From Social Patterns

Chris Fahey sent comments via email:

Thanks for thinking of me. Yes, I wrote about this last yearish: http://www.graphpaper.com/2007/08-02_user-vs-you (links to other debates in there) http://www.graphpaper.com/2007/08-11_you-vs-i http://www.graphpaper.com/2007/08-17_me-vs-you-vs-i With regards to people who claim that "The word 'user' is bad -- we should user the word X instead", I just twittered a quote I think is also relevant, from a commenter on Bruce Nussbaum's blog post about how Innovation is dead and Transformation is the hotness: "This is completely imperialistic; plant the flag, name it something else and kill all the natives." I guess that's more about the "user" controversy. My favorite statement on this topic is CM Harrington (a Behavior IA) paraphrasing Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High: "Well, if you’re here, and I’m here, doesn’t that make it “Our Times”? I'm not sure I agree with the rules on the pattern wiki page, however -- this is, to me, something where a strong creative vision (brand identity, voice, audience relationship with the brand) can wildly trump any theoretical logical or usability goodness. A brand that has a personality that sounds like the product is a person, or speaks on behalf of a group of real people (like Flickr, which even says Hello to you), it makes sense to say "Your". But for brands that position themselves as an almost cybernetic extension of your personal infospace (like MySpace or Windows), "me" and "my" might actually make sense. That said, you do limit your advice for social products, where the user has *other people* to deal with as well. You probably need to address that, too, to help support your advocacy for "Your" when referring to the user: What do you call Jack's friends on Jack's page? Is "My Friends" okay? The usual dodge is to simply use Jack's name: "Jack's Friends", but "My Friends" can still work if the whole page is presented as if the page were Jack Himself talking. Using "your" consistently for the user's stuff, and avoiding My assiduously for same, helps a lot. In fact, consistency is probably the paramount rule here.

Another approach that somewhat sidesteps the polarity of your vs. my is to use the person’s name. Bill Scott, the lead UI Engineer at Netflix (and a renowned patternista himself) tells me that at Netflix they avoid “Your,” preferring “Bill’s recommendations.” Their rationale is that it communicates the personalization (the same way your and my are supposed to) and it also clarifies that “it is you and not your kid (when using multiple profiles in a household).” But then again for most people Netflix may be more of a personal utility than a social environment.

http://twitter.com/thoughtfarmer tweeted about this pattern here [1]