"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."
--Immanuel Kant
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| A user |
Recently I was working closely with the users of a reporting tool I was developing, and I struggled with the term I used to describe them. It would creep into our conversations once in a while. As a developer, I wanted to call them 'users', but this seemed like a very impersonal way of speaking. They certainly didn't think of themselves as users. A 'user' [syn: buyer, customer, end user, enjoyer, purchaser, shopper] is someone who consumes products provided to them--they don't contribute anything to the product. But this should not be the way people who will use software should interact with developers. There should be many opportunities for them to direct the creation and ongoing development of the tools they use.
Thinking about this made me recall a conversation I once had with another developer, in which he objected to being called a 'resource' by project managers. "I'm not some automaton who can produce X lines of code every Y hours," he said. Managers must have some way of keeping track of who is doing what and how long it's taking, but the term 'resource' lumps together programmers, crude oil, and encyclopedias.
I don't really have any better suggestions for these terms than the ones that already exist. They are tools that serve important purposes. I was unable to refrain from using the term 'user' in the beginning of this post. Many euphemisms invented to put a positive spin on things are awkward or silly (e.g. 'sanitation engineer' or 'right-sizing'). Furthermore, if becoming more specific about who people are involves demographic terminology--e.g., how single, over-45, white females use a product--I doubt this is much of an improvement. Finally, 'using' something isn't always a bad thing. It can connote invention and creativity, like when you use a tool to do something it wasn't designed to do. But it's worth reflecting on the words we use when we talk about people.
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| A resource |
Perhaps what's more important than the words themselves are the
ways we use them. Immanuel Kant's first formulation of his Categorical Imperative is: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." But he also stated it in the terms of the quote at the top of this post: Don't use people as means towards ends. When we use impersonal terms, I wonder if we are any more likely to do so. I suspect that following the Categorical Imperative involves developing relationships and practices so that, when you say 'user' or 'resource', you don't treat people like
mere users and resources. How do you use 'user'?
