As the new kid on the block (I'm just into my third week now), I have already complied an extensive list of new words and phrases. Some of them are standard publishing terms- like “full bleed” (this refers to an image appearing on a page without any borders). Some are SharedBook vernacular like "book making space" (a BMS is the storage area on the SharedBook server where we store your work while you are creating your new book).
This all reminds me of my days at Hertz. When I started work to design their Web site, I had already worked in car rental for over 10 years. I was so fluent in "rent-a-car speak" that I didn't even know it was a foreign language to the rest of the world. It took a customer to correct my thinking.
One of our most commonly used terms was 'fleet' (this refers to all the vehicles the company offers). The Web site had a popular section called "Fleet Guide." This particular customer innocently asked, "What do you mean fleet? Do you now rent ships or something?"
It turned out every customer we spoke to thereafter informed us that they found the term odd as well. And the popular section of the site wasn't always hitting its target audience. So we changed the words, and ever since it has been known as the "Vehicle Guide." No more confusion.
In a Web 2.0 world, there are new words coined everyday. At SharedBook, we have new terms for our customers to learn. The trick will be to limit our lingo as much as possible and, when we need to introduce new terms, make sure that our customers get the benefit of a handy definition for each.
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