by Josh Bernoff

Thanks mostly to the BBC, which highlighted a quote from this blog yesterday (see left), 8000 people stopped by the Groundswell yesterday to read and talk about users.

I learned quite a bit from their responses, which I'll share.

I very much liked this quote from David Ogilvy's Ogilvy on Advertising, sent in by James Cherkoff:

"The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife."

Both my colleague Harley Manning, who leads Forrester's customer experience group, and a reader from the UK, Ken Tindall, pointed out that user interface expert Alan Cooper discusses this issue at length in his book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. Cooper, and Forrester, recommend designing products with a specific person in mind -- a sort of archetype for the people you will be serving. This archetype is called a persona. Personas are one of the central elements of scenario design, designing Web sites (or anything) so a specific type of person can achieve their goals. When you're designing for "Fred" or "Amanda" instead of for a "user" it's easier to sympathize.

Finally, reading all these comments, many from developers, led me to create (forgive the ego) Bernoff's first law of usability:

The closer you work to technology, the more tempting it is to think of your clients and customers as "users" and not people.

I was led to this by the impassioned pleas to keep the word "user" from technical support people, Web developers, software developers, and writers of technical manuals, many of whom cling to it like a cherished stuffed animal. As my colleague Brian Haven wrote in his new blog:

Designers, technologists, and business practitioners should consider abandoning these terms to force themselves to focus on the needs and actions people take, which should inevitably lead to better products and services.

I am trying not to make offensive generalizations here, since many of you technology workers have reached an enlightened rapport with the people who use your products. But could this episode about users and "lusers" have happened anywhere but at MIT, where everyone is immersed in technology all the time?

This is not just political correctness. Next time your computer, a Web site you're visiting, or a technology product starts behaving in a way that mystifies and frustrates you, ask yourself, is this my fault? Or did this happen because the designer thought of me as a "user" and not a person?

Tags: the word user, user, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

Thanks to posts by Steve Rubel (along with a tweet) and the BBC, my musings about the word "user" have generated a huge surge in traffic and opinions here at the Groundswell.

The blogosphere's response has been overwhelming positive -- look here and here, for example. This is thoughtful. My favorite post title is "User is a four letter word." I think this idea is making people think, which was my intention.

To all the people who had this idea before me -- I'm on your side.

To those who said dishwashers have users -- sure they do. But they typically have owners' guides, not user's guides. Owners are powerful. Users, somehow, don't seem to be.

The masses coming to the blog have left me some pretty indignant comments. Developers, in particular, seem to think this word is a perfectly fine part of their world. I'm grateful that you think about users in your design. I'd be even more grateful if you think of them as people. I think the closer you are to technology, the more you need to use this word. I'm not out to stop you. But please allow me to think differently.

I came to this point because I think the book is/will be better with fewer "users" in it. When it's done you can judge for yourself.

Tags: the word user, user, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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by Josh Bernoff

The more I write and read about social media, the more frustrated I get with the term "users."

When I started in the business twenty-mumble years ago, writing software manuals, people who used software were unusual (and had to be masochists). We spent a lot of time talking about users. The word user was helpful -- it helped us to keep in mind that there was a poor slob on the other end of what we were building.

Those times are long gone. We know users are important now. Disappoint them and you lose. So why do we still have to call them "users," which puts the emphasis on the technology they are using?

Yes, I know "users are people, too." But you know what? All people are users now! (With nearly 80% Net penetration in the US this is pretty close to true.) Users put up with computers. People just do stuff.

Nobody talks about users of dishwashers, or users of retail stores, or users of telephones. So why are we talking about "users" of computers, browsers, and software?

Try, just for a day, to stop using this word. You'll be amazed at how differently you think about the world.

Web users become people looking for information.

Application users become employees trying to get stuff done.

Users of your Web site become customers. (Forrester's group focused on usability of Web sites and other technologies is called the Customer Experience team. I like that.)

User-generated media becomes amateur media.

And most importantly, social media users become people connecting with other people. Once you think about it that way it becomes a lot easier to understand. And it focuses you on the relationships, which will always be around, not the technologies, which are always changing.

It's amazing (to me) the clarity this brings to writing, and to thinking. Words matter.

Jimmy Guterman took the pledge to stop talking about users at O'Reilly. Way to go, Jimmy.

So now you take the pledge. Right here in the comments section of this blog. Or on your own blog and link to this.

I promise to avoid the word user whenever possible.

I will think of people who use technology as people, customers, and friends. I won't use them, and they won't use me.

Postscript: more posts that I agree with on this topic:

Thomas Van Der Wal

Don Norman

Robert Scoble

[I did a followup post based on all the reactions to this one.]

Tags: the word user, user, bernoff, Forrester Research, Groundswell

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