The User is a problematic idea. But so is the Human.
“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that. Some of us are not even considered fully human now, let alone at previous moments of Western social, political and scientific history.” — Rosi Braidotti
If you do not think about the words you use, they will do the thinking for you. It’s this notion that Don Norman drew on in his 2006 blog Words Matter¹. Norman recalls a former colleague “passionately arguing that the terms we used would control the way we thought, acted, behaved and, ultimately, designed.” And so he abandoned the term ‘user’ — which he felt ignored the “rich structure of abilities, motives, and social structures” involved in the human experience — and instead advocated for “people, a person, or perhaps humans.” Since then, Norman and design firm IDEO have independently popularised human-centred, rather than user-centred, design. ‘Design for humans, not users’ has become a popular slogan. And Norman’s right: psychological studies suggest words do influence decision making²; the term ‘user’, by definition, does not respect the totality of the human experience³. The problem is that the word ‘human’ doesn’t either. Nor does it respect our complex, messy relationship with the so-called ‘non-human’: communities, animals, the environment, and even technology.
What’s in a name?
Many descriptions of human-centred design apply equally to user-centred design. In fact, there is debate amongst designers as to whether there is any difference between the two at all⁴. Where designers do draw a distinction, it is often aspirational rather than methodological: ‘design for the whole human⁵’ or ‘consider all humans impacted by your design⁶’. This places a lot of responsibility on a single word and how that word frames the design process.
Framing is a concept from the social sciences that has already been adopted by designers. “A frame is a thought organizer,” say sociologists Ryan and Gameson, “highlighting certain events and facts as important, and rendering others invisible.⁷” How you ask a question will influence the answer; how you frame a problem will influence the solution. Frames are activated by language⁸. So then what frame does the word ‘human’, rather than ‘user’, activate?
A brief history of the word ‘human’
There is no scientific definition of what a human is⁹. There is a scientific definition of Homo sapiens. But there is debate amongst paleoanthropologists as to what counts as a human¹⁰ (do we include Neanderthals? Or just the modern Homo sapiens sapiens?). This is because ‘human’ is not a scientific category, but a folk category: it is a concept we invented. The philosopher David Livingstone Smith considers the word ‘human’ an “indexical expression”, like the words ‘here’, ‘now’ or ‘I’¹¹. It is a word that depends upon the context of the speaker: upon their beliefs, conscious or unconscious, about who or what is human. The word does, however, have a history. And it is neither inclusive nor compassionate.
The Ancient Greek term ‘anthropos’ — a precursor to the Latin ‘humanus’, from which ‘human’ is derived — was incredibly restrictive¹². “The notion of ‘anthropos’ at the time did not include every human,” according to philosopher Francesca Ferrando¹³. It excluded animals and gods, but also so-called ‘barbarians’. For the Ancient Greeks, to be human was to extol certain virtues and have a Greek education. To lack either was to be a barbarian. To be Persian, for the Ancient Greeks, was to be a barbarian; to not be human¹⁴.
“The etymological roots of human, beginning with “anthropos,’’ are exclusivist; they are not inclusive,” Ferrando says. “These separations actually kept repeating themselves in the social construction of the human.¹⁵” There are myriad historical examples — from salvery to the subjugation of women — that repeat this pattern. Of course, etymology is not destiny; the meanings of words do change over time. But this bizarre quirk — of being exclusionary, whilst giving the impression of inclusion — seems to persist. When someone’s humanity is inconvenient, it is simply denied¹⁶. For this reason, Ferrando prefers the verb ‘humanize’ to the noun ‘human¹⁷’. We become human, and, unfortunately, can cease to be too. To humanize is a process, whereas the noun ‘human’ assumes our humanity — whatever you believe that to be — is fixed.
And this isn’t just historical, or theoretical. A 2016 psychology study¹⁸ about the influence of genderless language on thinking found that participants were likely to assume a typical ‘human’ would either be like them, or male. Genderless language — like the word ‘human’ — did not lead to a reversal in male-centred thinking. Only explicitly mentioning ‘women’ increased participants’ consideration of women. A further 2020 study by the same psychologists reaffirmed that, as its title suggests, “men are human, women are gendered¹⁹”.
The frame activated by the word human is nebulous, subjective and potentially exclusionary. Rather than forcing us to think, the word ‘human’ risks us universalising our own unconscious prejudices under the pretence of empathy and compassion. This, however, is a terminological symptom of a wider methodological problem: that unacknowledged assumptions about what constitutes a human being frame the design process as a whole.
Philosophy in the methodology
Methodologies precede empirical research. They are the structures that allow us to hypothesise and test. We forget that philosophical assumptions — like what a human is, or that only humans matter — will shape the questions we ask, the problems we recognise and the solutions we design. But methodologies cannot test themselves. They must be critiqued.
Anthony Chemero is a cognitive scientist and philosopher. The 8th chapter of his book Radical Embodied Cognitive Science²⁰ concerns a series of scientific experiments about object exploration behaviour in rats. “Chemero analyses this work to show how implicit philosophical assumptions can lead to serious methodological oversights,” write scholars Bennett, Metatla and Roudaut in their conference paper Small-‘p’ philosophy in HCI²¹. “He shows that the implicit, neurochemical-reductionist, assumptions held by the researchers lead them to overlook important, confounding, factors in their experiments.” Bennet, Metatla and Roudaut advocate for “a more philosophical approach to the practice of [human-computer interaction]²²” similar to Chemero’s approach to science: a philosophical critique of method, in order to improve output.
Methodological assumptions can also manifest in practice. “Our methods embed values,” writes human-computer interaction scholar Beki Grinter, “but we have tended to write about them as if they were value-neutral and generalizable.²³” In her essay Representing Others: HCI and Postcolonialism she cites numerous examples of human-centred design and research methods breaking down when applied outside of so-called ‘Western’ cultures. “We assume women can participate equally, consent on their own,” Grinter continues, “and work in rooms where they may be alone with a male researcher. Also, we assume that people with less technological knowledge and who may not have a PhD feel comfortable or believe it is appropriate to critique our designs²⁴.” Our methods do not work for all humans. Instead, they subtly reflect assumptions about what a human should be.
Human-centred, all too human-centred
Humanism is the ideological underlay of human-centred design²⁵, design generally²⁶ and the so-called modern world²⁷. Historically characterised as condemning dogmas²⁸, “humanism is, in so many words, its own dogma,” for critical theorist Cary Wolfe, “replete with its own prejudices and assumptions… which are themselves a form of the ‘superstition’ from which the Enlightenment sought to break free.²⁹” To oppose humanism is not to oppose the human as a species, but a specific conception of it. And rightly or wrongly, many humanist assumptions frame our design methodologies.
Humanism is vast, ever-changing and sometimes contradictory. Any definition of it, as Wolfe has remarked, “is bound to be a little reductive³⁰.” For the purposes of this essay, these are the elements of humanism I want to focus on.
Humanism assumes that human beings:
- Have an unchanging essence³¹
- Are autonomous³²
- Are Individuals³³
- Are separate from, or superior to, animals and the environment³⁴
I want to examine the impact of these four assumptions on design.
The myth of a human essence
That ‘we shape our tools and our tools shape us’ is not just rhetoric. Technogenesis is the theory that humans and technology co-evolve together³⁵. You can trace it back to Darwin’s claim that humans began walking upright because of tool use³⁶, and the work of paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan³⁷. Recent developments in evolutionary biology show that environmental changes can rapidly increase the spread of traits which, genetically, can take millions of years to transfer³⁸. Coupled with the brain’s neural plasticity, this means that environmental changes — such as the widespread uptake of new technologies — can have rapid, substantial consequences³⁹. This is neither good nor bad. But it shows that when we design for humans, we may, in some small way, be designing what humans become.
Design and autonomy
In our increasingly technological world, it seems obvious to literary critic N. Katherine Hayles that “human agency cannot ever be seen in isolation from the systems with which humans are in constant and constitutive interaction.⁴⁰” For the humanist, autonomy is a fact; for the posthumanist it is a value. Facts are unchanging and can be taken for granted. Values need to be reaffirmed. If we, as designers, take human autonomy as a given, we risk unintentionally undermining it with our work.
“Liberty,” as historian-philosopher Michel Foucault said, “is a practice.⁴¹” It is a collaboration between humans, institutions, policy, technology and myriad other forces. As designers we already know this, even if we do not articulate it like Hayles or Foucault. Hence our professional concern about dark patterns and design addiction. Design is never neutral; there is no way to present a choice free of influence⁴². Here the myth of inherent human autonomy is a comfort, for it frees us from this responsibility: that we collectively design the circumstances under which liberty is possible.
More than the individual
In design, human means ‘individual’. Our methods do not consider communities. Although practical, personas are a perfect example of this: we literally merge multiple research participants into a convenient caricature of a person. Airbnb may offer a great user experience for an individual renter or landlord, but, as a report from the Scottish Government⁴³ shows, short-term lets in tourist hotspots can “threaten the sustainability of these communities” by: reducing the availability of residential housing, driving up house prices and gearing local amenities towards tourists instead of residents. These findings are consistent with a report from the Economic Policy Institute⁴⁴ about the impact of Airbnb in the United States.
“From a UX and product point of view, Airbnb is a fantastic service,” as designer Cennydd Bowles has noted⁴⁵. But that’s the problem. Communities exist outside of our methodological frame. “User-centricity,” Bowles continues, “has failed these people.”
Design and the environment
We are designing in the midst of a climate crisis. Digital technology currently produces 3.7% of the world’s greenhouse gases⁴⁶ (for contrast, the global aviation industry was responsible pre-pandemic for 4.9%)⁴⁷. There is a rich history of sustainable design, but as long as our methods remain ‘human-centred’ our environmental impact will always be an afterthought. And while much of the climate crisis requires an international, governmental response, there are specific things that digital designers can do to make projects sustainable. For instance: bloated websites waste more energy⁴⁸. Deleting outdated images⁴⁹, or using a browser’s default font for your website⁵⁰, will make it both faster to load and more climate friendly.
Additionally, new design problems are emerging that human-centred design is inherently ill-equipped for. In 2016, for instance, Perdue Foods wanted to “improve conditions for both chickens and humans⁵¹” on their farms. Doing so would involve “thinking about the wants and needs of animals.” “What if, rather than understanding the needs of humans,” writes design theorist Laura Forlano, “designers are tasked to understand what chickens want? What expertise or theories might be needed in order to address this problem?⁵²”
So what should we call them?
This was meant to be an essay about design ethics. And in a way it is: for if methodologies and terminology influence the way we think and design; if designs and design systems embed values; then we need to make these unconscious assumptions conscious, lest we perpetuate them unknowingly. And as our methods are applied more widely — to government policy⁵³ and international development⁵⁴ — the need for this critique grows ever stronger. If humanism, as Cary Wolf puts it, lacks “the kind of vocabulary that can describe the complex ways that human beings are intertwined with and shaped by the nonhuman world in which they live,⁵⁵” then, at the very least, we need a new design vocabulary. Now.
In her Guidelines for the Nonsexist Use of Language, philosopher Virginia L. Warren wanted “to foster a deeper appreciation of how easily bias slips into our thoughts and theories,” rather than just “a superficial recasting of words⁵⁶”. That is what I hope to have achieved here. But the practical question still stands: what do we call who we design for?
Instead of ‘user’ or ‘human’, Value Sensitive Design uses ‘direct stakeholders’ and ‘indirect stakeholders⁵⁷’. Direct stakeholders have an active claim in a design and will likely use it. Indirect stakeholders, however, will be impacted by said design, even if they never use it. If you call someone on a mobile phone, you are a direct stakeholder. If someone else takes a call nearby and is talking loudly, you are an indirect stakeholder for that mobile phone. You are an indirect stakeholder for your doctor’s medical records system. These terms force you to consider everyone and everything — including communities and the environment, not just people — impacted by your product or service. Because the terms specify that some people, places or things will be impacted by your design, even if they don’t use it.
This, however, is but one frame of many. To truly respect the complexities of the human condition and our relationship with the world, we need to abandon our restrictive, singular notion of ‘the human’. We need multiple perspectives. Multiple frames. An ethics of consideration, and the vocabulary to articulate it. Human is not a neutral term or concept; we need to decentre ‘the human’ from design.
References
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[13] ibid
[14] ibid
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[22] ibid
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