This week, our team ran into a small and interesting challenge while naming a specific content unit.
The product is into B2B2B procurement, and the customers can create and see order invoices and the receipts. In a specific use case, they can edit a receipt any time and then they can see the revisions in that receipt.
In the initial discussions, we used the word History to see a receipt’s revisions—to see the changes in a receipt in each edit, with the timestamp and username stamp. The product vocabulary did not have the naming guidelines for this use case. The designer in me thought of the word History or Revisions although the engineers were already planning the code (with the flexibility).
History sounded as if the entity might not be in active use now—as if its lifecycle is complete. Revisions does not necessarily convey that it is a log of each revision with timestamp—it sounded more of a track-changes view of the edits in the receipt. So, we agreed on calling it the Change Log.
It was as much as about the industry practices, as it was about getting it right for its meaning.
Sometimes our work is in the sentiment—how we feel about the shape of the container, a particular icon, the position of the download link, or a particular word. The guidelines are important in content design but we don’t live for the guidelines—our live for the sentiment and it is fair to bend the rules and make space for the sentiment in the guidelines.
Since the product is not public and the team is small, it is fairly easy for marketing and sales to adapt new terms and vocabulary in their pitch and documents.
