How To: Product Name
How we got the name “Shoebox” for our internal budget tracking and billing product
I’ve worked on several FordLabs projects now and our projects typically involve discovering big problems and testing big ideas from an early stage with no product designed or built yet. By the time the product is a few months old, we finally come to a stage where we would like to give the baby a name.
Product naming, or just plain trying to give something a name, is an interesting thing. There’s no one correct way to do it. I don’t know how Adam named all those animals back in the day but I’ve heard stories from parents naming newborns based on their difficult pregnancy experience, pet owners naming pets their favorite dessert, startups naming the business after their grandfather’s first name. Some of them really creative, some of them not. Some of them just feel right, and others not so much.
There are a few helpful reads here and there on the internet to teach you how to name your product. But apparently, there’s a science behind words that just feel right. Nick Kolenda’s Brand Names summary article does a really awesome job of guiding you through a few steps to come up with a decent name for your product.
Steps Adapted
I was on one of these aforementioned projects with a nameless product and the team had been itching to finally have a proper name for our baby. This product was an internal budget-viewing and billing tool that shows up-to-date finances for each department. But all we ever came up with were boring descriptions of the product like “budget tracker” or “billing tool.” I know, really lame. But I found Nick Kolenda’s article and decided to adapt the steps into a team exercise:
1. Before gathering the team, generate 4–6 obvious words that describe the product
Some questions I used to generate these 4–6 individual words included:
- What is this tool?
- What is this tool about?
- What does this tool do?
- Why do users come to this tool?
- What do users do on this tool?
- How does this tool benefit the users or make them feel?
- How is this tool different from its competitors or tools it’s replacing?
These words just need to be good enough to encapsulate what your product is and what it’s about. They do not have to be the perfect words. They will most likely end up not being part of your product name.
You can actually involve the team in generating these words together in point 3, especially if you didn’t prepare the words beforehand but it will take more time and deplete the team’s energy if you let them debate and argue over which words should go up there.
I typically just decide the words, write them up, and in point 3, ask the team if this is sufficient to start and if there is 1–2 more words they would like to add. Mind you, the more words you add, the longer this exercise will take.
Write these words down on sticky notes or in a notebook somewhere. You will write them across the top on the whiteboard in point 3.
2. Present the “science” of names (Step 1 in the article) to the team and pick a name type
I gathered my whole product team together, which included the product owner, product manager, designer (me), and software engineers.
The article explains that there are four types of names (you should really read his article because he has very clear charts and tables but I’ll paste a little bit here):
Each name type is characterized as either a real word or a nonword and whether it is irrelevant or relevant to the industry of the product(s).
Deviant (Word, Irrelevant): Apple, Amazon, Pandora
Descriptive (Word, Relevant): General Motors, Electronic Arts, General Electric
Neologistic (Nonword, Irrelevant): Spotify, Kodak, Zynga
Associative (Nonword, Relevant): Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube
Using the examples above, Apple (deviant type) is a real word but it is irrelevant to the products created and sold by the company as they do not sell actual edible apples.
Another example, Facebook (associative type) may be made out of two real words but itself is not a real word but it is relevant to the product — a book of faces.
I also went over with the team the comparative table that explains which name types will be more persuasive, memorable, distinctive, good for SEO, etc. Again, please check out his article. Matching your branding and business goals with his table may help you in your decision to pick one of these four name types to move forward with.
If the team already knows what type of name they want, go for it and make sure every team member knows which one it is. But if you are unsure, you don’t have to decide just yet! Keep these four name types in the back of your mind and move on. We’ll have to pick one by point 4.
3. Write the 4–6 obvious words on the whiteboard and brainstorm related words
Remember those 4–6 words you generated earlier? Write them across the top of the whiteboard so they each form a column and underline them.
Once the words are up on the board, the team focuses on one column at a time (forget all the other columns) and brainstorm related words. They could be synonyms, adjectives, verbs, similar product (competitor) names, onomatopoeias, foreign words for that word. Anyone on the team can shout out a word and the facilitator writes down each word in a row down that column. The sky’s the limit here, go crazy, be creative, try a word that seems only barely related.
You can time-box each column to 1.5 minutes or you can go until people slow down and seem dried up for that column, then move on to the next word column.
Tip: Don’t write down repeated words. If a word has been called out before for a previous column, don’t write it down again. The goal is to get as many unique words as possible on the board so when you skim through it later in point 4, you save brain power from having to process repeated words.
4. Follow the naming technique (Step 3 in the article) of the chosen name type and generate a separate list of potential names
Now you have to know which name type you’re going with. Pick one.
At the bottom of the Step 3 table in the article, there are some naming techniques especially for the Associative and Descriptive types.
For example, if you chose associative, you can use:
Blend: Pin & Interest = Pinterest
Prefix/Suffix: Turbo Tax / Shopify
Removal: Acura (from Accurate?)
Replacement: Vimeo (replace ‘d’ with ‘m’)
Homophone: Krispy Kreme (use ‘k’ instead of ‘c’)
Onomatopoeia: Ping (sound word)
Translation: Volvo (Latin word for “I roll”)
Acronym: IBM (International Business Machines)
Combining these techniques with all the words you and your team have brainstormed on the board, generate a new list of potential names for your product.
Again, each person calls out a name, facilitator writes it on a separate part of the whiteboard.
5. Pick a name!
Once everyone has slowed down significantly, you should have a list of potential names for your product! Time to pick one!
Sometimes the perfect name may just come to you as you were creating your new list. But if not, mull over the list, let each one sink in, even send the team on a 5-minute break and come back with fresh eyes.
Some activities that may help are dot voting or having further discussion on each name. Perhaps on the pros and cons or what connotations each name might give. Sometimes there may be a couple of names that feel like you’re getting really close but it’s not quite there. Spend a bit more time on it, talk about it, play more with altering it, try to figure what you like about it. You might just be a few more words away to the name feels just right.
If you have a particularly picky team or if none of the names seem even remotely close to feeling right, you can redo this process with 2–4 new words and try, try again!
Reflection
In our case, our product was an internal tool so we weren’t expecting to become famous or anything. But we wanted a product we would love and think fondly of when we hear its name. We didn’t want it to be just another website that reminds us of bureaucratic corporate America and money and finances. With this process and having chosen this name, I believe we achieved that.
Remote Facilitation
I’ve more recently facilitated this exercise during the COVID-19 quarantine with a product team that was not my own. It took only 1 hour to go over the science, brainstorm the words, create the list of potential names, and vote for a potential name they liked or to explore further. Three things I did differently this time was:
- Get a brief of the product, its goals, journey, and users from a team member (could be Product Owner or Researchers/Designers).
- Prepare 6 words ahead of time with only that team member.
- Use a spreadsheet and shared my screen on the video call with the team.
It’s still essential that each team member verbally calls out the words they’re thinking of instead of typing it in a chat. This is so that:
- The facilitator can be more efficient and doesn’t have to reference the chat and copy it into the spreadsheet.
- More importantly, everyone can hear each word and be inspired by it to continue throwing out new words. This exercise works because people can feed off of each other’s words.
- It’s also important that everyone hears and knows what words are on the board/sheet. In the last step of coming up with a name from the words on the board, you’ll spend less time reading and more time skimming and getting the feel for a name.
If you have the opportunity, conducting the exercise in person and on the whiteboard is still more engaging and interactive. You can also read your participants’ faces and body language better to tell if they’re done with a column or they still want to try for more. You can also know when to give people a break. So by all means, do it in-person and on a physical board. But if not, conducting the session on a spreadsheet and a video call works as well.
