On naming things

There are two hard things in software, runs the old joke. Cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors. The joke is funnier than it has any right to be because the second item is genuinely under-considered. Most of what designers spend their time on, in client work, is naming.

The brand needs a name. The product line needs a name. The colours need names. The components in the design system need names. The pages need names. The CTA on the homepage needs a name. The new feature needs a name. The new pricing plan needs a name. The page after the user signs up needs a name. The thing the user does on that page needs a name.

Most of these are named badly. Bad naming is not a single failure mode. It is several.

The descriptive name that is too literal. “Sign up page”. “Settings page”. “Customers page”. These are file names, not user-facing names. They tell the user nothing they did not already know.

The brand name that is meaningless. “Engage”. “Spark”. “Pulse”. Made-up syllables that could attach to anything. The pitch-deck name. Indistinguishable from any other product in the category.

The clever name that no-one understands. “The Canvas” for what is, in practice, a notes app. Names that depend on a metaphor the audience does not share.

The descriptive name that is too long. “The Strategic Onboarding Experience”. A name in PowerPoint, not a name in conversation.

The name that conflicts with an existing name in the same space. “Stories”, in 2020, in any social product, is taken. So is “Spaces”. So is “Rooms”. So is “Threads”.

A few rules I have settled on, after years of getting this badly wrong.

Names should be sayable. Out loud. In a meeting. Without anyone asking how it is spelled. If three colleagues, hearing the name for the first time, all spell it differently, the name is wrong.

Names should not need a footnote. If the name only works after the metaphor has been explained, the name is the wrong vehicle for the metaphor.

Names should be findable. A name that is impossible to search for, because it shares a string with a common English word, is going to cost the team a small ongoing tax for years.

Names should age. A name that ties the product to a particular cultural moment (“Web3 Studio”, “AI-first whatever”) will look dated in two years and dead in five. The names that age well are usually the boring ones.

The brands and products I admire most, on the naming axis: Notion, Linear, Figma, Stripe. All four are short. All four are sayable. None depend on a metaphor that breaks under the second look. None are clever. They are just well-chosen.

The single book on this I recommend most often is Hello, My Name Is Awesome by Alexandra Watkins. It is more useful than its title suggests. The framework, SMILE and SCRATCH, has saved me from naming several products badly.

Most of the naming work in design is invisible. The names that the user accepts without noticing are the ones that did the most work. Aim for invisible.