Names

We live in an increasingly complex world. We need to keep things simple as much as we can so we can make our day simpler and better.

One of the things that tend to be complicated are names. More specifically names of products and software. Marketing people tend to like uber-complicated names with dashes and numbers. The same goes with programmers.

For example if I tell you there is a program called Buoh, do you know what its purpose is? What it does? Well, Buoh is a reader for online strips comics. Now, if I tell you there is a program called Rip It, would you venture to guess what it does? Yes, you were right, it rips stuff. Rip It rips DVD’s so you can watch movies everywhere.

What’s the different between those two? They are both single tasked applications, however one can tell its user almost immediately the purpose of the application just by reading its name. It makes life easier to have a program that can tell you what it does via its name.

Another example: Samsung Galaxy S LL Epic. Can you guess it is actually a phone? Unless you are a geek my guess is not. How about iPhone 4? You know right there it is a phone.

Without getting into which phone is actually better, it is very clear that a consumer that sees the name iPhone for the first time will know, or at least have a decent guess, as to what the product does. Not so much with Samsung’s smartphone.

Names can make things simple or they can complicate them.

Personally my mind is filled with the complexities this world throws at me all the time. I don’t need to make it even more complicated by having to start searching for what a product does because it is not clear from its name. To me a product name should be simple, provide information about the product and be easily remembered.