"Please place the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube on the Aperture Science Super-colliding Super-button".
Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
21–26 of 26 posts
Re: Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
#22A tangentially related pet peeve of mine is using code names for everything internally. They’re fine in moderation, but should be used sparingly.
It’s easier for a new engineer to understand and remember that your “foo-retriever” service calls “foo-processor” than to keep track of how “Zephyr” interacts with “Ceres”
Re: Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
#23"My account" is innocent enough, compared to some other real life examples. And it sometimes doesn't come from marketing, but from development too. I've worked in company which added a "funny" codename to everything: features, libraries, sprints, sections of backoffice interface. I don't know, maybe for some developers it makes things more engaging, for me it added a ton of unnecessary stuff to memorize or look up. A…
My Account is not too bad but I dislike the trend towards calling every customer portal “MyAcme(TM)”
Literally yesterday I saw a message on one of these saying “Log into your MyAcme” - announcing the top issue with this naming scheme to everyone.
Re: Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
#24Tangentially related: memberships and their 'benefits' is something commonly used to disconnect the payment from the thing you get. You think it's extra. It's not. In fact, I don't use most of the 'benefits' and I'm still paying for them. And the other weird use of language is showing a discount for when you get a credit card as 'take 5%'. Not 'take 5% off'. Like, I don't get to 'take' that. It doesn't appear in my p…
Or car ads with phrases like $1000 cash back. It's just a reduction in price of $1000. They don't give you $1000 cash in hand as a signing bonus.
Sometimes they do; we got that with our last mortgage renewal.
Re: Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
#25Counterpoint: if you are giving a user instructions (how tos, support interactions etc) then having the buttons, and concepts clearly marked out is really helpful.
E.g. if support tells a customer "click on your account" - then what does that mean? account is a generic abstract thing, how does one click on that? The customer must deduce that support is referring to one particular button on one particular place. Or support must say "the button labeled 'account' on the top right hand corner of the screen". If there is a unique name, then saying "click on 'Your Account"' is simpler.
It's even more critical when support needs to explain something abstract to a customer. Like, imagine explaining the difference between the temporary and EBS storage of a EC2 instance without any of the capitalized feature names.
Re: Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
#26"Features", like hurricanes?
Naming them is stupid, it's emotional and irrational.
The Japanese have a much better system of numbering them...