If not “user’ then what?

When writing usability studies, I try to avoid describing people as ‘users’. The growing consensus is that it’s insulting and (the tipping point for me) outdated . My struggle is finding a suitable word to replace ‘users’.

“What about…”
Sure, calling people “customers” can work. But in many instances “customers” is too broad a term—or just inaccurate. For example, in a recent sales conversation, we described the “user research” needed to inform our design decisions. Given our audience, asking for ‘user research’ was welcome. Asking for customer research (without significant backpedaling and clarification) would have raised doubt in our abilities—“customer research” belongs to marketing, not information architects or interface designers. This is about knowing your audience and what words will set them off.

But this “User Research” example is an exception. In most cases it’s fairly easy to pull off some lightweight word shuffling and expunge the “user” completely. “User interface” just becomes “the interface.” Easy enough.

Politics
And then there are other cases where the client is not purchasing your thoughts on how to improve their web app or site—what they really want is leverage, internal leverage within an organization in the form of a formal usability study. “See what the experts said!” In these cases, there are certain expectations around the formality of language used.

And it’s in these cases that it is harder to embrace a relaxed, no-nonsense, friendly tone. And so, what to do with that word ‘users’.

A Pattern Emerges
While reviewing a series of usability reports that Bright Corner has been producing, I noticed some interesting responses on my part to this word “user”.

Some instances of the word “user” – those referring to a specific person—struck me as derisive: “During her search for ‘x’ one user was brought to the…” In other cases, I barely noticed the word’s appearance. Curious, I looked for a pattern, and came up with the following rule of thumb for using/not using the term “user”:

• If you’re describing a specific individual (as in the example above) use a specific descriptive term— “visitor,” “shopper,” “student,” etc. If you do refer often to the same individuals, go ahead, give them a name—Janet, Steve, whatever—make this real.

• If you’re referring to the pool of people involved in the study, call them “participants”. For example: “During our study, several participants had difficulty with…”

• If you’re speaking of the general group of people who will be ‘using the system’ (continuous verb) go ahead and call the collective, faceless group “Users.” No one will get upset, as there seems to be a distance between real people and ‘users’ in this context. More importantly, there’s a certain authority (and urgency!) in making sweeping statements like “Users of the system will be frustrated by…” And, in these sentences, the emphasis is typically on the activity (or problem) and less on this person.

So there you have it, a quick continuum for referring to test subjects (oops-how insulting was that?!!) under various contexts, and a good example of when user might be just alright.