User
From GSLISWiki
The user is a commonly used concept in Computer Science, HCI, Systems Analysis, etc. There are many different interpretations of what this term means, and people who practice Critical Theory question where the term came from and what it really means.
In Computer Science, and especially in many Tech Support departments, the user is synonymous with luser, i.e., the programmer or other technical expert has no patience or respect for the non-expert's lack of expertise. One of the many obvious problems of this attitude, is that programs designed by experts for experts, require experts to use them, and most people don't have the time and inclination to become experts, and nor should they (if they did, nobody'd get anything done, and we'd all starve to death, 'cause everyone would be trying to program a tractor to drive itself instead of just getting in the damn thing and plowing the field).
One of the reasons that HCI came about is because computer programs were so unusable, that people had to start studying how to design programs that actually could be used by non experts efficiently, since the goal of the non-expert is not to use the computer, but to accomplish their task (using the computer only as a tool, if it is helpful). One of the first crack at trying to get stuff more usable, was to try and test how usable a program was, and in the test try and identify some major problems with how the programs were designed. This is how Usability Studies came about.
The problem with this approach is that the program is already designed and built by the expert for the expert, and too much time and resources have gone into the construction of the program at this point to allow a complete redesign. So the best that can be done after a usability study is to create a bunch of software band-aids, which hopefully will fix some of these problems.
Therefore people are now working on how to capture what user needs actually are, so that they can be met in the design phase, before anything is built. This is where methods like SBD, Participatory Design, Personas, Prototyping etc. come in.
But a key is understanding that there is no generic "user". Every person who uses the system has different needs, and the key is grouping people into groups who have largely similar or at least overlapping needs. Usually, a good rule of thumb is to create one interface for each group of users.
When conceptualizing users in this sense, it is usually useful to think of a user as anybody who will interact with the system, in any capacity, for any reason. People can often be grouped in terms of their jobs, so it makes sense to talk in terms of stakeholders, and to make explicit what stake each stakeholder has in the system, as well as in the environment as a whole.
[edit] Related Readings
Here are some readings which expand on the concept of a user, or on human attributes more generally:
- Bardini, Thierry; Horvath, August T. (1995). The social construction of the personal computer user. Journal of Communication New York: Summer 1995. Vol. 45, Iss. 3, p. 40 (26 pp.)
- A review of the origins of the concept of the "user".
- Hayles, N. Katherine (1993). The Materiality of Informatics. Configurations, 1.1, 147-170.
- Points out that we do, indeed, have a body. Funny, that. What's worse is that many people still forget this today.
