Can invention of UI/UX or a programming syntax become a publication? In my opinion, UI/UX (user interface / user experience) or programming syntax are just like a piece of art. Some people will like your work, some won’t  – it depends on a number of factors varying among people. I am doing research in designing UI/UX or programming syntax, and I have a few questions:


Can invention of UI/UX or programming syntax become a publication?
Which way of doing research can make those works look more academic?


Why do I ask these questions?

Because I think that when we talk about good or bad in scientific research, it should be universal, independent of human opinion. That’s why in the second question, I ask for research methods to approach scientific work, instead of creating artwork.
In principle, everything that has a research contribution can become a publication. Especially in computer science, a research contribution is very roughly defined as knowledge that is useful independently of the concrete implementation technology.

That means that "look at my nice draft for an UI / syntax" isn't a research contribution, but showing (e.g., through a user study) that a given design is better than the currently prevalent design in one or more dimensions is. Of course this means that you will need to do more than just propose the new design: firstly you need to be quite intimately aware what the current state of the art is (and the reasoning behind the current design), and secondly you will need to conduct a useful study.

As a sidenote, as soon as you are asking yourself ...


  Which way of doing research can make those works look more academics?


.. you are almost certainly doing it wrong. You should not conduct some work and afterwards think about how to make it "seem more academic". You should think from the beginning what the research question of your work is, and if you can't find any, question whether you should be conducting this work in the first place. Any attempt to make work "seem academic" after the fact is typically hard to publish, as reviewers are, at least usually, not stupid and able to look beyond simple deceptions.