I’ve always had an aversion to the term ‘user.’
First, there’s the negative drug connotation. When someone speaks of a drug user, it’s often under hushed breath or a code for an addict. No one who actually uses drugs refers to themselves as users, except perhaps in jest.
In the technology world, ‘user’ is the term given to one who uses technology. Well, actually, only certain types of technology. One is not a TV user, but a TV consumer. And business people often refer to those who use their technology as customers.
My problem with the term ‘user’ really resides in the fact that it doesn’t convey what i want it to convey. I use a hammer. There’s a prescribed usage pattern. I am at the whim of the tool; it has power over me by dictating what i can do with it.
When it comes to using blogs or wikis or Friendster, i’m not a user. I’m not following a prescribed usage pattern. I am a producer, a consumer, and a user. I may use a blogging tool, but i don’t use a blog; am i a blog user? I may use Friendster to surf profiles, but as i create one, am i a Friendster user? What happens when i fundamentally alter the tool and the content in my use of the software?
To be a ‘user’ feels so disempowered. There’s no creativity in that position, no positive output – i am simply taking, not giving. It also feels so inhuman, lacking emotion, passion, feeling. It is action-driven only.
The term ‘user’ grates at me, but i don’t know how to get around the term. I find myself trapped in it as i write. Are there other approaches to this?
In design meetings, I’ve always tried to avoid saying “user.” I always pictured myself standing around in bermuda shorts at my villa in Columbia.
The only thing is, I just totally danced around it instead of trying to make up a new term. Eventually I just got tired of it and gave up. Audience is no better, since it makes them sound captive and powerless. ‘Wield’ is a good word. It’s almost too empowering. But do you really wield a wiki in the same way that one wields a machine gun?
I’m curious to know how other industries refer to this ‘group of people’… are they just customers? When Kitchen Aid designs a blender, what do they call those who blend?
I think it’s high time the word “geek” lost any remaining negative connotation and got its comeuppance. What better word describes someone who knows how to manipulate technology to their needs, both the give and the take?
I think that you can thank Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and the rest of the folks at Bell Labs for really bringing the term “user” into common usage as someone who uses a computer. When they created the first multi-user operating systems (i.e. that wonderful, lovable thing we call Unix) they had to call them something, and so it stuck.
How about “okyakusama” ?
Here’s an interesting article on the subject:
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=5147
We use the term “customer” to refer to individual accessing services and whatnot in place of user, whether they’re an internal employee or a real paying customer, at my place of work. When we have to make a distinction between the two groups of people, we use “employee” and “customer”. Only very rarely do we use the term user colloquially, and only then usually as “end-user”.
If we can specifically discuss Social Networks then I would much prefer the word “MEMBER” over ‘user’. I have to agree with danah ‘user’ has a very negative connotation. The choice of words/terms within software (for consumers and enterprise) (USER LOGIN HERE) should be considered AS IMPORTANT as the software design, HCI and flow. Currently it is not in most cases.
I believe the issue is that software developers often spend the majority of their time in code making sure the ‘product’ works with relatively few bugs… I wonder if this is why we are then left with words/terms that not as ‘clean’ as the code underneath.
Maybe it’s time someone does a ‘study’ on the most supportive terms to utilize within certain areas of the software. Like “Members Sign in Here” was proven more supportive/pleasant/considerate than “USERS Sign in here.” Then again, maybe this study does exist already anyone know where it might be located?
i definitely agree – ‘user’ carries the connotation of passivity and embodies the consumerist mentality. Also, we also know folks who ‘use’ other people, and that’s not pretty. i don’t want to be a user, either (though it makes me think so fondly of Tron).
i like ‘member.’ Member connotes someone who is part of a community, and indicates an expectation of active participation/responsibility to that community. It implies belonging and relationship to the other members, which is more appropriate than ‘user’ which only implies a relationship to the software’s creators, which isn’t necessarily even very relevant.
now that you brought it up, yeah, “user” sounds negative. but i can’t think of a better word, because people do really “use” tools. and like it or not, it’s a good “general” term for people who use computers and gadgets (no TV is not a gadget, most of the time, it uses us). certainly we can’t call everyone geeks, same way we can’t call everyone who uses a hammer a carpenter. the term is so deeply ingrained in the technical jargon that it’s going to be almost impossible to replace it with a more empowering term. let me know when you think of one.
as a sidenote, my friends and i use the term “user-friendly” to describe people who are friendly on the outside but are really stinkin’ “users” on the inside 🙂
now that you brought it up, yeah, the term “user” does sound negative. but people do “use” tools. so it’s a good general term for ALL people who use computers and gadgets (TV is not a gadget, most of the time it uses us.) the term is so deeply ingrained in the technical jargon that it will almost be impossible to replace it with a more empowering term. let me know when you think of one. now what if we stop using the word “user” for drug addicts?
as a side note, my friends and i use the term “user-friendly” to describe people who are “friendly” on the outside but really a stinkin’ “user” on the inside 🙂
now that you brought it up, yeah, the term “user” does sound negative. but people do “use” tools. so it’s a good general term for ALL people who use computers and gadgets (TV is not a gadget, most of the time it uses us.) the term is so deeply ingrained in the technical jargon that it will almost be impossible to replace it with a more empowering term. let me know when you think of one. now what if we stop using the word “user” for drug addicts?
as a side note, my friends and i use the term “user-friendly” to describe people who are “friendly” on the outside but really a stinkin’ “user” on the inside 🙂
Are you really at the whim of a hammer? Yes there is a “prescribed usage pattern” but is that the one you are following? How often have you “misused” a tool or a technology to do things it wasn’t originally designed to do?
Granted if you think of the hammer as dictating your behavior for the time span of its use, than there is a need to come up with the term for the process of dictating behavior when one interacts with techology. User…
The reason we don’t have hammer or can-opener users though, I think, is because we don’t think of can-openers and hammers as things that have a distinct impact on our behavior, things that have agency. We don’t think that precisely because these things do not have agency. Just like Friendster does not have agency by itself. The interaction between the culturally situated programmers that design the “tool” steeped in the cultural framework within which they reside and the culturally situated individual that uses this tool within their own framework is what is happening. Not User using Friendster to do X because Friendster is a tool that is designed to do X and only X hence user can not possibly be doing Y with it.
If you think of techology as simply tools situated in the larger universe of social structure, mundane activity, every-day behavior and interaction, then, maybe we don’t need the term “user” after all. Person may do just fine.
People have similar problems with the word “subject” in participant studies… but, in truth, “user” or “subject” are merely placeholders, variables, per se. We just need something that generalizes what is at the other end of what we’re doing… maybe “participant” is good for both?
I’m not sure about the “hammer” analogy…I’m not saying there’s a lot one can do with a hammer but I can totally see it as being a creative tool tens of thousand years ago when it was first presented to the incredulous public and most conservative thought it wouldn’t fly…I’m only half kidding on this but I agree the term “user” is awful because it removes all possible merit from the so-called “user”. One step further and we are leeches…
“Actors” or “Spectators” depending of the level of implication. I would vote against the term “citizen” for online community though.
We need a new term however. The least we can do is define ourselves.
a few thoughts on ‘user’ – first, it has a negative connotation deriving from the subservience of one who cannot make for themselves. We use tools, yes, but these days, most of us do not make the tools we use. It creates (re-enforces?) the deity delusion of back office IT gurus, hackers, and geeks that creates inevitible cultural friction between the doosers and the fraggles.
Second, ‘user’ is the proper term, I think, for one who employs a technology, whereas consumer is the proper term, I think, for one who employs a utility. You use technology, you consume utility. We use a hammer, but we consume refrigeration or electricity. Utility implies a progressive (present progressive perfect for the grammer-philes), on-going, process-oriented action, whereas technology is characteristically a more isolated, results-oriented singular action.
So, it seems to me that the question becomes something like, “is one who employs a computer, a network of computing resources, or a social network service acting in a progressive manner or a singular manner?”
It seems that the email, internet, IM, word processing set of people are employing a communication utility more than an information processing technology. To be sure, they are still processing information, but they aren’t any more involved in the processessing than they are involved in the movement of electrons in the power grid or the Carnot cycle in the freezer.
a few thoughts on ‘user’ – first, it has a negative connotation deriving from the subservience of one who cannot make for themselves. We use tools, yes, but these days, most of us do not make the tools we use. It creates (re-enforces?) the deity delusion of back office IT gurus, hackers, and geeks that creates inevitible cultural friction between the doosers and the fraggles.
Second, ‘user’ is the proper term, I think, for one who employs a technology, whereas consumer is the proper term, I think, for one who employs a utility. You use technology, you consume utility. We use a hammer, but we consume refrigeration or electricity. Utility implies a progressive (present progressive perfect for the grammer-philes), on-going, process-oriented action, whereas technology is characteristically a more isolated, results-oriented singular action.
So, it seems to me that the question becomes something like, “is one who employs a computer, a network of computing resources, or a social network service acting in a progressive manner or a singular manner?”
It seems that the email, internet, IM, word processing set of people are employing a communication utility more than an information processing technology. To be sure, they are still processing information, but they aren’t any more involved in the processessing than they are involved in the movement of electrons in the power grid or the Carnot cycle in the freezer.
i use user. i gave up. i think this is a loss worth cutting. i am comfortable being a user of technology and i refute that the label disempowers me. i refute it by will and self-activation alone if need be. and deluded tho i may be, i do not interpret as disempowered by rhetoric any population that goes willingly or unwillingly under the rubric of “users”. they may indeed be disempowered by it. but i interpret them otherwise. that’s the best i can do on this front and i’m at peace with it.
clarification: “…under the rubric of (technology) ‘users’…”
Communications written in 2nd not 3rd person avoid this problem. Personally, I take more offense with the word consumer than user.
Perhaps this is because I was raised in swedenborgian church which has doctrine of use being divine love and wisdom in action.
“Use, therefore, becomes the basic standard by which we read the direction of personality development. The will, which is the receptacle of love, and the understanding, which is the receptacle of wisdom within the person, express themselves in the world through uses. We are reminded of the Upanishadic idea that what one’s thought is, that one becomes, or William James’s contention that there is no philosophy without autobiography, so that each philosophical system is somehow an embodiment of the philosopher’s own personal story. Actions, in other words, betray thoughts, which in turn reflect underlying beliefs.”
http://www.baysidechurch.org/studia/studia.cfm?ArticleID=129&VolumeID=34&AuthorID=45&detail=1
there is no crime in using the best tool for the job. If I am using a tool, it is because I am accomplishing an end, not consuming others’ work.
If you feel like the tool is using you, than it is poorly designed in God’s eye.
prod-user
pro-user
I was looking at how people react to interactive art last spring and kept running into the same problem. I came in with a bias against the term “user,” but still used it. But, I couldn’t bring myself to call someone who goes to view art at a museum or online or anywhere as a “user.” An interactive artist I was interviewing agreed. His words? “Person.” “People.” It doesn’t solve your specificity question. But it doesn’t have negative connotation and is more humane. With regards to your specific examples, I don’t think you need to find one term that works for everyone who touches a product or service.
Yes, I am responding to a blog for the first time ever. You should ask Peter about the term ‘user’. We had a conversation about it a while back, where he mentioned that the term first came into use back when people starting writing operating systems for hardware. The hardware designers referred to the OS people as users. The use of this word has trickled down through the years through layers of application programming and in my mind still retains its original master-servant connotation. Effectively, it implies inferiority. You have to use what I give you, so I have the control and hold the power in the realtionship. I never really liked the word either.
As a nonnative speaker I find “user” not that bad. But I wouldn’t use Customer as a substitute. A customer is somebody who pays. The new economy fall into that trap. They had a lot of users but no customer to pay the bill.
TV has its viewers, Radio its listerns and the web seems to have a lot of “actors” or “interactors” 😉
My english teacher would call them “dramatis personae”
“Participant” may work in some instances.
Person often works.
Person often works.
i have fallen into using “individual.” it’s nice because it can be cleanly pluralized (unlike person-people); it has no gender connotations; it implies human but without the weird sci-fi sense of “look, kang, the human spaceships are approaching”; and it’s neutral about one’s stance, both with respect to a piece of technology (“user”) or to a study (“participant”).
I’ve heard Edward Tufte point out that “user” is a descriptor commonly used only in computing and the illegal drug trades.
I try to avoid the “user” concept–it is usually too much of an oversimplification, and is often loaded with assumptions that are good to have fleshed out.
So, sometimes, I feel the need to talk about an “actor” taking an action. But, “person” and “individual” are my favorite generic terms.
Er, hello.
User = client patron participant accomplice member associate affiliate contingent adherent dependent advocate perpetrator … ?
Consumer seems a no. I’m reminded of a Shel Silverstein poem in which someone watched so much television that they became one. This is a little more active than that.
User isn’t a bad word, but we need synonyms, similar terms with different overtones. If you’re selling a product or service, client or customer makes sense. If you’re offering something that requires registration, such as logging in, subscriber or member make sense. In running a website, my customers are the advertisers – visitors or readers are the most common way of refering to them. I am leaning toward “client” or “member” after reading this article. Client implies that we exist to serve them, and member says they are part of a community.
Dan Knight, Low End Mac
I thought if anyone could answer this question, it would be you danah! Rats. See:
http://www.fredshouse.net/archive/000131.html
http://blackbeltjones.typepad.com/work/2004/03/postuser_postco.html
http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~burgess/archives/000492.html
for more handwringing and halfhearted attempts in this direction. No progress, we just don’t seem to have the right metaphors in our language. Maybe you could be a blog “gardener”? But that doesn’t much seem like a general term.
If we want a new term I think we’re going to have to repurpose a slang word, grab something out of another culture, or just make something up.
I am loosely affiliated with what we call “User Services” within “Computing Services” within “Information Services” at a small liberal arts college. We use “user” pejoritively. When we’re angry with the community we serve–and they often are–we call them users. My boss and I want them–the users, most of whom are faculty–to see us as colleagues. But they don’t. So we’re back to users. I sometimes call them constituents because I feel that it is my job to advocate for them. But that terminology doesn’t solve your problem of what to refer to them as when you’re discussing certain technologies. People who use blog software are bloggers in my book. But people who use word processors might be writers or they might be secretaries–how about composers. We have a whole different set of terms for the people who maintain web sites–content managers (the people who determine what goes on the site) and implementers (the people who put that content on the site). So we’re moving toward coming up with specific terms that relate to specific technologies. Makes things too confusing I think. I have no answers for you.
I have this same issue with how I refer to the people who buy and operate the software I’ve authored. I’ve switched my nomenclature to refer to these folks as ‘operators’, which seems to fit the profile of people who make use of software without being derogative.