The Word “User” Needs to be Canceled From Design Language
There is a very old joke in the User Experience world:
There are only two professions that refer to their customers as ‘users’.
While funny, it’s also very telling. Our terminology affects the ways in which we view and treat the people we (professional digital designers) are creating for.
I have long been uncomfortable with the term “user”. I find it to be derogatory to the people who are supposed to be the “center” in the term “human centered design”. Instead, I prefer to think of them as “actors” on the interactive product stage. To that end, I am starting to prefer to refer to people who are traditionally called “users” as “actors”.
A “user” is, reductively, someone who uses. It is easy to see that people working in digital systems use them, but that is at best an incomplete perception. An “actor” is someone who acts on a system, or, even better, interacts with that system. While the term “user” often implies a more passive or dependent state of being, actor implies a more engaged and independent state of being, which is what we want from the people who we are designing for.
The problem with changing the term from “user” is that it is ingrained in the digital design profession. It’s even in the terms we use to describe it: user experience and user interface. No matter how many times I try to replace them with interactive design or digital interface, it’s hard to keep it up against the terms most people accept as their defining designations.
Indeed, I regularly teach UX 101 classes, and — despite my best intentions, despite giving my students a lengthy harangue in the first class on why we shouldn’t use the word “user” — I constantly slip up and use term myself. It’s hard to change your own mental model when everyone around you not only won’t but doesn’t even see the problem.
Language matters. The term “actor” is a far more robust term than the term “user”. So, I’m calling on digital designers to replace the term “user” with the term “actor” whenever possible. Will it catch on? I don’t know — I kind of doubt it — but there is hope.
I’m calling on digital designers to replace the term “user” with the term “actor” whenever possible.
In a recent talk I gave at the Big Design 2021 conference about conducting non-hostile design critiques, I presented my argument to a group of design thinkers and experts. I was pleasantly surprised at how warmly the idea was accepted. Despite only being two slides in my overall presentation, it was probably the topic I spent the most time answering questions about and discussing afterwards.
When we change the language we deploy to describe people, we change our perceptions of them. So, let’s stop thinking about human beings as users of a digital product and start thinking about them as actors on a digital stage.
Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts, opinions, and ideas in the comments.
