Matthew Berger
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Mobile menu labels
The problem
The Google TV mobile app was changing. A new tab was going to be added to the menu on the bottom of the screen. It was going to be crowded. One or more existing tabs needed to go away, likely merged with other tabs.
Specifically, the Library and Watchlist tabs were going to need to be merged. This would streamline the navigation and put all the content a user owns or intends to watch later — everything they’ve saved — in one place. But there was no obvious answer as to what to call this new hybrid tab.
Most users use the watchlist far more than they use the library, but just calling the tab “Watchlist” wouldn’t work because we had research indicating that there was a sizable number of users who have hundreds of purchased items in their library and have had trouble finding them following past redesigns.
My task was to find a new menu label that would encapsulate library and watchlist — ideally, I was asked, using a term that was as fun as it was informational and intuitive.
Before:
The process
I audited competitors to collect info on how they addressed similar issues. Then I expanded my audit to any app where you could both save and purchase something — such as music and retail apps. I also studied past redesigns and the research we’d gathered following them to ensure I didn’t repeat anything we’d already tried.
Based on this research, I came up with a list of alternative menu labels. I listed out what I saw as the potential pros and cons of each one, eventually deciding on two leading contenders.
That happens sometimes in UX writing. You strive for something perfect, and turn the problem over to look at it from new angles, and throw out your initial assumptions and guardrails to start completely from scratch, and bring in ideas from different teams or departments, and put it away for a while and come back to it afresh in a few weeks. But if, after all that, it’s still doesn’t quite sing but is functional and effective and intuitive and will be clear and useful to a user, then that’s as close to perfect as you’re going to get. It’s perfect enough.
So I presented my alternatives to the product owners, and their reaction was the same as mine. Wasn’t there maybe something just a little bit sexier? I also felt there had to be, so I brainstormed and research for another week or two, bringing in folks from around the company to solicit ideas. In the end, only two alternatives were added to my list, and they didn’t seem any better than the ones I had recommended as my top choices.
But none of the options clicked as an obvious or ideal choice. And in my research, it seemed that none of the competitors had landed on an option that clicked quite perfectly either. They all worked; they just didn’t sing. It turned out I wasn’t the only one to think this. One of the other products I audited happened to also be at Google. And when I synced up with the UX writers on the YouTube team about how they approached this problem, they said they had struggled with it for a long time. They eventually had landed on something was just fine, even though they had been holding out for something amazing.
Excerpt of exploration documentation
The result
“Your stuff” is the unsexy but functional new menu label. It says what the tab is, it’s easy to understand at first glance, no one will be surprised what they find there when they click on it, it’s relatively translatable to other languages, it fits within our space restrictions, and it adheres to our voice and typical messaging (“For you,” “Your library” etc).
Other options don't do all those things. “My stuff” was repeatedly proposed, for instance. But “my” isn’t in our product voice, since we speak to the user, like a friend making a movie recommendation; we don't impersonate the user. “My” can also come off as archaic, evoking internet language of the early 2000s.
But what “Your stuff” doesn’t do is wow. It's not going to create a new vernacular like Snapchat's "Story" or Facebook's "Timeline." It's more like “Home” or “Your orders,” and that’s OK. No one will get lost or confused, and that’s what’s most important.
