Deciding on a Name? Bring the Right People and the Right Data Together.
Naming things in software products is hard. Names can be political and carry risks in an organization. Worst case, a poorly chosen name may need to be unwound from the many places a name can appear, from websites to white papers.
So when I got a request from a product designer to help their team with a new administrator role name, I paused.
I saw two ways to approach this: de-risk the decision or review the list of the team’s proposed names, then support or suggest a tweak to one of them. Because I had worked on role-based access control (RBAC) in a previous role and had words from a Michael Metts-led workshop in my head (“great facilitation is about bringing people along”), I chose to try and de-risk by scheduling a meeting.
[Caveat time. What you’re about to read worked for me, on a small scale. If you have a significant naming decision, like a new feature or product, pick up Design By Definition by Elizabeth McGuane. You’ll be glad you did.]
Before I talked to the product designer about how this meeting might look, I thought hard about two things:
- Who should be there
- What data to bring
They were in the (virtual) room
To start, I drafted a list of job functions for whom names in products really matter:
- Product marketing: cares about how comparable products treat similar names and where such names sit with trends in the market
- Product management: prioritizes customer needs and understands what drives the need for a new name
- Technical documentation: carries deep institutional knowledge about admin roles and permissions
A member from each group was invited to the meeting. Then, with the knowledge of who would be there and strong assumptions for what those people care about, I moved on to data.
Research, now and forever
Google Trends isn’t a tool I use often. But in the right situation, it’s just the thing. Comparing search terms, over time, and getting the results visually, for free and in an instant, still feels like magic.
The product marketer on the call was especially pleased to get this readout, mentioning how it signaled future market trends and could help with campaign strategy and timing.
Next, I pulled our current list of admin role names, then grouped them in simple categories (below) to show how proposed names would or would not fit in these schemas. In other words, by reflecting to the group what was already in the product, I could give them a way to judge if a new name would align with our current taxonomy.
Category 1: company-specific
- Owner
- Application Manager
- User Manager
- Read-only
Category 2: job function
- Administrator
- Help Desk
- Billing
Proposed names
- Name 1
- Name 2
After 30 minutes, we agreed on one of the proposed names. Success!
While naming things may always feel hard, bringing the right people along can make the prospect of choosing one a little less daunting.
