[IxDA Discuss] TechCrunch defends the life of the "user"

[Katie Albers]

As a point of reference, here's why the "user" debate
looks critically important to me...

When we call someone a user, we are seeing them in
terms of the object. So the hardware/software/web
page/application/whatever becomes the implicitly
central thing in the interaction. It makes us think of
interactions in terms like "Will the user know to push
this button?" or "Will the user understand this term?"
rather than designing the tool around the person who
will employ it.

It isn't that it's impossible to design from a human
point of view and think of "users" but it's
intrinsically harder. For a vast majority of us,
language is a primary means of interacting with and
defining the world, and as scientists (see Steven
Pinkus work for a better understanding) are coming to
realize, language then shapes our understanding of the
world (and no, the Eskimos do not have X number of
terms for snow).

Subject-Verb-Object. If we form our interfaces around
the object, we are making it more difficult for the
humans and more difficult for ourselves to avoid that
centrality. Why go to that much trouble when changing
a term will change your viewpoint and thus your
results?

Katie 
--- Christopher Fahey <chris.fahey at behaviordesign.com>
wrote:

> All this talk of not using the word "users" seems
> fairly self-serving to
> me. It sounds like a way for traditional usability
> and HCI folks, or
> marketers for that matter, to feel or appear a
> little more folksy and
> less clinical about their approach to understanding,
> um, users. To try
> to undo the perception of being out of touch with
> the emerging power of
> social media and user(oops)-generated content.
> 
> But if we're seeing the lab coats come off a little
> bit around here,
> well, that's a good thing.
>  
> The discomfort arises when we use the term "user" in
> contexts when so
> many other words would obviously be better, a habit
> that many people in
> this profession are prone to do. I've heard UXD and
> usability
> specialists slip up and call their spouses and
> friends "users"
> sometimes! 
>  
> When describing the interactive behavior of a UI
> element, "user" can
> often be fine. When quoting what a person in a
> usability test said about
> that interface, however, perhaps "person" is
> preferable insofar as
> "user" does indeed put some unnecessary distance
> between that person and
> the readers of the test report. 
>
<snip>


       
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