Naming product features with OOUX

A little story plus a tip to kick off your Monday...

This one is based on a favorite #productdesign conundrum: Naming a new feature (queue horror movie scream).

My desktop is a mess, like most designers I know. This morning I decided I'd spend exactly 30 seconds organizing the documents and folders scattered across it.

After a right-click, I selected a feature called "Stacks" from the dropdown. I didn't know exactly what it meant, but I knew enough to click on it.

This is what I saw when I clicked:

Exactly what most of us would expect. Some of us even have a few of these on our kitchen tables.

Here's why: The words desktop, document, and folder in the first two sentences of this post helped set the scene - 'oh, we're at work and we're organizing things!'

The word stack makes sense here, yes?

This is a great feature title because it fits the user's mental model while telling a delightful visual story. The title makes sense because it fits with the other nouns within that space.

Moral of the story: Words matter. #OOUX helps.

#nounforaging #discovery #orca #featureadoption #UX