Why should an app have a personality? Apps should 'do', not 'be'. In my opinion, the user shouldn't ever notice the interface, because its only purpose is to facilitate the service; anything that disrupts the purpose (like a 'personality') is distracting from what it's supposed to do.
Good point. Except for games or kids apps, the ui should get out of the way and have no personality. It should have some identity though, so we can tell apps apart, but a logo and a color scheme is enough usually.
What do you make of a service like Siri that imposes a personality on the UI without disrupting its usability? Anecdotally, many people like communicating with such an interface that simulates human conversation, even if the results themselves aren't improved by it.
This is really the kind of thing where A/B testing is both necessary and straightforward. Decently intuitive arguments can be made for both sides and there isn't really overwhelming strength on either of them.
It seems like this would also change per application, in which case A/B testing could really help you understand how users are thinking about and interacting with your program / tool / application. I think both of the paradigms that Dustin brings up in his article are good and there are applications I use that fall into both camps. Just as an example, SimpleDNS is a tool where I work on my stuff. Facebook is a social network where I got to interact with lots of stuff and the Your feels more appropriate there*
* Interestingly enough, it seems like most of the major platforms have moved away from using either "my" or "your" altogether, eg Facebook and Twitter both just have Friends, Followers, Tweets, Photos, etc.
What, pray tell, is the hypothesis to be tested? Whether "my" or "your" results in more clicks? How do we know they aren't clicks borne of confusion? Whether "my" or "your" users visit the site more often? Over what time frame? A day? A week? A year? A decade?
A/B testing isn't magic fairy dust that settles design questions. You need to have a clear hypothesis to test. It's especially difficult if the design question concerns long-term perceptions and psychology. An A/B test in this situation is anything but straightforward.
I'd be interested to learn about how this design decision was made in the companies that have had to face it.
I personally think this is a matter of personal preference, but the critical thing is to ensure you always use the same terminology throughout the entire application. Mixing them up is horrendous.
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.
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.
I like the explanation of terms, but come to a different conclusion. Rather than a universal my/yours I would think it ends up being whatever is appropriate to the interface. Some interfaces are for tasks that require "tools" others not.
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.
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.
> 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.
>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".
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.
Mostly. The downside is with words ("profile" even, though rarely enough that it probably doesn't matter) that can be both nouns and verbs. Leaving off the my/your then makes the button ambiguous.
Anecdotally, I have run into this with Google Products (Mail & Voice): The "Archive" button is problematic because you can almost always navigate to the noun Archive folder, or verb Archive an item.
This is the proper approach, I suppose. I don't use images for button labels in Gmail's interface myself, but I'm pretty sure that properly designed icons + tooltips with verbs (for both icons and textual labels) can be used quite effectively to differentiate between verbs and nouns: 'arrows' icons as verbs for moving stuff, 'boxes' images as nouns for storage places, 'tools' as verbs for some particular actions associated with those particular tools, etc. - just your usual common sense UI stuff.
Switched Gmail settings to icons for buttons just to check if this is being used here and immediately notice annoying inconsistency in Gmail's UI: Archive button has an icon of a storage box with an arrow (good choice), but has ambiguous tooltip saying 'Archive', whilst Delete button has an icon of just a trash bin with a proper action-tooltip 'Delete'. 'Report spam' has the worst icon by far, I think. Then again - manila folder icon for moving to label (which is a bit unclear) - it acts very much like the 'archive' action, but somehow doesn't have an arrow. Labels button tooltip - 'Labels' - also lacks the word 'apply/attach/add'. I understand that you can get accustomed to almost anything, but this doesn't mean you have to fight your way through UI.
I thought a bit more about this and now I think that a verb is more or less mandatory for buttons of actions, i.e. for buttons that change some objects properties or performs actions on the objects ('Apply labels', 'Move to trash' are probably better than 'Labels', 'Trash'). Verbs are not mandatory for buttons that just change your position inside the system ('Go to inbox' is probably worse than 'Inbox').
Rather than the language used, perhaps the interface would give the proper contextual cue:
* Use a button interface for all actions the user can take: [send][archive].
* Use a link for nouns / places the user can go: inbox | archive | trash.
* Icons tend to be actions (a star for 'mark this as a favorite', a trash can for 'delete this thing', a paper+pencil for 'edit this entry'), so they get grouped more with the buttons.
I think pronouns should be reserved more for interactions, where a UI's personality really shines through. So when refreshing your inbox, you may see "Fetching your email", for example.
Why does a UI have to have personality? Why can't it just look good and be easy to use? Does anyone actually care if an application is "speaking" as if it is a conscious entity?
> Why can't it just look good and be easy to use? Does anyone actually care if an application is "speaking" as if it is a conscious entity?
I don't think it's fair to say that a UI shouldn't attempt to have some "personality". Whether it is ultimately effective (or not) is another argument entirely, but there is more to UX than just the style and "ease of use".
Copy, labeling and alerts are all part of the UX too.
For a tool that you use as often as Gmail, you want something functional, but that doesn't mean it can't let the personality of Google shine through. Gmail's empty spam page says something like "No spam here, Hurray!" where as Outlook's says generic and bland like "There are no items in this view".
However, consider a shopping experience that you may use a couple of times per year at most. The application has a real opportunity to expose the user to your brand.
Also consider a new user experience that you only ever do once. These processes are boring, so maybe some personality helps conversions and reduces falloff.
There is no right answer here because there are so many different types of applications.
Good UI design is all about effective communication. If you have a UI that is pretending to be something it isn’t (a person) then it is basically lying to you. That’s hardly good communication. It’s confusing and dishonest.
And believe it or not there are some users who won’t understand that it isn’t really a person. Some minds are very prone to anthropomorphizing especially when they are dealing with something they find hard to understand and unpredictable like a computer.
"Having a personality" is going to happen whatever you do.
Somewhat counterintuitively, this doesn't mean your interface pretends it's a person; but all copy is written by people -- words are used by people only (pretty much), directly or indirectly -- and the words chosen are projecting some personality onto the application whether you want to or not.
There are no words/phrases/instructions without baggage, connotations, etc..
I have no objection to that. I just don’t want those words written by people to make it sound like the application is a person. The app can talk about itself doing things (it does do things after all) but not as a human being with feelings and stuff.
Yeah, actually even in that case, I'd prefer no pronouns. "Fetching email" is much better IMO, and possibly more accurate (Imagine my girlfriend logged into my email for instance).
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.
Siri is not an app. Siri was built to be a personal assistant, and as such, it was designed to have a personal connection with the user, making the 'you' and 'I' very important. Interesting point about 'we', though.
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.
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.
Why would a computer use the familiar form? It seems to me that I would uncomfortable if a computer, or worse, a web interface actively maintained by team of strangers, started to address in language that suggested a certain level of intimacy.
It might just be my youngness and general disapproval of the polite form speaking here. I really think English has gone in the right direction by removing their polite form in favour of being polite without senseless grammatical contortions.
It's a minor point but actually English has only the polite form. Stiff upper lip, and all that. "Thou" is the singular, but it isn't used much any more.
The computer isn't being polite to you, the company whose website you are on, is. In the same way your computer isn't being casual and friendly with you - the person who wrote you the email is.
Whether it's an app or a website, it's all just a conduit - and I don't think it's farfetched to say that by and large companies use polite forms when referring to their (potential) customers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I opt for my stuff because its more immersive. It's the first person narrative. As creator, I want to get out of the way of their experience as much as possible.
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.
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!
But versions of Windows before 95 didn‘t have the prefix. In Windows 3.1 it was just Program Manager, Write, Paintbrush, File Manager etc. So they took a step backwards in 95. It took them a decade to get back to where they were in the 80s.
Their choice of "My" caused a humorous reaction on quite a few people who felt the computer was much more a separate entity than a mechanical extension of themselves (to use the terminology of the OP)...
Remember the joke that Bill Gates reckons he has such complete control over every PC with Windows installed that he goes around naming each one "My Computer" so we won't forget it's his?
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.
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.
I disagree, I think if the OP was attempting to make a fair analysis, he should have acknowledged the third option. My immediate thought was the same expressed in this comment, as My & Your add wordiness. I suppose it depends on the overall tone & genre of the software you're (I'm?) designing, but it's an obvious alternative.
Dustin's post was not simply about whether to prepend labels with "my" or "your". That choice was an example of a more fundamental concern: whether to imagine the user as seeing an app as an extension of themselves or as seeing the app as a separate entity, and the implications of that in the interface.
It may have been helpful for the post to consider the effects of using no pronouns on a user's mental model, and a better response to the post would be to explore those effects, not to dismiss it outright as a false dilemma. A much better method of dismissing posts that have obvious answers is to not comment on them.
Calling comments dismissive is rather dismissive in itself. I don't see what is wrong with pointing out a better option (in the opinion of the commentator) in a succinct way.
Microcopy generally takes the form of a speaking voice which addresses the User directly, so a phrase like "Are you sure you want to delete this Customer?" makes more sense than "Am I sure I want to delete this Customer?". And so forth.
Which Microsoft also fouled up. A user's desktop could contain elements which were present in the user's desktop folder, in a group folder, or in the global desktop folder for the system. From within the Explorer shell, it wasn't obviously clear where the element came from. Yet another reason I have a rabid dislike for GUI file manglers.
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.
That's irrelevant. There are multiple reasonable possibilities here. Saying "Do X, now get on with coding" as if X is somehow obviously the right answer is a very dangerous attitude. The original article might not have mentioned those kinds of testing explicitly, but still, professionals decide among various choices being considered based on merit, not personal preference.
I find your comment odd (in that I am confused by it). The top comment (which you seem to take issue with) isn't any more useful to anyone than the OP itself. I took it as a bit tounge-in-cheek. You state that professionals make decisions based on merit rather than personal preference and yet the OP did the exact opposite. So neither the OP nor top-commenter are taking the 'professional' approach here.
FWIW I agree with pretty much everything you said in your previous comment (although perhaps not the first sentence).
EDIT: Or perhaps his last sentence irritated you? If he'd omitted "Now, get back to writing code!" would you still feel the same?
I think we just interpreted the original comment differently. I didn't sense any humour in the point being made, only in the flippant final line, and I strongly disagreed with the basic point regardless of anything related that the original article did or didn't mention. If I misunderstood then the poster has my apologies.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadjust a thought. very interesting commentary on the connotations of the usage of "your profile" "my profile' nonetheless.
* Interestingly enough, it seems like most of the major platforms have moved away from using either "my" or "your" altogether, eg Facebook and Twitter both just have Friends, Followers, Tweets, Photos, etc.
A/B testing isn't magic fairy dust that settles design questions. You need to have a clear hypothesis to test. It's especially difficult if the design question concerns long-term perceptions and psychology. An A/B test in this situation is anything but straightforward.
I'd be interested to learn about how this design decision was made in the companies that have had to face it.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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".
> 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.
Switched Gmail settings to icons for buttons just to check if this is being used here and immediately notice annoying inconsistency in Gmail's UI: Archive button has an icon of a storage box with an arrow (good choice), but has ambiguous tooltip saying 'Archive', whilst Delete button has an icon of just a trash bin with a proper action-tooltip 'Delete'. 'Report spam' has the worst icon by far, I think. Then again - manila folder icon for moving to label (which is a bit unclear) - it acts very much like the 'archive' action, but somehow doesn't have an arrow. Labels button tooltip - 'Labels' - also lacks the word 'apply/attach/add'. I understand that you can get accustomed to almost anything, but this doesn't mean you have to fight your way through UI.
I thought a bit more about this and now I think that a verb is more or less mandatory for buttons of actions, i.e. for buttons that change some objects properties or performs actions on the objects ('Apply labels', 'Move to trash' are probably better than 'Labels', 'Trash'). Verbs are not mandatory for buttons that just change your position inside the system ('Go to inbox' is probably worse than 'Inbox').
* Use a button interface for all actions the user can take: [send][archive].
* Use a link for nouns / places the user can go: inbox | archive | trash.
* Icons tend to be actions (a star for 'mark this as a favorite', a trash can for 'delete this thing', a paper+pencil for 'edit this entry'), so they get grouped more with the buttons.
I don't think it's fair to say that a UI shouldn't attempt to have some "personality". Whether it is ultimately effective (or not) is another argument entirely, but there is more to UX than just the style and "ease of use".
Copy, labeling and alerts are all part of the UX too.
For a tool that you use as often as Gmail, you want something functional, but that doesn't mean it can't let the personality of Google shine through. Gmail's empty spam page says something like "No spam here, Hurray!" where as Outlook's says generic and bland like "There are no items in this view".
However, consider a shopping experience that you may use a couple of times per year at most. The application has a real opportunity to expose the user to your brand.
Also consider a new user experience that you only ever do once. These processes are boring, so maybe some personality helps conversions and reduces falloff.
There is no right answer here because there are so many different types of applications.
And believe it or not there are some users who won’t understand that it isn’t really a person. Some minds are very prone to anthropomorphizing especially when they are dealing with something they find hard to understand and unpredictable like a computer.
Somewhat counterintuitively, this doesn't mean your interface pretends it's a person; but all copy is written by people -- words are used by people only (pretty much), directly or indirectly -- and the words chosen are projecting some personality onto the application whether you want to or not.
There are no words/phrases/instructions without baggage, connotations, etc..
And it's widely accepted that a website should use the polite form.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou#History
The computer isn't being polite to you, the company whose website you are on, is. In the same way your computer isn't being casual and friendly with you - the person who wrote you the email is.
Whether it's an app or a website, it's all just a conduit - and I don't think it's farfetched to say that by and large companies use polite forms when referring to their (potential) customers.
There are really interesting problems that you come across when you build multi-lingual interfaces.
More business-y sites tend to use the formal "Sie" though, including most ISPs and telecoms.
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.
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/
I think there is a decent analog here with unadorned naming being like flat design and my/your being like skeuomorphism.
The incorrect non-reflexive use of myself to avoid the potentially incorrect choice of I vs. me. As in:
... rather than the interface being an extension of myself.
NEITHER.
Just say "Purchases" or "Bookmarks." Not yours, not mine, not his, not hers. Just "it."
Now, get back to writing code!
Remember the joke that Bill Gates reckons he has such complete control over every PC with Windows installed that he goes around naming each one "My Computer" so we won't forget it's his?
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.
http://www.ecss.nl/
It may have been helpful for the post to consider the effects of using no pronouns on a user's mental model, and a better response to the post would be to explore those effects, not to dismiss it outright as a false dilemma. A much better method of dismissing posts that have obvious answers is to not comment on them.
Well, thinking in a false binary, when there are far more choices, as the article does, already trivialises the subject matter.
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.
FWIW I agree with pretty much everything you said in your previous comment (although perhaps not the first sentence).
EDIT: Or perhaps his last sentence irritated you? If he'd omitted "Now, get back to writing code!" would you still feel the same?
"My..." implies the interface is an extension of the users brain.
"Your..." implies the interface is a tool to be mastered.
Both might be appropriate for certain use cases. Using github as an example interface with personality, perhaps "My Forks" but "Your SSH Keys"?