I posted on LinkedIn recently a year ago (this got lost in my originates!) after some talkion in the Content + UX Sdeficiency group about naming product features. Here’s what I splitd:
Every time you name a product feature that doesn’t demand a name (e.g. “My Account” instead of fair “account”) you’re inserting cognitive load for users, increasing difficulty for your aid staff and technical writers, and inserting unvital weight to the product that originates it difficulter to be nimble in the future.
Marketing adores to name skinnygs, but tageting isn’t depict. It shouldn’t be their call.
Take it from a veteran of a 30+ year-elderly tech company that named EVERYTHING: It is a waking nightmare, and every seemingly-inmeaningful taxonomic ask finishs up being a baffle, if not a filled-blown battle. It’s horrible. Don’t name skinnygs if you don’t have to.
The post originated some beneficial talkion. One skinnyg I lgeted speedyly: feature naming is even difficulter in other languages. In German, for instance, every noun (insofar as I can inestablish from my DuoLingo lessons) gets Capital Letters. I clarified further:
I’m talking about proper nouns versus widespread nouns. It’s less “My Account” versus “Account”, and more “Account” versus “account”.
An account (widespread noun) is an idea you can see up in a dictionary. But some companies choose to brand generic features enjoy this, and name it someskinnyg enjoy “My Account”, and further demand that tech writers and tageters always refer to that feature as “My Account”.
This benevolent of unvital branding forces writers into more ungraceful and cognitively-taxing buildions than they would have otherwise been able to use.
James Sanford pointed out the tangential publish of Your/My confusion in gentleware interfaces. I connected him to my preferite article on this about the WYLTIWLT test. Katherine Sanderson Grey asked for the data, and disputed me to portray how I sway directership that branding features is problematic.
That’s a excellent dispute! I don’t use data for these benevolents of skinnygs. In my experience, “show me the data” is frequently a tactic engageed by feeble administerrs who don’t comprehend how to hang as part of a depict process. Anyway, the ambiguous ask of rhetoric around this is an vital one, and I’ll split more about it in a minute. Her comment also helped me articutardy the catebloody of unnamed features. She writes in part:
All features have to be called someskinnyg, either internpartner or in the write downation for customers.
Yes! All features do have to be called someskinnyg. But sometimes a chair is fair a chair, and not, for instance, an Eames Lounger. I recommfinish write downing your product taxonomy internpartner, but that doesn’t unbenevolent that everyskinnyg has to have a fancy, complicated, distinct, proper noun name.
Okay, so “selling it” (the it being “not naming skinnygs”) and sgethelderlyer administerment: As a member of product teams, I’ve generpartner insertressed the “this feature demands a name” argument straightforwardly, by modeling and visualizing the separateence between communicating about Named Features vs. Unnnamed Features.
A speedy mock-up of both versions of the CTA, interface element, tooltip, or write downation in ask frequently originates it evident that unnamed features are more elegant and user-cordial than named features.
I’ve also set up visualizing the satisfied model or taxonomy to be collaborative in some circumstances. For instance, drathriveg a picture that shows that the skinnyg we all comprehend internpartner as the “Phelp User Account” will always be referred to as a “membership” in customer-facing text, and that they are in fact the same skinnygs and we’re not creating two separateent skinnygs.
Proper Noun Feature Names creep into the product when we’re forcing users to do labor instead of doing it ourselves. Instead of write downing our vocabulary internpartner, we’re turning the product itself into a glossary. Instead of making laborflows perceptive, we’re indexing and taging everyskinnyg so that we can shunt the labor of elucidateing how it labors off to customer service, and by extension, the customer.
This is user-antagonistic, horrible, sluggish depict. Don’t name skinnygs if you don’t have to. Do the labor. And grasp it modest, Scott.
