Here Comes the Heresy
I’m going to commit heresy by disagreeing with Donald Norman’s article, “Words Matter. Talk About People: Not Customers, Not Consumers, Not Users.” In it, Norman proposes that we stop dehumanizing the audience for our products by calling them ‘users’ and refer to them as ‘people’. He recognizes the potential problem of there being multiple roles in the product development process (the people who design, the people that are going to buy the product, etc) but he states that it’s no excuse.
Here comes the heresy: isn’t that what those ‘people’ are? Users of our products? I don’t think that the term itself is derogatory, but our industry has made it derogatory in that we usually picture the bottom of the barrel when discussing users.
Therefore I believe that the real challenge lies in changing our thinking rather than our semantics. We could refer to users as “geniuses” and still reference them in a disparaging tone. In my mind “user” is still a term for people and it does not have to have a negative connotation. It was a term created to set them apart from the developer and the client. This is the person who is going to use the product.
But I’m not totally dismissing Norman’s point. I do agree that we need to be specific in our terminology when referring to users. Sometimes one product will have multiple users and many different roles. Creating personas is one way to deal with this. For e-commerce sites you can have “Sharon the Shopper” and “Mark the Merchant.” This allows you to get to know your target audience and think of them (as Norman requests) as people.
In the end I agree with the need to put a face on your ‘user,’ but I do not think we need to change our vocabulary when initially approaching a project. Instead we need to take on a more difficult challenge; we must change our thinking. I believe Alan Cooper has the right approach when he says, “Think of your users as intelligent but very busy.” Design for easy, efficient use that compliments your user’s strengths and supports their actions. They are our audience and our partners in design; work hard to get to know them and give them the best experience possible.
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