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Comment by chrisallick | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand how this product can be called Sketch in good conscience. Sketch is already a disruptive gorgeous product that has changed ux and digital design. It should be respected and given room to breathe. Change the name of your product.

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Agree 100%. All the names out there, and you chose the one of the industry standard for UI/UX design. For the uninformed, this would be like naming Expo Sketch "Photoshop" (at least in spirit) 5 years ago.

https://www.adobe.com/products/sketch.html

In fairness to Sketch (Bohemian Coding), they existed first before Photoshop Sketch was released.

Absolutely. Naming is hard.

This is Expo Sketch though. You can't use it without Expo. It's like complaining about the "Native" part in React Native.

I see "Native" as a kind of catch-all shorthand for the very large field of mobile apps and architectures.

If Expo had called Sketch, "Expo Designer" then people would indeed call it "Expo Designer". "Designer" is too generic.

"Sketch" isn't though. in mainstream tech parlance, it's associated with one very popular app and company.

That argument might make sense if the announcement were titled "Expo Sketch: a Playground for React Native". The name they're going with here is clearly "Sketch" not "Expo Sketch"

One of the "Expo Sketch" devs is in this thread referring to their app as just plain "Sketch".

Time to start a company called Lin that makes a design product called UX

That doesn't make it much better. I thought about white board makers.

... Or pick a product name that can be trademarked?

Yeah it took me a while to figure out that this wasn't a plugin in Sketch.

What is the URL of the original product? Curious to see it.

https://www.sketchapp.com/

We think the products are so different that people won't get confused but if it turns out to be a problem, we'll figure something out.

Sketch the design tool is great. We use it.

My advice, change it sooner rather than later.

I came here to say this also. As a dev & designer, sketch is a technical term like all the other technologies you refer to. I'm having global name space conflict issues as I attempt to pass your sales copy. I'd suggest you quickly change this, as currently a poor naming choice is overriding your others good work. Might give you a chance to hit the front page again too.

Why not just call it React Native Playground? or Expo Playground.

"React Playground" would be a good possibility, too.

I don't want to have to say "Expo Sketch" to distinct it from "Sketch" when talking with designers and managers.

This is a fairly terrible choice of name. Please change it.

Designer here as well. +1 to changing the name sooner rather than later.

Changing the name now will be quite a bit easier than later, plus the discussions around the product won't be centered around how it's using an already well known name.

EDIT: "but if it turns out to be a problem, we'll figure something out." It really seems to be that it is currently a problem unless your definition of a problem isn't public reception but instead a C&D.

Both tools are even solidly in the same niche (web design/development)... Sorry but no. No one wants to have to say "Sketch (the design tool)" and "Sketch (the RN tool)" every single time either one comes up.

And this is why OP is going to get a cease-and-desist regarding the name.

For what it's worth OP is Charlie Cheever, an early Facebook employee and co-founder of Quora. I'm sure he's no stranger to this kind of stuff.

Another vote for prioritizing a name change. Why create continual confusion and awkwardness for the thousands of people who will want to use your product alongside Sketch the design app? (That's me saying this is an awesomely useful project, BTW.)

I'm just imagining describing the Sketch/Sketch workflow to a non-technical manager... ;)

How about calling it "Expo Studio" or "Expo Easel", which have similar connotations?

"Expo Easel" Sounds really good! Nice job.

Thanks, naming/branding is a bit of a hobby of mine.

One thing about the name, however, that for me now rules it out as a recommendation, is that the two words are not articulated by a consonant; the ending vowel of "Expo" blends into the beginning of "Easel".

An unfortunate pairing, at least to my ear, that when spoken quickly sounds like "Expo Weasel" :)

Colloquially, you'd probably just refer to it as Easel.

It could also be called Expo Clip. Then can say "clips" to refer to saved scripts.

Absolutely. I'm so happy with Sketch some mental gymnastics are necessary to comfortably use any product trying to snatch the name.

Personally, I didn't understand how a chat app for software developers could in good conscience be called 'Slack'.

That's a different discussion and type of argument than the author of the reply means to introduce here. It is not a naming conflict because of another product that is too well known to use its name (for both legal and other reasons).

On your slack comment: I do understand it. Chatting is traditionally seen as not working. I'm thinking IRC times when I was young(er). Mostly social, not so much project related. It is more seen as the coffee break but online. The fact that both are often used to discuss business matter does not alter this. For me, Slack is well chosen, even though I use it mainly for work related communication nowadays.

To answer this I suspect you need to know a bit about Stewart Butterfield, who founded Slack.

A very very long time ago, SB created a social game called GNE (Game Neverending). The game (and it's participants, of whom I was one) were somewhat whimsical.

Based on this, I believe the reference to "slack" is a reference to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_SubGenius

("Slack" is "the ability to effortlessly achieve your goals")

But I could be wrong! "Slack" (also known as float) is also something you build into a project to help minimise the risk of failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_(project_management)

Maybe we will never know.

Judge for yourself, having read his resignation letter from Yahoo: http://www.businessinsider.com/stewart-butterfield-epic-resi...

I'm aware of the Church of the Subgenius, but I think anyone who was aware of Bob's teachings would probably already be aware of Slackware, the Linux distro commonly referred to as Slack, which popularised the same.

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