[Editor’s Note: Worst Word of the Week is a regular GeekWire feature spotlighting the pretentious, unnecessarily complex, buzzword-laden, imprecise-but-precise-sounding language that plagues the tech industry. Read our introductory post for more background.]
This week’s worst word: Use case
Examples of (mis)use: You’ll find this annoying phrase in headlines from The Motley Fool and Forbes, stories in Bloomberg Technology and Recode, and, of course, press releases.
What it means: Apparently this is a software-industry term referring to “a list of actions or event steps, typically defining the interactions between a role (known in the Unified Modeling Language as an actor) and a system, to achieve a goal.” Yeah, thanks for nothing.
The way I’ve heard it used most often is to mean “example,” “instance,” “situation” or “circumstance.” Or maybe “set of circumstances.” And those seem perfectly adequate, simple, clear (though perhaps longer) replacements for this pretentious piece of ponderous prose. I really can’t imagine any time it would be necessary to say or write “use case” (well, perhaps in very technical applications).
Why it’s the worst: Look, the world is a complicated place. There’s so much to study and understand. Why not make things as simple as possible (but not simpler, as Einstein purportedly advised)? Why not use the plainest language possible? It’s not as though using complex language really fools anyone into thinking we know more than we do. It’s bolder to be simple and clear, because it’s more apparent when we’re wrong and there’s less opportunity to hide behind obscure language.
So I say, be brave. Let’s all stop saying or writing “use case.”
