Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
What is a User?
I resist using the word “user” in most contexts because it
implies things we may not intend (drug users come to
mind). In the context of human-computer interactions,
“user” implies a power relationship and a kind of experi-
ence that tends to mischaracterize both technology and
people. When we began to defi ne human-computer in-
teraction back in the 1970s and 1980s, the term “user” be-
came quickly over-generalized. A person isn't typically defi ned as a “user” of the
New York Times
(unless you are house-breaking the dog) or of an automobile or a doctor. Over the years, I have
exhorted my students not to use “user” unless it's really the correct word. For example, the “user”
of a computer game is better characterized as a “player”; the “user” of an e-book is a “reader.” Char
Davies has called participants in VR experiences “immersants.” Because this topic covers a wide
variety of human-computer interactions, I have used the word “interactor” as a general term, al-
though I use “user” when I really mean it!
While often driven by hardware innovation, the growing interdisciplinarity
of interface design is also a product of heightened sensitivity to the expe-
rience of human-computer interaction. Change has been sparked by tech-
nology, scholarship, and imagination. The sections ahead are not complete
histories; they contain brief sketches of exemplars and some comparisons to
theatrical design.
in the beginning, there were engineers
Engineers were the
fi rst human-computer interface designers. Along that road, Douglas Engel-
bart and his team at Stanford Research International (SRI) were at the con-
fl uence of engineering, ease of use (human factors), and psychology and
values, led by Engelbart's unwavering commitment to making the world a
better place. Infl uenced early on by Vannevar Bush's canonical paper “As
We May Think” (Bush 1945), Engelbart created a program at SRI called The
Augmentation Research Institute (see Engelbart 1962). Its most famous in-
vention was the computer mouse, but history often forgets that the group
also invented hypertext, networked computers, and some of the founda-
tions for graphical user interfaces, among other achievements.
