Don’t use “My” in UI elements. | Hacker News Reader

Don’t use “My” in UI elements.

weblog.muledesign.com

125 pointsalanh39 comments

Slightly offtopic, but sometimes I wonder about the number of man-years wasted because Microsoft decided to use "Program Files" instead of "Programs". "Yes, you can finally put spaces in your file names. Well done. That doesn't make it a good idea."

Funny thing is, if Microsoft had used a directory without a space I wonder how many apps would exists where they didn't handle path names with spaces correctly.

What would the computing world look like if every program were as temperamental about spaces in filenames as, say, MATLAB (or any CAD software).

"No mom, you can't use spaces in the filename. Why? Because developers are annoyed by how normal people think."

I read that Microsoft put a space in there on purpose so that programs would be forced to deal with it. Folders on Windows can have different names depending on the install language. Even if it was "Programs" in English, it might be a name with space in another language.

Perhaps they should have named it Prøgrâm Filës, just to be sure.

I don't think Windows has a codepage with all of those characters in it...

Oh, to go back to the 8.3 days... 11 ASCII characters is enough to name your files, right?

You can have north of 200 characters, so long you don't mind \ every 9 characters or so.

12 characters, if you count the dot.

Which OS was that?

I think by 8.3, he meant DOS 8.3 ?

8.3 refers to: 8 chars, a dot, 3 chars, which was the limit for filenames.

So using "my" is lazy, sucks, and bad style but "your" is natural, friendly, and easy to maintain. I don't get it.

1. “My” will inevitably contradict with “Your” (see the article’s LinkedIn screenshot). It seems forced. Using “Your,” when appropriate, approximates a dialog between you[r system] and the user.

2. Avoid both for simple labels, tabs, and buttons.

Eventually, you will need copy that explains something to the user. When you do, you will not be able to keep your copy consistent by continuing to use "my".

"If you have questions about your account, call..."

I think the suggestion is that if you think of the design in terms of a dialog rather than a set of conventions, there are a lot of advantages. "My" vs "Your" is just an example.

Nice topic. Just talked to my co-founder about that. We are developing both web service and mobile app, so there are to different views on the problem. We didn't really thought about the whole problem of calling the user "you" or "me" yet, so here is where we are today:

In the web service we use "you" everywhere. So far so good. But for the mobile app (we just finished the first prototype - without beutification and such) we used "my" in almost every case... and we investigated why: For us it feels convenient that if I hold my cell in my hand, it is MY phone.. and such is the mobile apps that I use. They are MY apps, and as MY apps, they are a part of me (I take them with me everywhere I go - just like my keys). In the keys-example you would also say "my keys" and not just "the keys".. and you say "my phone" and not "the phone". I think it is just intuitive that it is "my app" and (inside of the app) "my posts" and "my messages"...

This is being overthought. It's an issue of brevity. "Edit profile." Am I expecting it to allow me to edit a profile of someone else? In so many cases, "my" and "your" are present when the user is unable to interact with content other than their own (e.g. personal finance sites).

Why not just "Profile?"

Or just "starpilot?"

For people who spend lots of time at a site that will work.

For my Mom trying to deal with her ISP, not so great.

I think people started using 'my' because 'Go to my profile' sounds more friendly than 'Go to your profile' as links. When you say 'you' the person is automatically distanced from you. When helping a customer face-to-face, you can say 'we' and 'our', but that makes even less sense than 'my' on a webpage.

The link doesn’t need “Go to” at all though — it’s a link. “Your profile” works just dandy — if not just “profile.”

Edit: “See your profile” is a friendly alternative, too

Or even drop the pronouns: "Profile" works just fine.

As a further improvement it should be "Go to my profile: click here".

Why not make "Go to my profile" the clickable link?

I'm tempted to suggest the next logical extension would be "Go to my profile: click here <-- HEY! That was the link!" :-S

This is how I've been doing it for several years. I may be wrong, of course.

I think that “Me” or “My” should be used when a title of a section (a page or a field) does not contain an action (a verb). It should also be used when a button, link, or title of a page contains a phrase that implies that the user is ordering the system to perform an action. For example:

Field Title: My Company Name: Page Title: My Main Menu Button: [ Change My Password ] Link: Reset My Account

In contrast, I think that “Your” or “you” should be used when the system is telling or asking something from the user. For example:

Field Title: What is your password? Message: You can always change your settings… Link: Click here to contact your agent Message: Your are signed in as:

Whenever I have the option of using one or the other, I go for “My”. For example, if I have the option of using both “Post My Project” and “Post Your Project”, I use “Post My Project”. Why? Because on “Post Your Project” the system is asking the user to do something, while in “Post My Project” the user is ordering the system to perform an action. I think that users like to feel they are in control.

I would suggest that "Edit My Profile" implies a sense of ownership and choice that the instructive "Edit your profile" or vague "Edit profile" doesn't, which could conceivably actually have tangible benefits in terms of encouraging user behaviour.

This is a testable hypothesis as is the claim by the author of the original post that it's "helpful" not to have conflict between "my" and "your" for different functions.

Does anyone have any data to support either conclusion?

I read about this recently when browsing the Yahoo design pattern library http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/social/core/yourvmy.htm...

I have had so many debates surrounding this over the years its not funny. I feel elated to have a definitive reason to go with 'your' over 'my' and an article I can send people when they challenge me. Win.

Do we really need these pesky pronouns? Putting labels like your pen, your mug, your red stapler on stuff is equally crazy, isn't it? Al link/button labeled Profile/Account/Settings... is just fine. There is no surprise in clicking on something labeled "profile" resulting in your profile being brought up, what else would you expect? My profile?

Another item to add to my ongoing list of usability checks (to be published, soon).

I wish I could vote this up more than once!

You guys are silly. I only meant that I agreed with it so much that I wish there were a way emphasize my vote. Now its "Oh wait, those guys voted down his post, I will too!"

Way to build community guys. I still love you though.

I agree with this, but for different reasons. The difference between "Edit my profile" and "Edit your profile" is really a difference in how the relationship between user, interface and back-end system is conceived. When the interface says "Edit my profile", it's represented as speaking for the user to the system, so you have [user+interface] <---> [system]. Which is a technically accurate representation of client-server architecture, and also generally the way the world looks from the perspective of any system - the UI is decoupled, and speaks to the system on my behalf, in my voice. This is the system-centered perspective.

To the average user, the world looks quite different: [user] <---> [interface+system]. Here, the interface isn't part of "me", it's outside, part of the system, so it should speak as the system, not as "me". This is the user-centered perspective, because it reflects how users see the world.

I think this also speaks to why programmers generally tend to be bad at user experience - it's almost an ontological problem. What is software, really? Is it just system, with interface added in later, almost as an afterthought? Or is it interface+system?

Hmm, somehow I have the inverse mental model, though it might be because of correlation with where I see each usage rather than anything inherent. I associate the "my" usage with cutesy/friendly AOL-style interfaces, where we're trying to make the user feel fuzzy ownership over their stuff: "Change my buddy icon", "update my profile", etc. I associate the "your" usage with a more cold, detached system-centric Unix model, where the programmer/system sees this as your stuff and responsibility: "enter your password", "choose your username", "wipe your home directory [y/n]?", etc.

Perhaps at the extremes, something like: "Hello, I'm Clippy! Let's edit our files together!" versus "Computron 5000 online, please state your request."

This reminds me of some observations by Douglas Hofstadter and self-referential expressions. I forget where he wrote this (Metamagical Themas, perhaps), but he wondered, when you come across a dirty car with "wash me!" drawn into the dirt, to what does "me" refer? Why do we assume it's meant to be the car; perhaps those words are some desperate plea from a passerby in need of a bath.

The funny thing with seeing a folder named "My Documents" is that since I did not create that folder, and did not pick that name, my gut reaction is to attach "my" to whatever entity did create it.

"Update profile" seems more in the style of Computron 5000 to me, but yeah, the move to "update my profile" was an attempt to make it friendly and now it has that connotation. But I think it works mostly by making the idea of a dialog (in the sense of conversation) more explicit, not so much about ownership. Like you also started seeing prompts like "Would you like to...?" or "Are you sure you want to delete?" rather than "Confirm deletion."

Dialog works because my perception of my interaction with software is that I'm in a dialog with it. When the interface mirrors that idea back to me, there's a fit or congruence and it feels comfortable, in the same way that an ergonomic handle is something like the inverse of the shape of your hand while holding it - I say "my profile" so the interface should say the linguistic inverse: "your profile". IMO, it has nothing to do with humanness or friendliness or emotion -- which is nice if it's contextually appropriate, but it can be irritating -- and more to do with cognitive ergonomics.

The idea of making computers more friendly, like a human, to make them easier to use is kind of a dumb idea when you think about it, like saying screwdriver handles should be shaped like human hands because we find it comfortable to hold someone's hand. Anyway, human-to-human interaction is often very awkward and definitely not intuitive, why should it be the ideal for human-computer interaction?

> What is software, really?

The part you can't kick, of course.

How to kick software: Three finger salute.

Alt-SysRq-B works more reliable in Linux.

Or perhaps:

    kill -s HUP <pid>

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