The wallet
naming project
A payments feature needed a consumer-facing name. Multiple teams had opinions. Nobody was driving a decision. I ran the alignment process end to end — and the name I proposed was the one that shipped.
Not a "pick a name
and ship it" problem.
The smartwatch was adding a payments feature. It needed a consumer-facing name — the kind of name that appears in the UI, in marketing materials, in app store descriptions, and in every market where the product ships.
What existed was a mess: competing internal terms, unclear trademark status, and no alignment between the teams who needed to agree. Multiple teams had opinions. Nobody was driving a decision. And the deadline was aggressive — the naming work started late relative to the product timeline.
Stakeholder map first.
Then the POV.
I ran the cross-functional alignment process end to end. Not because it was assigned to me — because nobody else was going to.
I started with a stakeholder map: who needed to sign off, what their constraints were, and where the conflicts lived. Then I built an inventory of the constraints — trademark clearance requirements, PMM positioning, localization considerations, engineering string implications.
I drafted a POV document that laid out the options, the tradeoffs, and a recommendation. The document wasn't just "here are three names, pick one" — it mapped each option against every constraint, showed where each would break, and made a clear case for the recommended direction.
I unified competing terminology into a single scalable system that worked across the smartwatch, smart glasses, and international payment modalities. Then I shepherded it through reviews: Legal, Trademark, PMM, international market teams, and ultimately executive review.
A framework that
scales to future devices.
A stakeholder-aligned decision document that mapped each naming option against every constraint — so the recommendation was defensible, not just preferred.
A unified terminology framework for payments across multiple device types and international markets — not a one-off decision but a system for future devices.
Localization-ready naming conventions that accounted for regulatory differences in India and Brazil — where payment regulations created unique branding constraints.
The name I proposed
was the one that shipped.
The name secured executive approval and survived every review without revision. It met aggressive deadlines despite the late start. And the framework scales to future devices — it's not a one-off decision but a system.
My manager described this as demonstrating the ability to "excel at navigating high-stakes ambiguity involving legal and international constraints." That's the work.
What I'd do differently: start earlier. The naming work came late in the product cycle, which compressed the timeline and created unnecessary pressure. If you can see a decision that needs to be made six months from now, start the conversation now.
"Ashlee drafted a compelling POV for the naming strategy and settings structure, which helped us understand constraints and feedback from XFNs. It was great to see her leadership and willingness to drive a complex problem."
— Product design peer