LinLog

If you're a masochist like me, you may have see OSNews's link to Sal Cangeloso's recent item on Linux application names. His premise is essentially that the usability of Linux systems is hindered by bad choice of names, where application names in Windows are easier to associate with the application function. To support this, he gives a list of application categories with some of the more popular Windows and Linux applications that fit them. The problem is, he cherry-picks his examples and completely misses the real issue.

If you read Cangeloso's list, there are nine application categories. Five of them are related to multimedia, while the important "office" category is completely missing. Hardly a diverse sample to begin with. Worse yet, in four of the multimedia categories, he chose Windows Media Player as one of his Windows programs. While I'll readily concede that the name "Windows Media Player" clearly indicates an application related to media, hammering on a single example over and over again does not establish a general trend. In fact, it just makes the argument look weaker when you consider some of the popular office applications that didn't make the list (presumably because they didn't support the argument). Examples such as Access, Outlook, Excel, and Acrobat come to mind. I find it hard to believe that anyone who hadn't already heard of those applications could work out what they're supposed to do from the name alone.

Of course, any such list will be much to small to establish any real pattern, as there are a plethora of good and bad examples on both sides. But you know what? It doesn't matter, because application names don't really have much to do with usability. In fact, application names have nothing to do with usability at all. Application names are about marketing. Would it really make Outlook easier to use if it were called "Microsoft E-mail and Personal Information Manager"? Of course not. In fact, the only thing it would do is make Outlook harder to talk about because of the unwieldy name.

The real usability issue here is in how the user opens the application. It doesn't take much thinking to realize that this need not necessarily involve the name of the application at all. For instance, one of the more common methods for opening a program is to double-click on an associated file, e.g. double-clicking on a document to open it in Microsoft Word. Likewise, many applications install custom context menu items that do not make reference to the application name, e.g. the "Add to playlist" item used by Windows Media Player. This is good usability - it clearly communicates what the item does without adding any unnecessary information.

What Cangeloso is really concerned about, though, is the system applications menu. The usability issue here is different. It is discoverability, i.e. how easy it is for a user to find a new application of which he isn't already aware. However, as the image on the first page of Cangeloso's article so nicely shows, this is already a solved problem. The image depicts the KDE applications menu with program descriptions turned on and items nicely arranged into broad function-based categories. In other words, rather than the user simply seeing "Firefox" and wondering what on Earth it could be, he will see an "Internet" category that contains an item that reads: "Mozilla Firefox (Web Browser)". Given this extra information, it is hard to see how changing the application's name itself would make things any easier for users.

As I said earlier, names are for marketing, not usability. The idea is to make the product recognizable and get users to remember it. A descriptive name can help in this regard, but it is far from a necessity. If we're going to criticize the names used by free software, let's at least address real problems, like names with bizarre pronunciations or names that consist largely of abbreviations. Now those a valid criticism. But to complain about an application's name because it harms system usability is just bizarre. If changing the name really makes the system more usable, I'd venture that you have much bigger problems to worry about.