FoundationsThinking words

Thinking words

What Joey says in the Portal while he is working, and what koala-bot says in Slack. Two lists, two audiences, one file — Koala.Web.Design.ThinkingWords.

Joey, in the Portal

Third person and ellipsis-terminated: the Portal describes Joey to the reader. Client-facing, so nothing here is a joke — a client may be reading over the conveyancer's shoulder on a transaction worth £400,000.

Safe in any width, including inside a button. Nothing over 18 characters, or a word that overflows a pill resizes a button under the reader's pointer.

Thinking…
Pondering…
Considering…
Deliberating…
Ruminating…
Cogitating…
Reflecting…
Drafting…
Rummaging…
Percolating…
Brewing…
Warming up…
Having a think…
Mulling it over…
Working it out…
Untangling it…
Reading it twice…

And where there is a whole line to spend — a chat bubble, a panel — these as well. A superset, so a roomy caller still draws the short ones too.

Turning it over…
Chewing it over…
Weighing it up…
Puzzling it out…
Piecing it together…
Joining the dots…
Consulting his notes…
Checking his workings…
Choosing his words…
Getting his head round it…
Rolling his sleeves up…
Scratching his head…

No copyable block for these, deliberately: nothing should be holding a second copy of them. Draw them with <koala-thinking>, which carries the list onto its own element — or, on a surface that builds its own label in script, read the JSON the page renders for it.

koala-bot, in Slack

First person and no trailing ellipsis, because a bot speaks as itself and composes its own message. The audience is the team, so these lean on the koala and on seeing the repo — which is exactly why they are a separate list.

Pondering
Noodling
Ruminating
Munching eucalyptus
Foraging
Climbing the tree
Sniffing around
Chewing on it
Mulling it over
Scratching my head
Squinting at the code
Connecting the dots

[
  "Pondering",
  "Noodling",
  "Ruminating",
  "Munching eucalyptus",
  "Foraging",
  "Climbing the tree",
  "Sniffing around",
  "Chewing on it",
  "Mulling it over",
  "Scratching my head",
  "Squinting at the code",
  "Connecting the dots"
]

Add ?format=json to this page's URL for the same words as a bare array, from the same file, so the bot need not keep its own copy. That endpoint serves this list and nothing else — one that could return either set is one that will one day put client-facing words into Slack, or a koala joke on a screen a client can see.