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I think that the rejection of the term “user” to refer to people who use our tech products is part of the smokescreen that hides both incompetence and malevolence. And it justifies itself with faux political correctness. 1
Replacing the term “user” with generic collective terms like “person,” “patient,” or “audience” is a blocking action. It gives you less information about the user while appearing to give you more. 2
Personas are a very effective tool for differentiating users with great specificity in such a way that helps the design process. 3
We learned a long time ago that imagining your user as a group is detrimental to the design process. Imagining them as a single, specific person is remarkably helpful and effective. 4
I’m not gonna go into personas here, but the term “user” has one very singular and powerful benefit that no other term offers: It makes clear that the person is actually USING the product, and not just observing, buying, supervising, or hypothesizing about it. 5
Saying that “user” is somehow insulting to “people” is just bullshit that serves the unsavory purpose of conflating those who USE the product with other players. Saying “fan” or “player” or “client” blurs the vital distinction between someone who uses and someone who doesn’t. 6
My number one rule of design is to create personas to identify your users with great and useful specificity and then NEVER USE THE TERM “USER” AGAIN. But replacing the term “user” with some other collective term is the worst of all possible worlds. 7
A “user” is someone who uses a product. One of the main causes of bad interaction design is designing for customers, SMEs, business executives, procurement personnel, developers, and aesthetic designers rather than for users. This distinction is vital to successful design. 8
If you talk about “users” in your product design work, you are not doing it right. “User” does not refer to an individual, and designing for groups is very difficult and fraught. But when you talk about design as a practice, the term “user” is critically important. 9
Once again for those in the back row: Using the term “user” in your design process is bad. Don’t do it. Using the term “user” when talking about the design process itself is good. Do it. 10
