Fritinancy

Word of the Week: Affordance

Affordance: A sensory clue to the function of an object or an environment. The word was coined in 1977 by the American perceptual psychologist J.J. Gibson to mean "a relationship between the world and an actor"; in Gibson's definition, the relationship did not need to be visible. A decade later Don Norman, an engineer and cognitive scientist who had worked with Gibson, introduced the term to the field of design, where it took on its current meaning of "perceived affordance."

From Norman's website:

There are several ways of getting a new user to understand what actions are possible. ...

1. Follow conventional usage, both in the choice of images and the allowable interactions. ...

2. Use words to describe the desired action (e.g., "click here" or use labels in front of perceived objects). ...

3. Use metaphor. ...

4. Follow a coherent conceptual model so that once part of the interface is learned, the same principles apply to other parts.

Photo: An example of double affordance on a street in Switzerland: one receptacle is for trash, the other for cigarettes. From a Flickr set by Nicolas Nova.

Naming Trends of 2007

The good, the bad, and the unpronounceable: the year in brand nomenclature.

1. Silly Semantics: Baby internet businesses continued to choose baby-talk names--a blend of Dr. Seuss, robotic beeping, and random babble. There were nonsensical names like Thoof, created via computer algorithm and selected only because the .com domain was available. (Also the soundalike Doof, "an online playground." Oof!) Logic-defying names like Xobni ("inbox" spelled backward) and Kwout. Copycat names like Meemo, Meebo, and Bebo. And oodles of names with the long-u sound that made Google and Yahoo famous: Doostang, Hoooka (three o's!), Yuku, Hulu, LoonaPix, YooGuu, Helperoo, Grabaloo, Snooth. (I'll have more to say about Snooth in the new year.) Everyone wanted to be the next Google and Yahoo; everyone thought the secret was that "oo" sound. That's magical thinking (and bad branding) at its most naïve.

2. Thinking Globally: It started with Del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site that incorporated the United States country domain into its name rather than simply tacking on ".com." Gradually, other companies found creative ways to integrate country domains--usually from small countries that can use the domain-registration income--into their names. Some of the cleverer creations: Outside.in (a U.S. company using the India country domain), G.ho.st (U.S. company, São Tome domain), Wis.dm (U.S. company--I think--with a Domenica domain), and Eye.fi (U.S company, Finland domain). The trend goes beyond U.S. borders: Mormor.nu--a Danish needlecraft company using the domain extension of the Polynesian nation of Niue--translates to "Grandma.now."

3. By the Numbers: Yes, we're still seeing numerical clichés like 360 to mean "all around" and 411 to mean "information." But some businesses found original and meaningful ways to turn numerology into branding stories. I've written about 23andMe, the genetic profiling company named for the the 23 pairs of chromosomes in human DNA. Not new but very influential is the business-software company 37 Signals: the name comes from the number of radio waves we've received from outer space that scientists think indicate intelligent life. (Obscure, yes; but very cool indeed to the target geeky audience.) 8020 Publishing's name, which I wrote about here, comes from the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the effort. The 1865 Company, a retailer targeting upscale African-Americans, takes its name from the year the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, abolishing slavery. Numbers also showed up in restaurant names: Hawthorne Lane in San Francisco became Two, supposedly because "it's the second restaurant at 22 Hawthorne Street with two chefs." They should have stuck with Hawthorne Lane. And I read recently about Parcel 104, a pricey restaurant in Santa Clara named for "the original lot number on which it sits": a bad excuse for a name explained in bad prose--the restaurant doesn't sit on a number. (Parcel 104's About page also misspells "pear orchard" as "pear orchid." I've never eaten there, but I already have indigestion.)

4. You, Me, They: Personal possessives have been around in internet names since MyYahoo and My eBay. What's new is the more expansive use of pronouns in nomenclature. The second person showed up frequently: RockYou (a photo-sharing site), WikiYou ("the unauthorized biography of every person on earth"), ViddYou (a video-blogging network), PeekYou (a people-search engine). Vostu, a Spanish-language social network, combines the second-person-singular pronouns vos and tu. And Dell's new Vostro computers for small businesses appropriated the Italian word meaning "yours." Wesabe, the personal finance site, can be read as "we savvy" and as a twist on "wasabi," the Japanese horseradish. There were third-person-pronoun names, too, like They're Beautiful (free "virtual bouquets") and She's Geeky, a conference for women in technology.

5. Brought to You by the Letter K: Back in April, Laura Wattenberg wrote in the Baby Name Wizard blog that "if any letter defines modern American name style, K is it." Corporate America--or at least that portion of corporate American in its Internet infancy--was on the same wavelength. Names beginning with "K"  seemed fresh, fun, and youthful: Kindo , Kontera, Kiwork, Kindersay, Kublax, Kerpoof, and--most notably--Amazon's new wireless reading device, Kindle. Even silent "K" had its say in names like Knuru and Google's knew (whoops!) Knol.

6. Sorta-kinda: "I'm not a Jew, just Jew-ish," the British humorist-physician-theater director Jonathan Miller once said. Likewise, many company names were name-ish this year. Examples: the book-review site Revish, the help-ticket-tracking site Ticketish (which uses the Saint Helena domain, .sh, and thus also qualifies in Trend Category #2), the content-management service Texty and its sister site Yieldy, and the online collaboration tool Stixy. (I know the suffix -y has many meanings, but in these examples it seems to be a synonym for ish. For more on ish as a contemporary cultural signifier, see these Urban Dictionary entries.)

7. Fruit of the Year: Plums were ripe for the picking in 2007. American Express introduced its Plum Card. Valassis Communications announced that its online coupon portal, RedPlum, would go live on Jan. 3. And Plum magazine--"the first-ever pregnancy magazine for women over 35"--celebrated its first year of publication. The magazine's tagline, "Something especially prized," conveyed the most desirable meaning of "plum." Of course, if any of these ventures fails, there will be no end to the prune jokes. Runner-up fruit of the year: lime, as in the Gap's new shoe site Piperlime as well as Gaiam's "healthy living" site Lime. 

8. Gross Me Out: Marketers of consumer products seemed to think that naughty potty humor was what shoppers craved. Which is how we got MomSpit no-rinse cleanser, Alligator Poo candy, Mother Effer's Va-J-J Jelly, and a host of similarly named items. Recommendation for 2008: Wash your mouths out with Squid Soap!

That's two trends short of the traditional end-of-year Top Ten. Want to round out the list? Leave a comment; I'm compile the best suggestions in a post later this week.

Bonus link: Lots of new web names at Go2Web2.0.

Logo Trends of 2007

Bill Gardner of LogoLounge--"the internet's largest database of logos"--picks the year's hottest trends: double helixes, rubber bands, "eco smart," and more.

From Gardner's notes on the "pseudo crest" trend:

At first glance, most of these look like they've been lifted from a heraldry 101 style book, until you scrutinize the composition elements. Only at this point are you likely to see wrenches, guitars, penguins, shoes, cell phones and anything else you'd never expect to find in Camelot. This is a youth anthem; and designers have identified this as a source language for fashion culture and the music industry. In fact, this is a modern trend you will see everywhere, despite its roots in heraldry and even other intricate patterning like Victorian wallpaper.

(Via Jason Kottke.)

"The Wire" in the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal isn't where I'd expected to find a long, adulatory piece about my favorite TV show, The Wire, but that's where I read it. Reporter Lauren Melching notes that The Wire's fans include "the hip-hop world and the intelligentsia," two constituencies not traditionally served by the WSJ. Melching says the series represents "storytelling at its most stunning" and notes that its stable of writers "reads like a who's who of American crime fiction": in additional to series creator David Simon, writers have included Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos. The fifth and final season begins Jan. 6 on HBO.

The Journal story includes a long sidebar recapping the previous seasons' story lines (but they're not a substitute for watching the whole series, starting with Episode 1). And I got a kick out of the glossary of Wire lingo. A sampling:

TO HAVE SUCTION: To have pull with your higher-ups at the Police Department or in City Hall.

A CORNER BOY/YO/LITTLE HOPPER: A young kid on the street who's aware of the street (but not necessarily a dealer). A corner boy is one on a corner, working a package with a crew. A yo or yo boy is a derogative term for such, popularized by Baltimore cops. A corner boy would never refer to himself as a yo or yo boy.

CARRYING WEIGHT: Doing jail time (and not cooperating with the police).

TO SHOVE OFF: To get high.

TESTERS: Free vials from a new street-ready package that go out to addicts to get them hooked/let them know there's a new package....They are simply advertising the quality of a new package. Testers can be heroin, which is sold under brand names: Death Row, Tec-Nine, WMD, etc., and usually come in Ziploc bags, or inside capsules, or in glassine envelopes; or cocaine, which is usually in vials of the kind used for perfume samples, with different colored tops. Red-tops, blue-tops, yellow-tops, etc.

BURNER: A disposable cellphone.

SLINGING: Selling drugs. Or twirling. Or clocking. Or working a package.

THE JECTS: The projects.

CHEESE: Money.

Baby Name Wizard's Names of the Year

Laura Wattenberg of the influential Baby Name Wizard blog has announced the top three names of 2007.

Second runner-up: Delilah, "rising despite biblical infamy," thanks mostly to the ubiquity of the Plain White T's song "Hey There Delilah."

First runner-up: Chuck, "a fascinating study in the machinations of style." Chuck was the nom de l'année in popular media during 2007: there's an NBC series called Chuck and a couple of be-Chucked movies, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and Good Luck Chuck. (There's even a female Chuck--née Charlotte Charles--in the ABC series Pushing Daisies. "Sunny, with moxie to spare," is her capsule bio.) "Producers loved the way Chuck conveys the message that 'this character isn't about image,'" Wattenberg observes. We've come a long way from Chucky.

Official 2007 name of the year: Barack, "a watershed for baby-name diversity in American politics." Wattenberg devotes more than 700 words to a discussion of Barack and other presidential-candidate names in U.S. history. Well worth reading.

Photo: Hedy Lamarr as Delilah in the 1949 film Samson and Delilah. Source: WomenIntheBible.net.

What Shall We Call the Sofa?

Today's New York Times reports on the difficulties furniture manufacturers face in "naming or describing furniture that is designed to defy categorization":

Names and slogans are now “the hardest part of my job,” said Edward M. Tashjian, the vice president for marketing at Century Furniture in Hickory, N.C., who oversees the naming of individual pieces and entire collections. “Literally, every time I do it I want to quit and find a new career.” Coming up with a name for one of the new collections “that’s descriptive and engaging — not to mention hasn’t already been used, isn’t completely banal and meets the approval of the rest of the management team — is a nearly impossible task,” he said. ...

Bernhardt Furniture Company, which in the past has focused on traditional furniture but has lately expanded its repertory, also took several months coming up with the name for a new collection that merges old and new, although its approach was somewhat more adventurous. “We were looking for lifestyle-type names that just kind of sounded young and fresh and updated,” said Heather Eidenmiller, Bernhardt’s director of brand development. “You’ve got to find a name that pulls them in but that would never turn them off,” she added: “A name that can be pronounced, and that doesn’t sound like influenza.” (For a brief moment in 2006, the company considered naming its neo-traditional Wilshire Blvd. line for the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, but “you could just hear people say ‘Pantages is contagious,’” Ms. Eidenmiller said.)

“Fairgrove” was among the early contenders for the new line, but was nixed because it lacked an edge and sounded “too traditional.” “Brentwood” was another possibility, but failed because “it’s a bit neighborhood-y sounding,” Ms. Eidenmiller said, and because of the association with the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. “I was like, no, we’re not ready to go there yet,” she said.

Eventually, Bernhardt decided on “Arlington,” after various areas in and around Chicago, and what she called its good “phonetics and sound.” (Apparently no one in the group worried about the national cemetery.)

In what universe, I wonder, is "Fairgrove" deemed "too traditional" and "Arlington" just edgy enough? As brands they're virtually interchangeable: WASPy, old-money, consonant-laden, staid.

By contrast, contract-furniture makers, which outfit workplaces, are much bolder in their naming strategies than the home-furniture industry. Herman Miller, famous for its Aeron chair, also makes products with evocative names like Ambi and Caper and offers accessories in The Be Collection. Steelcase, a client of mine, has product lines called Topo, Detour, and Relevant. (I named a Steelcase chair Amia.)

Meanwhile, home furnishings are marketed with utterly undistinctive names like Regent, Grayson, and Kingston. By the way, "Arlington" isn't exclusive to Bernhardt: American Leather uses it, too.

Pictured: American Leather's "Breckenridge" sectional. And here is Century Furniture's "Breckenridge" sofa.

Kwazy or Bwilliant?

Has Elmer Fudd changed his job description from wabbit-hunting to name development? That was my conclusion when I landed on Kwout, a just-launched service for embedding quotes into blogs. The company's tagline: "A brilliant way to quote." I can't imagine ever feeling brilliant while saying "kwout," even if I'd guessed that it has something to do with "cut out a quote." Nor am I reassured by Kwout's minimalist home-page copy: "kwout" is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map. Ah, yes. Huh?

Nothing on the Kwout website reveals the brains behind the words, but the WhoIs database shows that Kwout.com is registered to HeartRails, Inc., in Sagamihara, Japan.

I think what we have here is a little language problem. May I suggest a remedy?

Like a Rock

The Conglomerate blog, which has been covering business, law, economics, and society since 2003, is kind enough to provide an explanation of how it arrived at its name. The blog's founding pair--both law professors--considered several name candidates: Venturpreneur ("clunky and too hard to spell"), Punctilio (a key term in an important Supreme Court ruling; rejected as "too obscure"), Peppercorn (from contract law's peppercorn theory of consideration: used in too many business names, it turns out), Random Walk, Noise Theory, and Seamless Web (a phrase first used to describe the law in 1898).

In the end they chose Conglomerate. The blogging linguist Mr. Verb is as mystified as I am:

These guys chose the name for its 'businessy' sound, among other reasons. But their sense of the term is dramatically different from my own, and probably that of many readers of this blog. For me, conglomerate has a very negative ring to it. It calls to mind the buying of companies to drive up stock prices, where people got rich off manipulating markets, not by producing goods or delivering services. I'm just making a point about word meaning here, not about what's good business practice, but a similar view of conglomerates is laid out in this wikipedia entry, and also in this post on Conglomerate Monkeyshines.

I couldn't agree more. And I'd go even further:

• Conglomerate sounds off-putting. It's that glom syllable in the middle, which derives from Latin glomus, a ball. It's an unlovely-sounding word in English, made even less attractive by the (probably unrelated) slang meaning of glom: to take or steal. There's also glom onto: to grab, attack, or grasp. Glom has visual and aural associations with glop, clomp, and glum, none of which has a positive meaning.
• It's generic. It's like calling your business Company, Inc.
• Descriptiveness is a weak benefit. Yes, conglomerate "denotes the gathering of disparate parts into a whole." And it's a kind of rock. So what? What does this tell me about the insights Conglomerate's authors will share, the experience they offer, or the ways in which they'll make me a smarter, better person? Far better to find an intriguing metaphor or a provocative phrase that suggests a point of view or an advantage.

Lawyers aren't known for world-shaking creativity in name development. Most law firms, after all, are simply named for their original partners. And lawyers are trained to scrutinize word meanings rather than word associations. But the art of naming requires a broader perspective, one that includes etymology and meaning but also reaches out to consider allusion, association, emotional resonance, and ear appeal. By those standards, Conglomerate--an earnest and well-reasoned effort--falls short.

Personally, I think they were on the right track with Peppercorn. If I'd been their naming consultant, I'd have encouraged further exploration in that direction.

Image: Inside Google.

C-Day Diversions

Light a fire (but don't burn wrapping paper--all those bad dioxins!), sharpen a pencil, and dive into Jon Carroll's 26th annual Christmas Quiz. It's as challenging as ever, but Away With Words readers will have an advantage with Question #1. Answers will be posted tomorrow (Wednesday) in Jon's column on SFGate.com.

Wired Magazine senior editor Adam Rogers explains to NPR's Liane Hansen the naughty-nice algorithm, the meaning of Santa's HELPERs ("Heavy Equipment Light Package Emergent Response"), and other tongue-in-cheek high-tech secrets of "C-Day."

Maybe you, like me, observe this day with a movie or two, followed by Chinese food. In that case, get into the spirit by watching "Christmas Time for the Jews," a two-minute animated video from Saturday Night Live. Yep, that's Darlene Love on vocals. (Via The Boomer Chronicles.)

Finally, this enchanting thought about Christmas from the New York Times editorial page:

A stranger, an extragalactic visitor wise enough to look past all the shopping, might be forgiven for thinking that this is the festival in which we celebrate the magic of sleep.

After all, what other holiday do we attend in robes and pajamas?

Scrabble for Cheaters

Ever wish you could change the rules in Scrabble to include more blank tiles or made-up words? Here's your big chance: Scrabble for Cheaters, "a tournament of verbal smarts and fraudulence," is now accepting entries for two-person teams. For a paltry $50 you can buy your team any vowel; for $250 you can add a Q, X, or Z. All proceeds benefit 826NYC, a nonprofit organization that helps kids ages 6 to 18 become better writers.

The rules:

• Each team must have 2 players.
• Each team must have a team name.
• Each team must dress like a team on the day of the tournament.
• Each team must arrive at least 30 minutes before noon on the day of the tournament.
• Each cheat may only be used once. Cheats will be issued on tournament day.
• If you can't stand the blatant deception, trash talking, and foul play, try Yahtzee.
• Turns are timed. You have 2 minutes to play a word. Games are over after 1 hour.
• Cheating is highly encouraged.
• Winner must gloat.

The contest will be held Saturday, Jan. 19, at noon, in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Limited to 32 teams, but you can also participate by sponsoring a team.

I'm not planning to fly across the country to compete, but if 826 Valencia (which is affiliated with 826NYC) ever decides to hold a Bay Area tournament, my cheatin', gloatin' heart will be there. 

(Via Jason Kottke.)

(Image, via Adverblog, from a 2006 French ad campaign promoting the national Scrabble tournament. I want a framed poster!)