Key principles

• Service names should be VERBS and not NOUNS
• Service names should be easy to understand
• Service names should say what they do

Pattern

• Services names should be based around Verbs (What they do rather than what they are named)
• Service names should not include government jargon
• If a service changes then the name should change to reflect that

Anti Pattern

• We train people to learn our terminology and names so that they can navigate the public sector landscape
• People become familiar with our names and start searching for them (you can argue this as a positive or negative depending on the individual customer)
• The function of a service changes over time but the name remains the same and thus has even less linkage to the actual function.

Supporting research

• This is a common pattern across all our user research
• Most recent example is International Networks (2019/2020) where Sections of site had NOUN names.
  • Pulse: People thought this was a NEWS area when it was actually FORUMS
  • Challenge: This was initially meant to be based on industry challenges but actually morphed into a collaboration area

Tags

• nouns
• noun
• verbs
• verb
• names
• naming
• services