Interfaces and marketing that use "my" always irk me by, for lack of a better phrase, coming on too strong. I'm all too aware of the human hands that typed out that button label - it seems damned impudent of them to be assuming my voice. It implies a certain intimacy. My cart sounds like an appropriate label for something I've filled, but so long as it's empty trying to foist it off as mine just comes across as a desperate plea for emotional investment.
I think marketeers leveraging "my" tend to envision that we will come to think of their product as like some treasured childhood teddy bear that we hug firmly to our bosoms each night. In life though, when we talk about owning things - my this, my that - it's often in order to identity ourselves with them. For most services, that's a lot to assume. Treading the HN path of avoiding possessive determiners at all may be the wiser path.
I agree. "My" always comes across as forced and a bit too cute to me.
Having said that, there are situations where those traits may be appropriate. If some kind of intimate or emotional connection is the point of the app, it makes a certain sort of sense.
I also realize my bias against that sort of presumed intimacy may be greater than the average person's.
>it seems damned impudent of them to be assuming my voice
I agree. This is something that has been bothering me every since Windows XP. I think less about what marketers want and how desperate it may or may not be, and I spend more time feeling offended that someone is presuming to intrude into my personal space in my program on my machine and tell me how I plan to use it. It's like they're misrepresenting me to myself, and it never fails to provoke much scoffing and eyerolling from me. I consider it a major signal of BS in software.
On the other hand, software which uses "your" or no pronouns at all can do almost exactly the same stuff - like creating a default organization of data - and I don't mind. I see it as a respectful suggestion which has my best interest in mind, and I'm more likely to actually incorporate their idea into the way I do things because I'm not immediately on the defensive.
Edit:
This reminds me of when I was staying at one of those tropical beach resorts and one of the souvenir sellers was announcing "shopping time, everybody!" to everyone that passed by. I didn't like that he obviously wanted me to participate in a dishonest exchange, but he was presumptuously "reminding" me that giving giving him money is a natural part of my day, the same way that I have an "eating time" and a "sleeping time".
> I think marketeers leveraging "my" tend to envision that we will come to think of their product as like some treasured childhood teddy bear that we hug firmly to our bosoms each night.
I'm not sure if it is as pronounced anywhere else, but my area has a lot of shops that use the prefix in their name.
My Chemist
My Hairdresser
My Bookstore
My House
All places I walk past regularly, and they're all equally as awkward. Same goes for interfaces trying to emulate the same thing.
Reminds me a bit of the good ol' pre-Vista days of "My Documents" et cetera in the Windows world. :) But hey, even MS took a decade between 95 and Vista to decide to drop the prefix!
This is a really dismissive comment that could be used to trivialize just about any article and debate here on HN. While it isn't a big issue, this topic is something designer's do think about and a discussion about its effects on user experience seems reasonable. Plus I doubt anyone's losing hours of productivity over this.
That's the kind of dismissive attitude that kills web companies. If there's one thing we've learned from usability research, A/B testing and the like, it's that seemingly subtle changes in details can make a huge difference to overall effectiveness. And if there's a second thing we've learned, it's that what programmers or web developers assume is best is a lousy indicator of what is best when you actually measure results.
Presenting material in a way that resonates with the target audience of each particular product or service is important, and a little time spent getting it right will almost certainly generate more benefit than writing code for the same amount of time.
Where this simplicity breaks down is when you have two kinds of a thing. For example, a user may have documents shared by a group and then documents that are yours/mine.
Honestly, I still feel it's an overwrought discussion about something that ultimately doesn't effect the user enough to change their general perception of the product.
From the section of the iOS HIG about writing alert copy:
> Avoid using “you,” “your,” “me,” and “my” as much as possible. Sometimes, text that identifies people directly can be ambiguous and can even be interpreted as an insult.
I agree with this. Using the example from the article, "Profile" is just as expressive as "My Profile", more concise, and groups better with other similar actions. Taken to its logical extreme, you'll have to put "My" everywhere; imagine GMail with "My Inbox", "My Starred", "My Important Messages", "My Circles", etc.
Yet Siri calls me 'you', and refers to herself as 'I'. Rules are made to be broken. Actually, on a recent road trip, I found myself asking Siri for an update on my progress by asking: "What's our ETA?". While she gave me the right answer, I kind of wish she'd responded by saying when "we" would arrive. An interface that is actually in it together with me - that would be a step forward.
I also think that physical vs. digital is a big determinant of whether Yours or Mine is appropriate. When using a physical object, you are at the very least spatially aware of all of the components. Your pencil, car, hammer are all items that operate due to mechanisms easily understandable at a very basic level simply by observation. There's no mystery. It is purely an object, and it is my object.
Digitally, however, you cannot understand the mechanism by which a mobile app works simply by observing it. There is a level of obscurity, a veil of mystery, as if someone, something were behind the scenes pulling the strings. Unlike looking at an engine and observing all of the gears and rods involved in making an axle spin, one cannot observe bytes of data travelling between microprocessors. I think it's that layer of obscurity that gives digital products a degree of personality that a car or hammer or pencil or knife cannot have. There's something at play that you're not seeing with digital interfaces, and perhaps we most comfortably assume that another human is involved in the process.
Excellent thought process on the differences in possessive pronouns.
But what if you go for a more minimalist approach? What if your app doesn't use possessive pronouns at all?
You could just display "Settings", "Settings have been saved!", "Profile picture has been changed." etc and I've seen apps that do this natively.
Although, to a certain extent I suppose that proves his point, as apps will be forced to act as though they aren't using possessive pronouns if they use "My" - it would be a little strange to display messages like "My profile picture has been changed", etc. Using the possessive pronoun "Your" is the only one with special modifiers throughout the app's structure that don't sound redundant.
I've always thought there was something condescending about "My" stuff. Like, I need this page to tell me where my stuff is so I don't edit someone else's. Or something.
In foreign languages with a polite form of "You" (such as French or German), there is an additional question: should a website use the polite of familiar form.
And it's widely accepted that a website should use the polite form.
In Japanese, besides there being a lot of different levels of politeness, using "you" is still considered too direct in general. In conversation, it is to be avoided in almost all cases. It's common to refer to people by name, or by omitting/implying the subject instead of saying 'you'.
There are really interesting problems that you come across when you build multi-lingual interfaces.
Is it really widely accepted? I'm still weirded out when people use the polite form. Let alone computers, that's just silly.
Why would a computer/website be polite to me? They have no concept of these things. Just using polite forms doesn't mean you're being polite, you have to mean it. A computer is as of yet incapable of having intentions.
This article could be better - it presents a problem but does not resolve it in any meaningful way. It asks the equivalent of "which is better, left or right?" and concludes with "my opinion is that left is better."
This is not a pragmatic approach to the problem - where is the research? Where is the substantiation of why left is better than right? There is a rationalisation provided, sure, but people rationalise shooting heroin too, so that doesn't go too far. It would be interesting to see a study on this.
I have to say I disagree with the author's value assertion. It may true that people do treat computer interfaces in a social way, but whether this is useful (for many difference definitions of useful) is clearly open to debate. I wrote a paper about this a few years ago that pins the popularity of the idea of the computer as interactive artifact on Lucy Suchman and her work Plans and Situated Actions. The relevant paragraph is here: http://peermore.com/astool.html#nid21T (take off the fragment for the whole paper).
If we're actually having some kind of debate about how to signifiy in an interface I'd probably choose "profile" and forego "my" and "your" as they imply a relationship that does not exist and a facility in the interface that is not possible.
Given that most people aren't actually concerned about that and just want their stuff to be "nice" or "friendly" I'd pick one of "your" or "my", whichever fit in the grammar of the rest of the system, and be consistent.
I see it as a conversation happening both ways. It just depends on who is the initiator of the conversation.
Consider for example the following two imagined scenarios:
In order to send a new tweet:
1) You click a button that says "Send My Tweet".
2) You click a button that says "Send Your Tweet".
In the first case, you are telling Twitter to send the tweet you just wrote. The power lies with Twitter to send it.
In the second case, Twitter is telling you to send the tweet. In this case, the user has all the power.
.
.
It's interesting to compare Facebook's approach with Twitter's:
Facebook is a bit of an oddball in addressing the user. Facebook usually addresses the user as "you", but it sometimes refers to the user in the third person. On the home screen, it asks "How's are you doing, Sean?" and displays the link to your profile as just your name. On your actual profile page, if you hover over the Activity Log button, it will say "See your activity on Facebook". But then when you go to privacy settings, it says "Who can see my stuff?". This makes a ton of sense. By using "my" instead of "your", Facebook is making the user feel like they have control of their stuff.
Twitter is pretty squarely in the "Me" camp, as evidenced by the link to your profile on the top of the page.
If the website has something informational to tell the user, like a notification, they will always refer to the user as "you".
For example:
"Bill just retweeted you", "Bill just liked your status", "Your page is undergoing maintenance".
When you're changing account settings, the website will invariably refer to the user as "you". You are the one who actually needs to perform an action.
For example:
"Change your password", "Update your email".
I think there's also a difference regarding publicity of the material.
Using "your" is more appropriate for things that already are, or are expected to become, public as a part of the standard workflow (think photo sharing application).
Using "my" works better for things that are private and sensitive, like "My settings" or "My reading list" is often something that should not be shared, or only explicitly shared.
In general, I think avoiding either My or Your is better. However, there could be situations in the UI that you may want to separate My Stuff vs Other's Stuff. E.g. a shared folder with a header "My Files" vs "Others". In this case, I think using "My" is stronger. There other other cases like "Your files have been fetched" that sounds more right. I think in general, if you are labeling something, My is ok. If you are communicating a message (e.g. through a notification), Your is better.
His conclusion is totally against the "the best interface is no interface" UI/X design idea. He goes:
> Interfaces are much more abstract, and much more intelligent; they far more closely resemble social interactions than physical tools.
...therefore if I (the user) feel that I have a social-like interaction with the interface, it means that I am definitely noticing it IS there, whereas if I can feel it as an extension of self, I can get more easily to just ignore it once I get used to it and actually feel that there is "no interface". It's easier to ignore the hammer in your hand the person you're talking to, at least for me (and I believe for most social people).
Then again, if you are creating something like the UI for an ecommerce site, you probably want to give the user part of the feeling that he is in a real shop, that implies a real physical interface, so you say "Your shopping cart" - but I'm not sure this is necessarily a good idea.
Imho, OP did a good analysis of the interaction perspective, but somehow managed to arrive at what is 90% of the time the wrong conclusion (but then again, maybe my 90% is his 10%...).
The descriptor should either be unqualified "Purchases", not "Your/My Purchase", which is redundant and pandering, or, for any feature which can scale beyond a single user, identify the relevant user (your enterprise customers will thank you): "username => Settings". It's also useful to classify groupings, tags, or other attributes (Engineering, Accounting, HR, etc.) and integrate these with security and other aspects.
I always found "My Computer" to be annoying. It's pedantic (no shit, this is my computer), or wrong (no, this is Mike's computer, I'm just borrowing it), or void of useful context (this is a multi-user computer but I'm accessing it from my or someone else's account).
From a testing perspective, individually naming elements based on their ownership attribute makes for hell in scripting, testing, or writing suitable generic instructions (how do you tell Aunt Tilly how to change her settings when "My Computer" has been sensibly renamed "Aunt Tilly's Computer"?).
Sub-par article fails to consider many other relevant alternatives and considerations.
The test shouldn't be what users say they're more satisfied with, but which labeling results in better task performance. Now, if self-reported user satisfaction is your designated task, that's fine, but contexts such as multi-user support, shared system access, single-user use of multiple accounts, and centralized maintenance/access of many multi-user systems might also be considered.
I feel interacting by voice changes this a bit. Using the Xbox as an example... Microsoft has a 'my pins' option (to select favorites) while the Amazon video app has 'your videos'. Certainly feels odd to say'your videos'out loud.
I know this is only tangentially related, but this has always annoyed me in Windows. For example, "My Pictures" does not contain my pictures. My photos are in c:\photos.
And it gets worse with every Windows release. The standard file dialog in Windows 7 is absolutely ridiculous. There is a tree on the left, with absolutely worthless (to me) entries: Desktop, Favorites, Recent Places, My Photos, My Documents, etc., etc. The actual hard drive navigation is at the very bottom, and usually requires scrolling.
A sane navigation tree would just be a list of volumes.
This is because Windows has moved to modern file system organization concepts, keeping data for users within the user accounts and not in the global file space. Why are your photos in c:\photos? Why do you organize your files like it's 1995?
You'll find that that left tree is useful if you flow with the design of Windows rather than fighting against it. Desktop is meant to be an easily visible place for short-term storage of working documents. Recent Places is pretty smart about remembering frequently used local and network locations. My Photos / My Documents are totally useful if you actually put things there like the system is designed to do.
If you insist on drilling down to that hard drive navigation, don't blame the software for yourself deciding to break past the abstraction.
In system generated messages "yours" seems more appropriate. It implies that someone else is talking to the user. If I got a message "My email was received", I would feel like talking to myself.
The UI is an extension of human brain. So labeling things with "mine" will make the UI feel natural. My contacts feels closer than your contacts.
Interesting analysis, though personally I sit firmly in the camp that software are tools and as such should not express a "personality" or attempt to provide an "experience". For me, this suggests that straight nouns should be used for this sort of thing i.e "Profile" rather than "(Your|My) Profile".
My power drill doesn't refer to the chuck as "Your/My chuck". My toaster doesn't refer to to the bread as "Your/My bread" and my car doesn't refer to "your/my door is ajar".
[+] [-] cantlin|13 years ago|reply
I think marketeers leveraging "my" tend to envision that we will come to think of their product as like some treasured childhood teddy bear that we hug firmly to our bosoms each night. In life though, when we talk about owning things - my this, my that - it's often in order to identity ourselves with them. For most services, that's a lot to assume. Treading the HN path of avoiding possessive determiners at all may be the wiser path.
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
Having said that, there are situations where those traits may be appropriate. If some kind of intimate or emotional connection is the point of the app, it makes a certain sort of sense.
I also realize my bias against that sort of presumed intimacy may be greater than the average person's.
[+] [-] gosu|13 years ago|reply
I agree. This is something that has been bothering me every since Windows XP. I think less about what marketers want and how desperate it may or may not be, and I spend more time feeling offended that someone is presuming to intrude into my personal space in my program on my machine and tell me how I plan to use it. It's like they're misrepresenting me to myself, and it never fails to provoke much scoffing and eyerolling from me. I consider it a major signal of BS in software.
On the other hand, software which uses "your" or no pronouns at all can do almost exactly the same stuff - like creating a default organization of data - and I don't mind. I see it as a respectful suggestion which has my best interest in mind, and I'm more likely to actually incorporate their idea into the way I do things because I'm not immediately on the defensive.
Edit:
This reminds me of when I was staying at one of those tropical beach resorts and one of the souvenir sellers was announcing "shopping time, everybody!" to everyone that passed by. I didn't like that he obviously wanted me to participate in a dishonest exchange, but he was presumptuously "reminding" me that giving giving him money is a natural part of my day, the same way that I have an "eating time" and a "sleeping time".
[+] [-] nwh|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure if it is as pronounced anywhere else, but my area has a lot of shops that use the prefix in their name.
My Chemist
My Hairdresser
My Bookstore
My House
All places I walk past regularly, and they're all equally as awkward. Same goes for interfaces trying to emulate the same thing.
[+] [-] thejerz|13 years ago|reply
NEITHER.
Just say "Purchases" or "Bookmarks." Not yours, not mine, not his, not hers. Just "it."
Now, get back to writing code!
[+] [-] majormajor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyro|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Silhouette|13 years ago|reply
Presenting material in a way that resonates with the target audience of each particular product or service is important, and a little time spent getting it right will almost certainly generate more benefit than writing code for the same amount of time.
[+] [-] scottmagdalein|13 years ago|reply
Honestly, I still feel it's an overwrought discussion about something that ultimately doesn't effect the user enough to change their general perception of the product.
[+] [-] Kerrick|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reyan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottjackson|13 years ago|reply
> Avoid using “you,” “your,” “me,” and “my” as much as possible. Sometimes, text that identifies people directly can be ambiguous and can even be interpreted as an insult.
[+] [-] tadfisher|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jameshart|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyro|13 years ago|reply
I also think that physical vs. digital is a big determinant of whether Yours or Mine is appropriate. When using a physical object, you are at the very least spatially aware of all of the components. Your pencil, car, hammer are all items that operate due to mechanisms easily understandable at a very basic level simply by observation. There's no mystery. It is purely an object, and it is my object.
Digitally, however, you cannot understand the mechanism by which a mobile app works simply by observing it. There is a level of obscurity, a veil of mystery, as if someone, something were behind the scenes pulling the strings. Unlike looking at an engine and observing all of the gears and rods involved in making an axle spin, one cannot observe bytes of data travelling between microprocessors. I think it's that layer of obscurity that gives digital products a degree of personality that a car or hammer or pencil or knife cannot have. There's something at play that you're not seeing with digital interfaces, and perhaps we most comfortably assume that another human is involved in the process.
[+] [-] dylangs1030|13 years ago|reply
But what if you go for a more minimalist approach? What if your app doesn't use possessive pronouns at all?
You could just display "Settings", "Settings have been saved!", "Profile picture has been changed." etc and I've seen apps that do this natively.
Although, to a certain extent I suppose that proves his point, as apps will be forced to act as though they aren't using possessive pronouns if they use "My" - it would be a little strange to display messages like "My profile picture has been changed", etc. Using the possessive pronoun "Your" is the only one with special modifiers throughout the app's structure that don't sound redundant.
[+] [-] antidaily|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acavailhez|13 years ago|reply
And it's widely accepted that a website should use the polite form.
[+] [-] po|13 years ago|reply
There are really interesting problems that you come across when you build multi-lingual interfaces.
[+] [-] Swizec|13 years ago|reply
Why would a computer/website be polite to me? They have no concept of these things. Just using polite forms doesn't mean you're being polite, you have to mean it. A computer is as of yet incapable of having intentions.
[+] [-] TillE|13 years ago|reply
More business-y sites tend to use the formal "Sie" though, including most ISPs and telecoms.
[+] [-] jrogers65|13 years ago|reply
This is not a pragmatic approach to the problem - where is the research? Where is the substantiation of why left is better than right? There is a rationalisation provided, sure, but people rationalise shooting heroin too, so that doesn't go too far. It would be interesting to see a study on this.
[+] [-] michaelfeathers|13 years ago|reply
I think there is a decent analog here with unadorned naming being like flat design and my/your being like skeuomorphism.
[+] [-] cdent|13 years ago|reply
If we're actually having some kind of debate about how to signifiy in an interface I'd probably choose "profile" and forego "my" and "your" as they imply a relationship that does not exist and a facility in the interface that is not possible.
Given that most people aren't actually concerned about that and just want their stuff to be "nice" or "friendly" I'd pick one of "your" or "my", whichever fit in the grammar of the rest of the system, and be consistent.
[+] [-] snilan|13 years ago|reply
Consider for example the following two imagined scenarios:
In order to send a new tweet:
1) You click a button that says "Send My Tweet".
2) You click a button that says "Send Your Tweet".
In the first case, you are telling Twitter to send the tweet you just wrote. The power lies with Twitter to send it.
In the second case, Twitter is telling you to send the tweet. In this case, the user has all the power.
.
.
It's interesting to compare Facebook's approach with Twitter's:
Facebook is a bit of an oddball in addressing the user. Facebook usually addresses the user as "you", but it sometimes refers to the user in the third person. On the home screen, it asks "How's are you doing, Sean?" and displays the link to your profile as just your name. On your actual profile page, if you hover over the Activity Log button, it will say "See your activity on Facebook". But then when you go to privacy settings, it says "Who can see my stuff?". This makes a ton of sense. By using "my" instead of "your", Facebook is making the user feel like they have control of their stuff.
Twitter is pretty squarely in the "Me" camp, as evidenced by the link to your profile on the top of the page.
If the website has something informational to tell the user, like a notification, they will always refer to the user as "you".
For example: "Bill just retweeted you", "Bill just liked your status", "Your page is undergoing maintenance".
When you're changing account settings, the website will invariably refer to the user as "you". You are the one who actually needs to perform an action.
For example: "Change your password", "Update your email".
[+] [-] e_proxus|13 years ago|reply
Using "your" is more appropriate for things that already are, or are expected to become, public as a part of the standard workflow (think photo sharing application).
Using "my" works better for things that are private and sensitive, like "My settings" or "My reading list" is often something that should not be shared, or only explicitly shared.
[+] [-] lominming|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnq|13 years ago|reply
> Interfaces are much more abstract, and much more intelligent; they far more closely resemble social interactions than physical tools.
...therefore if I (the user) feel that I have a social-like interaction with the interface, it means that I am definitely noticing it IS there, whereas if I can feel it as an extension of self, I can get more easily to just ignore it once I get used to it and actually feel that there is "no interface". It's easier to ignore the hammer in your hand the person you're talking to, at least for me (and I believe for most social people).
Then again, if you are creating something like the UI for an ecommerce site, you probably want to give the user part of the feeling that he is in a real shop, that implies a real physical interface, so you say "Your shopping cart" - but I'm not sure this is necessarily a good idea.
Imho, OP did a good analysis of the interaction perspective, but somehow managed to arrive at what is 90% of the time the wrong conclusion (but then again, maybe my 90% is his 10%...).
[+] [-] kirarev|13 years ago|reply
just a thought. very interesting commentary on the connotations of the usage of "your profile" "my profile' nonetheless.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] baddox|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dredmorbius|13 years ago|reply
I always found "My Computer" to be annoying. It's pedantic (no shit, this is my computer), or wrong (no, this is Mike's computer, I'm just borrowing it), or void of useful context (this is a multi-user computer but I'm accessing it from my or someone else's account).
From a testing perspective, individually naming elements based on their ownership attribute makes for hell in scripting, testing, or writing suitable generic instructions (how do you tell Aunt Tilly how to change her settings when "My Computer" has been sensibly renamed "Aunt Tilly's Computer"?).
Sub-par article fails to consider many other relevant alternatives and considerations.
[+] [-] Felix21|13 years ago|reply
You can easily just test both (with Neither as your control) and survey your users to find out which group is more satisfied with your UI.
When it comes to what customers want or will like, what you "think" is almost always wrong, so stop thinking and start testing.
[+] [-] dredmorbius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] with_cheer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Strang|13 years ago|reply
And it gets worse with every Windows release. The standard file dialog in Windows 7 is absolutely ridiculous. There is a tree on the left, with absolutely worthless (to me) entries: Desktop, Favorites, Recent Places, My Photos, My Documents, etc., etc. The actual hard drive navigation is at the very bottom, and usually requires scrolling.
A sane navigation tree would just be a list of volumes.
[+] [-] T-hawk|13 years ago|reply
You'll find that that left tree is useful if you flow with the design of Windows rather than fighting against it. Desktop is meant to be an easily visible place for short-term storage of working documents. Recent Places is pretty smart about remembering frequently used local and network locations. My Photos / My Documents are totally useful if you actually put things there like the system is designed to do.
If you insist on drilling down to that hard drive navigation, don't blame the software for yourself deciding to break past the abstraction.
[+] [-] mouly|13 years ago|reply
In system generated messages "yours" seems more appropriate. It implies that someone else is talking to the user. If I got a message "My email was received", I would feel like talking to myself.
The UI is an extension of human brain. So labeling things with "mine" will make the UI feel natural. My contacts feels closer than your contacts.
I wrote about the same subject: http://mouly.me/2011/07/my-contacts-or-your-contacts/
[+] [-] jalfresi|13 years ago|reply
My power drill doesn't refer to the chuck as "Your/My chuck". My toaster doesn't refer to to the bread as "Your/My bread" and my car doesn't refer to "your/my door is ajar".