ux | work | life matters

Day 030 | Coming up with a name

We’ve started to think of names. Last year around this time I was doing the same for my Limited Company. It was quite the challenge and I ended up just picking one as the papers needed to be filed.

Unless you already know what you want your product or company to be called, there can be quite a few things to consider. The name you pick should ideally also have an available domain name, twitter username, perhaps Facebook username, etc, something I found was trickier than expected (the domain name that is).I thought of names, decided on one and time after time it fell on that someone had already registered the domain name, or it was used in a way or referenced something I hadn’t expected.

Just as with people a name says a lot and deciding on one there are aspects like the following to consider:
[list type=”check”]

  • What type of name do you want?
  • What do you want it to communicate?
  • Should it have a reference to what you are/the product itself?
  • Do you want to be able to use it as a verb? Or perhaps a noun? Or both?
  • Should it be more cryptic?
  • Should there be a hidden meaning?
  • An abbreviation perhaps?
  • Or a made up word or name altogether?
  • [/list]

    What you choose will end up being the identifier when you pick up the phone. It will make up your email address. It will be what you reference to people when you talk about what you do. It needs to be memorable and stick and it needs to resonate.
    But it doesn’t have to be hard. Apple got it’s name from one of Steve Jobs’ fruitarian diets. Simple as that.

    Right now we don’t know what our name is, but I love the fact that soon we will. And once we do, then we can start to share more. Then we will have our first tangible identifier.

    Tomorrow – Day 031 | Variations & executions

    Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lwr/2405124325/

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