An event taxonomy a designer can argue with

Week two of the Cohort Signal Lab is deliberately slow. Guests arrive with a spreadsheet of events minted by whichever squad shipped last. Duplicate nouns sit beside each other: item, product, sku, card. Designers were rarely in the thread when those names were chosen. They live with the consequences in every research interview.

We put verbs first. Saved_item is an argument you can have. engagement_score_updated is a fog. Properties come second, and only if a warehouse can join them to something a human already understands: a job, a listing, a household.

The naming meeting is not a luxury

A two-hour argument about whether “activation” includes a permission grant will feel expensive. Shipping four versions of the same noun is more expensive, because every later chart becomes a reconciliation project. We would rather the argument happen in the Chamber, with a designer in the seat, than in month eleven of a warehouse migration.

Helen Cartwright’s rule, posted on the Lab wall: if a designer cannot disagree with the verb, the verb is not finished. Disagreement is a quality check. Consensus on a vague word is not.

Retiring events in writing

Killing a vanity event requires a letter, not a Slack shrug. Who still reads it? Which board pack cites it? What replaces it? The Lab asks for that letter in week eleven so the company cannot pretend the number vanished by accident.

This is why we refuse to treat taxonomy as “data team homework.” Product owns the nouns because product owns the promises. Engineering owns the shipping. Research owns the interviews that will break a bad name. All three should be able to sit in the same document without a translator.

Mobile wrinkles

Screen views and backgrounding are not the same on iOS and Android. The Mobile Event Grammar weekend exists because the Lab cannot spend eleven weeks on platform quirks. If your product is mobile-first, budget for that weekend or bring your own crash-free session notes, as Owen from Leeds did — see voices.

For a seat in the next taxonomy workshop, write to the house with the product you ship and the noun you already distrust.