Bridging the communication gap: a user task vocabulary for multidisciplinary web development team

The design of Web-based systems is specially characterized by the multidisciplinary nature of Web Development Teams (WDTs). Due to this multidisciplinary, WDT members use different terminology that can lead to misunderstanding along the development process and, consequently, affect the resulting design. This problem has been identified during the physical design of websites, characterized by the sharing of ideas and the need of reaching a common understanding of the problem. With the purpose of avoiding misunderstanding among WDT members during this phase, it is proposed a controlled vocabulary of web user task. The definition of the vocabulary is based on the analysis of interaction design patterns. The paper describes the definition process followed for the construction of the user task vocabulary as well as the vocabulary itself. The final version of the controlled vocabulary compiles a total of thirty-four web user tasks and forty-one semantic relationships represented as synonyms. The vocabulary has been assessed through a heuristic evaluation, proving its correctness and completeness.