Don’ call me ‘user’! Interesting idea, nice T-shirts and some good comments in the article. This is a debate as old as computing itself, if not older. It reminds me of when I worked for a post-privatisation rail company, and there was resistance among staff to the new company policy of referring to “passengers” as “customers”. It reflected the clashing cultures of the new profit-driven ownership and the public service-oriented staff. I agreed, and I still get a little annoyed when I am referred to as a customer when stuck on a crowded platform and waiting for a late train. Customers have choice. Passengers need to get from A to B.
I’m not sure I have the same sympathy for the call to drop the term “Users” from our vocabulary. What should we call people who use computers and interfaces? I’m not so sure the term lacks in dignity and respect as much as Don Norman insists. It’s an interesting question, but one of those real distractions from getting the job done. One for the philosophers and PhD students of related Social Science disciplines…
Sure. Users are people. Call it “people-centred design” if you like. But in practical discussions with clients and those less concerned with our methodologies, I find it is essential to explicitly differentiate between the stakeholders, clients, managers, developers and designers and the people who will actually Use the product. Each person in this complex process has different and sometimes opposing needs, and this really needs to be drummed into clients’ understandings, otherwise they become convinced that we should be making the product for them, their preferences and tastes, and their world view. We need to strongly resist this, or our output becomes sycophantic and useless. No one is happy, the client loses customers, and we lose the clients. And so the cycle goes.
Until a word that accurately describes who I am talking about, I will have to continue using it.