The Land of Metaphor

where's the trail? ( source )

The current logo for Semble is a cairn -- a pile of stones usually placed along poorly-marked hiking trails to help fellow hikers avoid getting lost. This kind of symbolism resonates with us in several ways.

do you see the resemblance?

Firstly, it represents the stigmergic aspects of collective intelligence, much like the pheromone trails left behind by ants. When we're making sense of information online, we leave behind digital markers (posts, dms, bookmarks, flashcards etc.) that can help others navigate the informational landscape without getting lost. Or, as Pierre Lévy puts it:

"Our online behavior emits a continual flow of messages and cues that transform the structure of memory, helping to direct the attention and activity of our contemporaries. We deposit electronic pheromones in the virtual environment, which in turn determine the actions of other Internet users..."

Secondly, it speaks to the physical act of assembling rocks into a cairn. The process itself is an act of curation, of recognizing a relationship between the individual parts and the whole. If you've ever tried it yourself, you'll know that it takes a discerning eye to scan the area and find the right stones that sit well together.

Lastly, we love nature and hiking! Any kind of symbolism and design representing natural elements speaks deeply to our aesthetic preferences.

There's nothing wrong with having particular aesthetic tendencies, however, things can get hairy if we go too deep and get lost in the land of metaphor.

As with most products, Semble takes great inspiration from prior art. It's no secret that we are taking a lot of initial inspiration from great products like are.na and sublime.app .

There are some non-trivial differences between these two products, but the basic experience is about creating and adding items to groups. Are.na calls these blocks and channels while sublime.app calls them cards and collections.

When first brainstorming, my metaphor machine mind couldn't stop the train. Why not call items stones and groups cairns? The cairn metaphor allows us to use all sorts of fun words like sand, rock, boulder, ridge, valley, and all the fun terminology that comes along with hiking landscapes.

The problem with this style of naming is that it likely just muddies the already unclear waters.

clear as mud? ( source )

We're already struggling to handle certain basic concepts within Semble, like the notion of a general "space" where cards you save go to by default (even if you don't add them to a collection yet), currently called library. As well as the distinction between your URL card vs the URL page (called the Semble page) which aggregates activity around the same URL.

If we simply brushed over this complexity with metaphorically consistent terms, it would make the confusion worse, not better. The other issue with this kind of naming is that it implicitly dictates the experience and concepts of the app, rather than letting that emerge in a back-and-forth dialogue with users.

Naming is notoriously hard . At the same time, consistency and branding are essential. Ideally, though, not to the detriment of comprehensibility.

P.S. There are instances where introducing new kinds of terminology or neologisms is advantageous. For example, intentionally inducing a state of confusion for the purpose of thinking differently from our default cognitive patterns, called linguistic aporia .

"[Language] is so important to humans. How we talk about things and how we describe them changes the nature of our perception and new language creates the space for new thinking."

An aporetic meme?