User?bility

I have to confess the term user make me feel very uncomfortable. Whenever I'm confronted by the word I have a mental picture of a laboratory full of users: average, normal, everyday people, electrodes attached to their sweating foreheads, each being forced to click their mouse through a monotonous sequence of steps in rapid succession. Nameless, faceless scientists in grey labcoats wander around scribbling notes on their clipboards and muttering to themselves, the flickering fluorescent lighting reflected in their spectacles. Suddenly a Jack Nicholson-type character leaps out of their seat. "Eight clicks got me to the shopping cart, HA!" he exclaims. "Usability Tester Ratched, I just got myself an outboard motor, WOO HOO!"

Users are people too. I'm one, you're one. A person that is. I don't think of myself merely as a user of things. The act of interaction is far more complex, involving and richer than merely using. People explore and involve themselves with 'things' and scenarios. Being a user seems to imply that you may have some kind of illicit dependency – it's hardly an affirmative, positive word to describe the bredth and depth of real, dynamic interaction.

Numerous writers, designers and theorists have difficulty with the impersonal, mono-dimensional nature of this word, (so it's not just me).

John Thackara's “[10] Articles of Association Between Design, Technology, and the People Formerly known as Users” – three of which are presented here – highlight this point of view too:

"Article 1:
We cherish the fact that people are innately curious, playful, and creative. We therefore suspect that technology is not going to go away; it's too much fun.

Article 2:
We will deliver value to people, not deliver people to systems. We will give priority to human agency and will not treat humans as a "factor" in some bigger picture.

Article 4:
We do not believe in idiot-proof technology, because we are not idiots and neither are you. We will use language with care and will search for less patronizing words than 'user' and 'consumer'."1

Touché. And Thakara is not alone.

Dirk Knemeyer, Chief Design Officer at Thread: "the word user has a terminal lifespan. With the evolution of technology and the increasing need to individualize human computer interaction (heck, human anything interaction), user is well on its way to paradigmatic obsolescence. It might seem entrenched today, but it is a question of when, not if, it is supplanted. People vested in the term user should start looking for higher ground now, because time will pass them by."2

Nathan Shedroff offers a more apt descriptor of 'the user': "Experience designers must regard their audiences as active participants – not passive viewers".3 Participants – a much better word for me. As interactive design (web and CD-Rom, 'experience design') becomes more immersive and moves beyond simply 'point'n clicking' to becoming fully-fledged 'experiences', participate does describe what goes on when a human being interacts with a piece of experience design. Max Bruinsma expands this further as well: "Since one of the main characteristics of the medium is its multifaceted nature comprising and converging different roles for those who make use of it, I will refer to 'users' as 'visitors', 'readers', 'players', 'listeners' or 'viewers' whenever these roles are implied in the content and behaviour of a site".4 (Coincidentally, Bruinsma also has some problems with the term 'experience design', as you can read here).

The term user harks back to the grey old days of research into human-computer interaction. Think command-line interfaces. Think computer punchcards. Think real nerds. Technology and interface design were in their infancy. Just being able to use a computer system back then was a sign that you were a dextrous, skilled individual. Nowadays, the sophisticated technology and the artfully designed interfaces that enable people to interact with all sorts of dynamically designed scenarios, do much more than just allow 'usage'. People (real human beings with feelings and emotions) interact with web sites (and other forms of experience design) to do all sorts of activities. Some are task-driven (online banking, booking a flight, checking weather reports, for example) but many more are offering experiences where the term user seems both anachronistic and inaccurate.5

I personally really like participant. And so it seems, so do many others.

Users – your time is up.

Notes
1. John Thackara (2001).
"The Design Challenge of Pervasive Computing."
Interactions, Volume 8, Number 3, May 2001.
ACM Press, New York.

2. Dirk Knemeyer (2003).
The Domain of Design.
http://experiencethread.com/articles/archive.cfm
The article is available from the above site in HTML or PDF format.

3. Nathan Shedroff (2001).
Experience Design: A Manifesto for the Creation of Experiences.
Indianapolis, New Riders, p.148.

4. Max Bruinsma (2003).
Deep Sites: Intelligent Innovation in Contemporary Web Design.
New York, Thames & Hudson, p.9.

5. Dirk Knemeyer (2003).
Returning to a Human Paradigm.
http://experiencethread.com/articles/archive.cfm
The article is available from the above site in HTML or PDF format.

Comments

[Mr. Kahn]

Audience, viewer, reader and listener are one directional. Those are consumer modes. Consuming the supplied information. Customer is the same.

User is a wonderful english word. User, use, useful and utility. If your creation is useful, a user will use it. People use good tools. Pleasure and happiness often come from being a useful in a social context.

Esther Dyson and that fold are squeamish about the word. I am not squeamish about it. I used to be, because I followed their relation to the word: drug user, a subject, a serf.

But now I happily use the word. It is wonderfully adaptive and has a very positive meaning.

In the context of my human readable, digital, logic controlled and data driven creations I will refer to the manipulating and interacting population on individual terms as the user.

That user may or may not participate in what you have created. By posting this message I am participating. However, if I had just read this there would be no participation on my part, at least not in the immediate time frame.

But ultimately it does not matter. If you call them participants I will figure out that you mean user. And if I call them users you will figure out I mean participant.

Perhaps our grandchildren will be confused, but then I have no idea what a schnorrer is.

[Ryan]

I can’t remember when my 'laptop' became my 'notebook' but I can remember when 'Multimedia' became 'New Media'. The point is they’re the same.

Whether you call Them users, participants, visitors, readers, players, listeners, viewers or actors (Thackara also uses the term ‘actors’) makes no real difference.

At AIGA they’re carefully trying to define ‘Experience Design’, at Boxes and Arrows they can’t agree on a definition of an Information Architect and here (and elsewhere) we’re discussing the term ‘User’. This is all fine, it’s healthy. There are changes in this industry and things need to be reassessed.

It could be an Australian thing but maybe we should just get on with it, let it define its self. If we continue to use terms that are familiar to our peers and the business community they might just understand what we are about.

Even better, we can show the value of the work we do and they will understand it… they might even pay for it. With so many changes and developments it seems counter-productive to change the terms.

But if you really want to end users, try ‘Them’ (note cap T). 'Participants' has four syllables, far too many. ‘Them’ has one, it speeds things up a bit. Them-name and password, Them-testing, Them-case scenarios, Themability, you get the picture.

[Andrew Haig]

Eventually the market and our own cultures will probably decide what is the most appropriate terminology to adopt (I nearly said to use). But, as stated above, for me, 'user' will always be interpreted as being somewhat impersonal, demeaning and 'narrowing'.

I wish I could have heard other terms: "readers, players, listeners, or participants" from a client's, designer's or developer's lips. It's always user – always. I think it's important to expand the conversation between designer/client, teacher/student and writer/reader so that we question and clarify exactly what it is that we mean when we refer to people's interactions with design. All too often this relationship is referred to, simplistically, as being: 'usage/being used by a user', not anything else. When sometimes it's a whole lot more. 'User' just isn't big enough a word.

Them? Sounds a little too "Us' and 'Them' for my liking. Plus, it's the title of a 50s sci-fi movie where giant ants invade smalltown America. Very difficult to 'themability' test giant, marauding mutant ants...

[Ryan Smith]

It seems omnivision agree with you!
http://www.omnivision.com.au/web/what02.htm

[Joshua welbaum]

I am a barista. i have seen the "1+1=3" in my coffee shop and always wondered what it was all about. i still do not think i get it, but hey at least i found it on the web.