Examining Users' Repertoire of Internet Applications

The language within user interfaces should match the language of the user. However, there has been very little work on how to capture this language and in particular, the lexicon of the user. In this paper we describe how the tools from discourse analysis can be used to capture these lexicons, and show how they vary according to the function of the text. We conducted semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to collect texts for analysis. Analysis showed a variety of repertoires used to describe typical network applications, such as email and Web use. We present these repertoires and describe how they can be used in the design of the user interface