Names
Why do doctors call the bone at the tip of the index finger the “2nd Distal Phalanx?” Because giving it a name provides a shortcut. This way a doctor doesn’t have to say “the brownish wobbly bit behind the squishy pinkish bits” and can jump straight to “the liver.” It’s a means of linguistic and conceptual efficiency. A name provides an interface to discussing the thing it’s named for.
People say “cat” to mean a normally four-legged animal covered in fur that mews. Until we had a word for “cat,” we had to use other words to describe them. The same goes for “schadenfreude,” a thing that exists conceptually throughout the world but has no English name.
In fact, when you’re forced to describe a nameless idea or thing to a friend, you’re essentially providing the definition for a thing that doesn’t yet have a word for itself.
So if it’d be useful, why not give it a name? Jared Spool (beating me to the punch with the anatomy example) gave a brilliant talk at SXSW where he gave names to different approaches to design. These types have existed for years, but having names for them provides shortcuts to thinking about them and discussing them.
But a word of warning: it can be creatively dangerous to give existing names to new things because things that truly are “new” have new definitions. Familiar names carry familiar definitions (and branding) with them. While the iPad is technically a “tablet computer,” calling it that overlooks some key distinctions between it and its pen-based predecessors. This can box you in to thinking about something in familiar terms instead of as a new concept. As a “new thing,” Apple was better off not giving the iPad a name until after it defined itself (calling it a “post-PC device” only after it’d been out a year.)
So if a thing exists with a definition but no name, don’t be afraid to give it a new one. Remember, every name is a made-up name. New names are like simple machines; tools that allow for easier discussion. They enable new metaphors and, consequently, new ways of thinking about things that already exist.
Think about the effect giving a name to AJAX had on the web (and how its definition has shifted since it was introduced). Think about names for musical genres. Think about “Web 2.0,” “HTML 5,” the ”uncanny valley,” and the “killer app.”
See also:
Jared Spool: The Anatomy of a Design Decision [Video]
Stephen Fry: Blessay on Language [Text / Audio] (thoughts on naming of CCTV starting at 29:03)
Take five minutes to watch this three minute video by Ze Frank. It’s pretty dense and I didn’t get it the first time through, but it has some of the best insights to marketing I’ve heard.
We humans are associative creatures. We’re pattern-matching fiends. It’s how we can quickly find our friends in a crowd, why we think calves are cute, and why we search for patterns in static. Pattern matching is what our brains do.
But those are just visual examples. Our brains also match patterns with experiences. For example, many people take up smoking because they’re hanging out with good friends who smoke, and they associate smoking with friendship and good times. In other words, smoking has been branded with friendship and good times.
Some of these associations (or “emotional aftertastes”) are inbuilt (afraid for safety = bad), others are discovered (I like strawberries), and all have a dramatic effect on the decisions we make.
This brings us to the single most important marketing lesson I’ve learned:
People want to be happy.
And by “happy” we can also say “not frustrated.” It’s why we have customer service. It’s why we switched to Google Maps. People will choose the path of most happy and least frustrating every time.
Someone was once making the case to me that popups and the “smack the monkey” ads of the Myspace age were effective because they received high click-through rates. I argued that they were damaging because they branded the company as irritating. Branding yourself with “happy and not frustrating” is extremely valuable. It’s why Apple can afford sell 52 hours of one-on-one training for $1.90/hr.1 They lose money up front, but they more than make it up in the long term with the strong brand loyalty it brings.2
1 Apple’s One-to-One program costs $99 for a year of personal training.
2 In this example, Safeway takes the opposite approach and decides to make more money up front at the cost of their brand equity.
