Humans not users
johannesippen.com
johannesippen.com
User is an established term for a person in software, just like customer is a term for a person in commerce, or patient in hospitals. These are all humans and nobody is losing sight of that. No need to rebel against that just to express certain moral high ground.
It's a bit like when a local airline here once spent millions in branding research, and started calling their passengers 'customers'. It was really odd to be sitting at the airport and hear the call "XYZ Airline would like to advise all customers on flight 123 that their aircraft is ready for boarding through gate 6"...
I always think of the term 'passenger' in more romantic terms, whereas 'customer' seems more mundane. FWIW, the airline seems to have dropped that branding now, and have reverted to calling their, ahem, passengers as 'passengers'.
Every single time I am referred to by that name over the PA it weirds me out. Maybe if this was a private system, but for public transport? Customer is just the wrong word.
Yes, these users are human beings but outside of academic settings, who ever calls someone a "human?"
This is sematic nitpicking while simply reiterating "human centered design" talking points.
There's nothing necessarily wrong here but it feels like standard Medium fluff.
Even basic "user personas", however, attempt to capture the "not just a user" dimensions, and a decent business plan needs to answer questions like "What's in it for me? How is it better than <substitute x>?"
The customer for dog food is not the dog, for example
The goal of UX is to help them get something done and make them happy. So while the techniques may share ground, the intent is completely different (and new).
So the idea isn't inherently nonsense. (Any particular claims as to the right ways to apply it to software, on the other hand...)
It comes down to accuracy. “People using xyz” is simply more descriptive than the shorthand.
At the same time, it CAN be useful to mistakenly define an element in a system for the sake of making it usable. That’s where “user” comes in - it’s a simple enough concept to make it fit into frameworks. But please, please... be aware that it is indeed akin to shorthand.
A question for the UX designers in here: Do you think about what your users do when they don’t use your product? What tools/models do you use for that? Very curious for your feedback!