App Design Lessons from Written Language

Think your app will be a big success — one that people will use all the time and can't live without? Well, they may not be apps, but written languages possess both these traits, and since they've been developing and competing for as long as human history, there's a lot to learn from them.

1. Avoid Feature-Creep

A while back, Zed Shaw put up an awesome article on how elegance is found in the merging of the simple with the complex. He gives as an example the Korean alphabet, which in the 15th century came to brilliantly represents syllables through phonographic components that kind of look like the what you're saying. Still, since the alphabet's creation, the vexing problem of changes in pronunciation has added a layer of complexity to Hangul in the same way it has to Latin or Greek. As an app designer, we often wish our users would just stick to using things how we intend, only to be forced to realize that the customer is never wrong. Likewise in language, speakers merge diphthongs, bifurcate consonants, or make letters disappear through elision.

So has any language survived the pronunciation test of time? If there were one, the phonographically pure Spanish would be it. As my grandma loves to tell me (over and over), its orthography is so perfect that Spanish-speaking schools don't teach spelling. More impressive I think, is that if a Spanish speaker picks up a copy of Lazarillo de Tormes (arguably the world's first bestselling novel), they are able to read it aloud just as when it was first published. History calls the process by which Spanish orthography became so durable the Readjustment of the Spanish Syllables, but as app designers, we can recognize it as a dropping of support of nearly all the edge cases in medieval Spanish that allowed for varied pronunciation.

That said, next time you think of an edge case and feel like being comprehensive, think first about the undesirable uses it may allow. Are they worth it or will keeping the feature set tight help you deliver a perfect product? Sometimes it'll be hard to decide, but in most cases, a more focused offering will be better.

2. Keep It Real

Think Spanish-speakers being able to read aloud with ease a five century old Spanish book is cool? Well, Chinese literature can top that. A Chinese speaker today can grok the millennia old stories of Zhuangzi with only modest difficulty. Unless you invented the wheel, you probably can't even imagine your tech being meaningful that long.

So how did the Chinese language do it? In short, by keeping it real, and having each Chinese character map directly to a meaning, instead of to a sound first and then a meaning. Just to be clear, it's not that all Chinese characters are pictographs; most are derived phonetic compounds with some indication of both sound and meaning. Furthermore, Chinese is not strictly monosyllabic and many modern morphemes are formed from characters with only a vague connection to their composite. These things understood, written Chinese still possess a strong sense of isomorphism between written morphemes and real world concepts, a trait that makes ancient text readable.

As an app designer, you'll want to likewise stay grounded in reality. Know your user and know concretely how they'll use your app. The more you can ephemeralize or map to real life stuff, the more likely your app will stay relevant to your users long term.

3. Be User Programmable

Another amazingly popular written language these days possesses neither consistent orthography nor real world isomorphic symbols. Yet, nonetheless, English seems to support an uncanny amount of everyday and technical jargon by being a good host. Making no hard rules on how the letters of the Latin alphabet should be pronounced, guests of the language feel comfortable bending them to their needs. Extreme case in point, here I am appropriating English letters to creep my sister-in-law out with what she recognizes as Shanghainese, an otherwise unwritten language:

tina: dinner?

me: mu yingei men wenwen

me: dezi yi yize lala odang

tina: i can actually read what you're saying

tina: which is creepy...

Playfulness aside, the ease of acquiring loan words in English is likely due to the fact that each written word supports some sort of etymological closure that lets letters and their sounds be defined in context. As app designers, aiming for English's level of user programmability may at times be key toward spurring adoption.

After Words

This essay contains huge generalizations, omissions, and at least one error. It also advocates lessons learned from fairly immiscible languages. Don't let that keep you from appreciating the ideas it presents. People love and need the languages they use, and hopefully, the same will apply to your app.