Naming anything is a pretty big deal. Maybe you’ve experienced this if you’ve ever named a clinic, a newborn or your first car, and felt that aching certainty that a more perfect, more fitting name was out there…somewhere.
That’s how we felt naming Jane back in 2012.
Six months and 42 single-space pages of names later (which you can read about here), we can all agree it did not go quickly or smoothly. But, in the end, we can also all agree that Jane couldn’t be named anything else. Here are some thoughts on why Jane’s name feels so right:
Simple in every way: Easy to spell, easy to say (when you’re answering phones many, many times a day) and easy for people to toss around in a clinic environment: “Hey, does Jane have that?” or “Can you check with Jane?” We wanted to make sure that Jane could be a name you would use.
Hooray for being different: A quick scan of the competitors revealed some striking similarity in their names. Many of the other options out there are a combination two “cliniky” sounding words put together, and often when we spoke to people they couldn’t remember the name of their current software. In fact, they would often name a different software that started with the same word… “practice… something?” So we knew we wanted something different.
So friendly sounding: Alison, one of Jane’s founders, has spent much of her working life running practices, and now owns a multi-disciplinary practice here in North Vancouver. We know that practitioners and therapists spend most of their time working with people and not usually with computers. So we wanted Jane’s name (and Jane the product) to be approachable and welcoming. Jane. Right off the bat, is friendly — and we’re friendly! We’re helpful and easy to get to know (we hope!), and so is Jane.
That last point is really important to our whole team. As we work hard to add new features, we want you to know that we’re working even harder to keep Jane flexible and approachable. That means making the design friendlier, and ensuring that Jane can work in a way that suits your practice.
Real Relationships: We also feel very strongly about being relational in the way we work. We are striving to build community - and having a personified name helps us focus on building a relationship with everyone who interacts with Jane. Our team, our customers, our partners and even patients - we hope that everyone becomes a “friend of Jane.”
So we hope you’ve enjoyed meeting Jane! It’s a privilege to be a part of your team.