What your Filenames Reveal About your Design Mindset
Context
When design has become a part of who you are, and not merely a tool that you occasionally pull out of the toolbox, you will observe and practice design everywhere – in all situations.
For example, you will see design in the products you’re developing at work, as well as in the manufacturing of those products, and in the quality control systems, the supply chain, sales, and distribution of them. You will see that they have all been designed.
It won’t stop there – you will see design in the product line, the brand, and in the marketing. You’ll also see design in the formation of the teams that developed those products and in their approach to testing, documentation, revision, and presentation. You’ll see it in the company’s website, the office layout, the staff meetings, the company procedures, the organization policies, and even in the company parties.
You’ll see design in how individuals plan their year, their quarter, their week, their day, and in how they use the freedom and resources given to them to accomplish the company’s goals. You’ll see it in their individual work and workflow, including the way in which they prioritize tasks, the way they present their findings to others, the way they write their emails, the way they organize their files, and – yes – even in the way they name their files.
An Uncomfortable Truth
When you name a file and share it with someone, their first contact with the actual work being sent to them is your filename. Whether conscious or not, judgment about the quality of that work, and your approach as a designer begins to flow heavily at this moment.
The goal of this article is to be explicit about how some people – often important people – will judge your sent work by its filename.
Example: The Scenario Set Up
To illustrate the impact of your file naming approach, consider this example which is derived from very real experiences I had as the director of engineering for a global company.
Imagine you’re in a leadership position for a design-oriented company. Outside of the office you meet a seemingly talented person you might want to hire into an open design position. You ask for a resume and give your email address. A day later you get an email with a resume attached.
At this point in the example, I’ll list a large variety of filenames that could have been given to the file. Consider what you would think about the work and the candidate, with each of these different names.
The attached resume file is named:
Document6.doc
Document.doc
Document.pdf
Resumefinal.pdf
Resume_final.pdf
Resume_Smith.pdf
Smith_Resume.pdf
Smith_Jason_Resume_V3.pdf
Smith_Jason_Resume_Oct2024.pdf
Smith_Jason_Resume_Oct2024_V3.pdf
Example: Design Mindsets
What do these filenames say about the candidate’s design mindset? They certainly say something. I will evaluate these file names based on four design mindsets:
Discovery Mindset (focuses on understanding others and having empathy)
Creation Mindset (focuses on how to best use design freedom to make choices)
Precision Mindset (focuses on clearly specifying details)
Assessment Mindset (focuses on checking and revising the quality of the design work)
Good designers exercise these mindsets naturally and frequently. In other words, they focus on understanding others and having empathy. They focus on how to best use design freedom to make wise design choices. They are capable and diligent at clearly specifying details and they frequently check the quality of their own design work and make revisions as needed.
Example: The Analysis
Filenames 1-5 (repeated below) are utter failures as they indicate that the candidate is not thinking about the recipient.
Document6.doc
Document.doc
Document.pdf
Resumefinal.pdf
Resume_final.pdf
Simply stated, it is assumed that the candidate does not have strength in the discovery mindset. The recipient should not have to rename the file to make sense of it later, or to properly organize it! These file names indicate that the candidate cannot place themselves in the shoes of the company leader who asked for a resume. This leader likely asks many people for their resumes, so sending a file with a generic name that could apply to any resume sender is nonsensical from a design perspective. Finally, sending a file with a name like this means you will create more unnecessary work for the recipient – certainly not the impression you want to make when trying to get hired or when working with anyone as a collaborator.
Filenames 1-5 expose other weaknesses in the candidate’s Creation, Precision, and Assessment mindsets too. None of these filenames indicate that the candidate is skilled at using design freedom to make wise choices. They either chose to call it Resumefinal.pdf (not a name that screams talent in creativity) or they simply let Microsoft choose the filename for them, as in Document6.doc. Either way, it will likely be assumed that the candidate is weak at using a creation mindset.
None of Filenames 1-5 are precise. If the candidate cannot be precise about something as simple as the filename, it could easily be assumed they don’t have strength in the precision mindset and will possibly have difficulty being precise about other more important details in the future, if hired.
Last but not least, Filenames 1-5 are an indication that the candidate is not strong at assessing the quality of his or her own work. If people paused before attaching the file and asked “how good is this file name for the person who will receive it?” I am confident that those with strength in the assessment mindset would revise the title to something more useful.
It could be easy at this point in the article to imagine yourself as the candidate, and say “This doesn’t really matter! It’s minutiae!!! Of course, I can name files well, I just didn’t because I was in a rush, or I didn’t think you would care, or it just wasn’t important to me at the time.” The point, however, is that you didn’t name it well but other resume senders that day did name theirs well. In a world of constant filtering for the best, you were filtered out. So, even something as simple as file naming can matter!
***
Other subtleties exist in these filenames 1-5 (again repeated below) that are worth pointing out.
Document6.doc
Document.doc
Document.pdf
Resumefinal.pdf
Resume_final.pdf
Filenames 1 and 2 expose an additional problem in the way the candidate thinks about design; .doc files are working files, and .pdf files are archival files. The company leader is not expected to modify the candidate’s resume, nor would they, nor would the candidate want them to. The candidate should want to send a stable snapshot of their resume (pdf) – one they know is formatted right and relatively unchangeable. The candidate who submits the PDF is more likely to understand the concepts of versioning and version control. Anyone hired into a design position would need to be adept at these things.
Filenames 4 and 5 express some understanding of iteration and version control but simultaneously convey immaturity, which will inevitably result in another file from this candidate called Resume_final_final.doc, or Resume_actual_final.doc, both of which express the same immaturity.
Now consider Filenames 6-10. These are better, but may still produce unwanted judgments about the work and the sender.
6. Resume_Smith.pdf
7. Smith_Resume.pdf
8. Smith_Jason_Resume_V3.pdf
9. Smith_Jason_Resume_Oct2024.pdf
10. Smith_Jason_Resume_Oct2024_V3.pdf
Filenames 6 and 7 express some strength in the precision mindset since they indicate who the resume is from, but they are weaker than Filenames 8-10 which make it clear it is for Jason Smith. Filename 7 is better than 6 when it comes to the discovery mindset since the company leader is likely to organize candidates by last name. In the leader’s digital folder of resumes, the candidate should want to create a filename that makes it easy for the leader to find Smith’s resume. Therefore the filename would start with the word “Smith”.
The difference between filenames 8 and 9 is subtle but important as it expresses the maturity the hiring manager is likely looking for. Resumes are very time-based and yet they don’t often change more than a few times a year. A V3 indicator in the name does not help the recipient quickly place this resume in time, which is often needed for resumes since the leader may recontact candidates in a future hiring cycle.
Filename 9 is very good, and expresses the candidate’s thoughtful approach to their work.
Filename 10 is also good in that it expresses that some level of version control was used during the month of October to revise and possibly get feedback on the document from others. Nevertheless, sharing the number of internal rounds of iteration is likely irrelevant to the recipient. In this way, Filename 9 is better than Filename 10.
In the end, Filename 9 says a lot of very valuable things about the person who named it. It will likely be assumed that this person is design-oriented, careful, and worth more consideration than those submitting in the other ways.
Takeaways:
Your work is constantly being judged for appropriateness, fit, and quality.
You are also constantly being judged for your ability and potential to contribute to the enterprise.
When someone first engages with your work, they make rapid, sometimes unconscious, sometimes unjustified, judgments about you and the degree to which you are good at and careful in your work.
When you send a file to someone in an email (or similar), their first contact with that work is your filename. Your filename says a lot about the work you did and the degree to which you are serious about what you produce.
It takes virtually no effort to create a good file name. Doing so makes a bigger impact than you think. So, just do it.
