
Humans not users - taniraja
https://johannesippen.com/2019/humans-not-users/
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flixic
As a designer, I have no problem calling myself UX designer. Sure, “users”,
whatever. We never lose sight of the fact that user is a human being and we
are designing for other sensitive, diverse people.

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.

~~~
cyberferret
I agree. I've always seen 'users' as simply a term for 'people who _use_ my
software'.

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'.

~~~
zebracanevra
In Sydney, the public transport trains refer to all of their passengers as
"customers" as well.

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.

~~~
c22
When I was in jail they referred to me as a "client" which I thought was
rather odd.

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nkrisc
Not too pick on PMs or MBAs, but everything described as "bad" here is
terminology from those world, not UX design. Aside from the fact that UX
literally has the word user in it, this is not the language I ever hear fellow
designers use except when adopting business-oriented terms in business
contexts. Most of the time those I talk to simply say "people." People looking
for X, people trying to do Y.

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.

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cal5k
I find that a lot of articles/talks by designers make such declarative
statements... "Design for PEOPLE, not USERS!". Lots of time spent on
semantics.

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>?"

~~~
davidivadavid
Yes, and a lot of us marketers are scratching our heads when designers talk
about "human-centric design" (i.e. making products by thinking about what
people want, what marketers have been doing forever) as if it had really
profound and new insights. But it's certainly a good approach so, it's worth
promoting.

~~~
gumby
Marketing personas are often not aligned with UX personeas, not due to a
mistake but due to the fact that the two functions operate in different
domains

The customer for dog food is not the dog, for example

~~~
davidivadavid
And the user of dog food isn't the dog either, believe it or not. Dog food is
designed for dog owners, not dogs. Everything is designed for humans.

~~~
gumby
Indeed, the primary criterion in dog food design is smell and consistency of
output. #2 is cost — how can you tweak ingredients as to legally be allowed to
label it “lamb dinner” at lowest cost

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djkz
Just saw another day on Twitter after a brand referring to their followers as
beeflings.
[https://twitter.com/mulegirl/status/1088946637454471169?s=19](https://twitter.com/mulegirl/status/1088946637454471169?s=19)

~~~
cyberferret
That would be just one step away from calling them "meatbags" as Bender would
do in Futurama...

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arthurofbabylon
I’m on board. I’m a designer - and I don’t think about “users.” I think about
people using these instruments. The difference, in my experience, is profound:
I’m connecting with a complex, amorphous process rather than a mistakenly
defined unit.

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.

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johannesippen
Hey everyone, this is Jo, the author of this article – AMA. Just kidding,
really appreciate the discourse happening here, reading every single one of
your comments.

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!

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tabtab
If you go around calling users "humans", people will think you are an android
(lower-case), robot, or space alien; or somebody who believes they are one of
those.

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User23
Reminds me of the old joke: only two fields call their customers "users" and
one of them is drug dealing.

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mrhappyunhappy
Despite the unnecessary beef with the term “user”, the author seems to
sugarcoat the only metric that matters at the end of the day - $$$. All of
these altruistic reasons designers and app creators claim will help their
users is just another way of saying we need more $$$. Let’s be real for a
minute and admit that our job as UX designers is to figure out how to squeeze
more $$$ out of users.

