Jon and Julian, part of the ThoughtWorks Studios team, came up with the initial idea for Mingle as a product. In their pitch, they referred to an Integrated Collaborative Environment which, naturally, was shortened to ICE.

The name ICE stuck, as internal working product names tend to. But as the product took shape, we went through a more thorough naming process, considering things such as the brand personality, target audience, legals and brand associations.

These are some of the things we did to come up with the name Mingle for the first ThoughtWorks Studios product:

• Generate a brand heat-map to visually convey the core characteristics and messages behind our product. Heat maps are powerful ways to convey meta-information and provide a visual 'blink' understanding of the data. The studios group generated a set of core brand tags and we voted on these to rank each tag. The tag 'integrated' was given many votes because integration is core to Mingle. In the heat-map, 'integrated' was in larger, more bolded font. Less 'hot' tags had smaller, less prominent fonts. The brand heat-map allows us to visualize the core characteristics of our brand clearly. And to ensure we don't forget, it's on the main window of the office for all to see.
  
• Generate an 'elevator-pitch' for the product. If you can't articulate in 30 seconds what your product is and why people should use it, then you don't understand your product. We continue to evolve our elevator pitch as required.
  
• Utilize existing assets - your team. Over 700 uniquely talented individuals are ThoughtWorkers. We sent an email to the whole company asking for product name suggestions. The elevator pitch and the heat-map were included for context...and an iPod Video for incentive (nothing gives incentive like an iPod!). Each name suggestion (and there were a lot!) was printed on an index card and stuck to one of the walls of the office. We mulled over the options for weeks.
• Select a shortlist. We culled the index cards for names we had already ruled out and spent several sessions discussing the remaining options. We used a laptop with Google to check the online prevalence of each name as we went. The Google results were a guide, but not a decision maker (clearly a name that returns 450 million results is poorer for brand cut-through than to one with a fraction of the results).
  
• Make a decision. The final decision was made by the product owner with input from the team and the results of a small field test we ran. At the end of the day, not all people will love a brand-name. And ours is certainly unique. But, arguably, the brand shapes the perception of the name more so than the name shapes the perception of the brand. For example, how many people would have liked the name 'Pink Floyd' when first suggested for a band name - but its power is in its uniqueness and memorability.
  

So, after a long process, Mingle is born. We think the name captures nicely the new, collaborative and powerfully simple nature of our product...