UX Designer." It certainly does not reduce as well to a clever abbreviation: UxD (or IxD, or BxD, or XxD) versus what? UD?

Generally, but not always, user experience (UX) encompasses what I would refer to as 'fitness for purpose.' Something can be completely usable but not particularly useful. Or it can be both usable and useful, but not relevant. Or usable, useful, and relevant, but not appropriate. And so on. Tom de Haas implies this with the inclusion of branding, usability, functionality, and content in his understanding of UX. UX includes not only certain tangible components, but also intangibles. As Gary Dorst implies, many intangible aspects of UX affect the overal user experience although they are not measurable. Also, as Katie Albers points out, these are not the only aspects of UX. One of the most notable aspects missing from the de Haas list is architecture. The architecture of physical, interface, and information products and components has a profound impact on the user experience, particularly over time. Futhermore, the element of time is another differentiator between usability and user experience. Usability looks at how usable something is in an instantation (whether or not access is repeated). User experience (or its more specific counterpart, business experience) looks at the overall experience over time.

But back to the question. "What happened to usability?" It sometimes is hiding inside the larger user experience field, sometimes stuck to the side in research without fruitful application (and re-application in an iterative manner), sometimes mislabeled as UX or another related area. But usability research, assessment, application, testing is alive and well in many environments.