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Some user interfaces feature titles such as:
While others opt for:
Are their any guidelines addressing which is more suitable to pick in different situations? Is one more preferable than the other?
(edited 11-12-2017 after comments below)
MS Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines suggests the following:
“Use the second person (you, your) to tell users what to do.” So use second person for error messages, help, window or page labels, on-page documentation, and other places where the app is telling the user about the user’s content.
“Use the first person (I, me, my) to let users tell the program what to do.” So use first person for buttons, menu items, and other controls where the user commands the app.
This means you can have first and second person on the same page. You can label a list “Your photos” but have a button labeled “Publish my photos.”
This is consistent with what a user learns in the physical world, where the reader of text is “listening” to what the creator or owner of the text has to say, so the reader is “you” (e.g.., “We appreciate your business” on an invoice, “Your speed” on a radar speed sign, and, of course, any instruction, like “RSVP”). However, there is an exception for text artifacts that are handled by the reader as a form of communication back to the creator/owner (e.g., a contract, waiver or oath will begin “I, [PRINT NAME], agree that…”). That is like a command button label.
All that said, the correct answer to your question may be to not use either “My” or “Your.” Unless you need to differentiate between content under user control and some other content (e.g., community documents or photos), the best title is simply the class of content (e.g., “Documents” and “Photos”). Labels should start with the most distinguishing and informative words so users can easily scan for them. Cluttering your labels with low-meaning words like “my” and “your,” (or “view” or “manage”) makes it harder for the user.
Even when you do need to differentiate user content from others, you may want to avoid “my” and “your” because in certain situations it can be unclear if it refers to the user or the computer/ program/ website, or creator thereof. Links can be problematic. Consider a website for someone who writes and posts Game of Thrones fanfic, and invites her readers to post their own too. There’s a link for “My Stories” and “Your Stories.” Which is for the user and which is for the website owner? I believe some users will read the “Your Stories” link as “click here for your stories,” so they expect the users’ stories. Other users will read “Your Stories” as “show me your stories,” so they expect the website owner’s stories.
Or consider MS Window’s “My Documents” folder, which, at first, I’d say is direct violation of Microsoft’s own guidelines. But that assumes users perceive the folder to be a container labeled by Windows, so Windows should be “telling” the user it’s Your Documents, not My (Window’s?) Documents. However, some users may have a more interactive attitude and see the folder icon in the tree of Windows Explorer as a button that commands Windows to show the user's content, so it’s saying “(Open) My Documents.” If I buy and display an “I love my dog” bumper sticker, then it’s me talking about my dog, not the sticker-maker manufacturer talking about its dog. Likewise, some users may perceive they bought Windows (regardless of what the license says), it’s their workspace, so any labels therein are now them declaring their own respective ownership, so it should be My Documents. There’s a similar problem with social media web sites. Some users may perceive themselves posting on the web site’s page (so it’s “Your Posts”), while others perceive the web site “gave” them a page for their respective posts (so it’s “My Posts”).
If your program/ website doesn’t “own” any documents, photos, orders, or whatnot, maybe all users can figure it out whether you use My or Yours. Or maybe not –do all of them know there’s nothing there you own? You can avoid the risk of ambiguity by consistently using [Username’s] Documents, if it’s necessary to differentiate.
Don't use My or Your. In most cases it's obvious whose they are.
The only case you might want to do it is to differentiate e.g. between the user's documents and everyone's documents. In that case I would follow the Microsoft guidelines cited by Michael and use "Your Documents" and "All Documents".
One of the worst UI bloopers in Windows XP is the use of the prefix "My". It's ridiculous: want to see your photos? Look under "M" for "My Photos". Received files? Look under "M" for "My Received Files". It's like the old joke about the secretary who files everything under "T" for "The Payroll", "The Rent", etc.
If you have access to the book Designing Social Interfaces by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone I suggest you read the chapter on My/Your.
Or you can read about the pattern online.
What you choose will not "kill" the overall experience either way. My suggestion is to find & solve for the bigger experience issues you have. (Or if this is your biggest problem, congrats on a great product!)
However, what will kill the experience is if you:
Examples of what not to do:
Hope this helps!
According to Dustin Curtis "My X" makes the interface an extension of yourself whereas "Your X" makes it more of a social creature. To quote him from his great Yours vs. Mine article:
I've settled pretty firmly in the camp of thinking that interfaces should mimic social creatures, that they should have personalities, and that I should be communicating with the interface rather than the interface being an extension of myself. Tools have almost always been physical objects that are manipulated tactually. Interfaces are much more abstract, and much more intelligent; they far more closely resemble social interactions than physical tools.
In my mind, it's your choice. There's no big difference between your, my or neither, just try to use consistent labeling.
Colleen Jones—Partner and Interactive Experience and Communication Consultant at threebrick; UXmatters columnist on Generating Ideas | Your Versus My in User Interfaces:
From a usability perspective, I have not seen much difference in task performance based on choosing your or my modifiers. [...] From a rhetorical perspective, I like including your or my modifiers for personal information to create a friendly tone.
Christopher Fahey:
A brand that has a personality that sounds like the product is a person, or speaks on behalf of a group of real people (like Flickr, which even says Hello to you), it makes sense to say "Your." But for brands that position themselves as an almost cybernetic extension of your personal infospace (like MySpace or Windows), "me" and "my" might actually make sense. In fact, consistency is probably the paramount rule here.
Yahoo! Design Pattern Library suggest to use your to label personal objects in social sites (Source: Your vs. My), but notes that my works fine for private, individual environments.
I apologize for the lack of references, but in my opinion (and from viewing social websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like), they rarely say 'Your' (even more rarely say 'My') unless it is to prompt the user.
If you're viewing a settings dropdown/spinner there is no difference to the user when you see 'Account' or 'My Account' or 'Your Account' so for simplicity's sake, I'll choose 'Account'.
The only time I see 'Your' is when the site is directly trying to reach out to you and have you complete an action like Facebook's 'What's on your mind?'
In short, if the word causes confusion, search for a different approach.
In case of "my Photos", it could be replaced with {usersname}'s photos for example.
You can easily test this by asking people what they think is meant. If you get a lot of different answers... something is wrong.
Answer from the year 2020
The guideline by Microsoft is correct. The user is having a conversation with your interface by applying this rule.
It seems like a contradiction when Microsoft uses "My Documents", "My Photos" etc. but it is correct for this special use case: a folder structure. A folder structure is something personal and hence "my" is used correctly in this case. Nobody would title a photo album "Your Patagonia Vacation" or write on a Folder "Your tax documents 2019". It's your folder structure, not a part of the application itself. Or think of a diary. On the cover, it might say "Diary" or "My Diary". But certainly not "Your diary".
Is it better to just label your Album "Patagonia Vacation"? Or have a "Tax documents 2019" folder? Probably yes. You can sort alphabetically and it's less verbose. Same goes for the applications we design. So even when we use "my" and "your" correctly, we should have a reason why we are using it. Many UX Designers have understood that and that's why we tend to see My/Your less nowadays.
Example of correct usage: "Your most famous posts" as a title of a page.
And now think of the next tab in this app being posts the user has not seen yet. "Posts you haven't seen" sounds much better to my ear than "Posts I haven't seen". It's the app showing you the posts you haven't seen and not yourself showing you what you haven't seen. That wouldnt make sense. So with You/I it is even more obvious than Your/My. And obviously you should stick to one form.
An example where you should use none: On your phone you will probably have a Note app. It's probably called "Notes" and not "My/Your notes". It's obvious that it's your own notes and not someone else's. The title of the overview-page of all notes in that app hence should be "Notes". You can check on your phone and see if Android and Apple think the same.
I read in a style guide (sorry, can't remember which one) that it's better to use 'My', since it puts the user in the driver's seat — they are the center of action, they are the ones doing things.
Whereas 'Your' sounds like someone else is speaking to them, which makes that someone else the center of action. That's probably the wrong model for software — the user and the software are not having a conversation. The user is using the software as a tool to perform a task.
Besides, most web sites I've used use 'My', so consistency is another argument in favor using 'My'.
Choose your words carefully. If 'my' or 'your' is of help to clarify by all means use it. Otherwise don't. Less words mean the remaining words gain attention and importance. There is also the representation of the real meaning of the possessive pronoun :-). What about:
Share your tips, your opinion Our recommendations
Here are Google's Material Guidelines on the issue:
Address users clearly
Address users in either the second person (you or your) or the first person (I, me, or my), depending on which is suitable and clearest...
Each form of address is recommended for the following contexts:
- Second person, "you" or "your": This conversational style is appropriate in most situations; as though the UI is speaking directly to the user.
- First person, "I" or "my": In some cases, this form of address emphasizes the user's ownership of content or actions.
The guidelines provide the following examples:
- "Quickly open the camera without unlocking your screen" — Speak directly to the user in the second person.
- "Your places" — Speak directly to the user in the second person.
- "I agree to follow the terms of service" — Emphasize ownership of actions using the first person.
- "My account" — Emphasize content ownership using the first person.
