Feature: James Woudhuysen champions the Human, rejects the User

Why is there suddenly so much attention being paid to usability's destructive capabilities? James Woudhuysen, professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University, was present at the recent UPA event when practitioners met one of the new wave of critics face to face. It turned into a memorable evening: I wrote it up on UN as Prodding at the Limits of User-centred Design. The professor wrote it up in IT Week as Usability Cult Sacrifices Innovation. We seemed to be on opposite sides of the fence.

But Woudhuysen knows a lot about usable design and understands its contribution. As a commentator he appears to have rounded on it, but iconoclasm – based in passionate beliefs about the nature of society, progress and debate – is his style. So I asked him to explain his current position on users and usability.

'The discussion is not about when usability is required,' he tells me, 'because, in my judgement, it's required right at the front end. I'm not seeking to chuck out usability – I'm suggesting it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for success.'

Woudhuysen points out that he was reading Norman's "The Design of Everyday Things" in the late 1980s when he worked with staff at Xerox Parc. He early adopted what he calls the Y.O.Y. school of IT journalism: "Why, oh why, is this such crap?", "Why are corporations so oblivious to user needs?", "Why do they put buttons and icons where they do?". 'I still agree with all of that.'

'But it is only one thing to recognise that user interfaces are still crap – though they are' he asserts.

In his role as consumer (a role he is quick to qualify: 'We are all consumers for one second in a minute, then we are all something else: wives, children, parents'), he accepts that that usability studies, usability testing, user-centred design are valuable. What he is not prepared to accept is that the sole problem facing design and production is corporations' inability either to recognise their commercial interest in fixing bad interfaces, or their moral responsibility, in that they are wasting people's time, money, and getting them irritated.

'To say that is the world view, or the alpha and omega of what the future of IT should be, is, I think, a mistake - and it's a dangerous mistake in today's climate as it will reward a static and passive view of people; inexperienced, unskilful, thick people to whom we all have to accommodate. I don't think that's a perspective which is sympathetic to innovation.'

His view of humanity challenges the usability profession's dependence on the concept of 'users', taking the issue right to political and philosophical questions about the nature of man.

'We are told that we live in a consumer society, although most of us are more and more dominated by work – just that simple idea suggests to me that human beings are users, but also builders; they are not just consumers, they are producing and they have an ability above that of animals to produce better things. A beaver can build a dam; a bee can build a hive, but they never do version 2.0 and that suggests to me that from a basic ahistorical philosophical view, the category 'user' isn't adequate to express the full potential and humanity of human beings.'

He allows this might have been merely a professorial objection if it weren't for trends in society undermining a view of people as capable and creative, indeed as innovating.

'We confront a world today where passivity and bringing therapy to victims is a very strong cultural dynamic in all parts of western society: where "The Little Book of Calm" is a best-seller; where the phrase 'Sono stressato' [I'm stressed out] even dominates Italian public life. From Oprah Winfrey through to Gulf War syndrome we find the stroking-people-to-make-them-feel-good approach. There are strong currents in society to say that "we are all flawed, vulnerable individuals – from our parenting, our education and our socialisation. We need help: we need a helpline; support; we need counselling; we need quack remedies; we need well-being, not just health but mental health as well". So in that kind of cultural climate, I'm always nervous that a passive definition of human beings as users, or, worse still consumers, rather than talented, sometimes collective, builders and producers; that that definition of users – situated in today’s cultural context – has some very adverse consequences. The most obvious of these is the title of Steve Krug's book: "Don’t Make me Think!". That says it all.'

'I see vast hostility – European hostility, in particular, because we are the most backward in many things – on a completely irrational basis towards lots of technology: to cars; to the mobile phone. When you look at today's context for innovation, that the thing that should be bothering us is making a universal standard such that users do not have to think? That sits very well, too well, with a society that has lost faith in innovation: that does not want to put anything into technology push; looks at everything in terms of demand pull or the "God of the market" and I think that is very foolish.

'Innovations have brought with them a whole bunch of problems – we know all that – but to dissolve everything in the quest for usability would deny us SMS and would deny us the Sony Walkman.'

The SMS interface is, in his words, crap. But the development and application of texting offers a fine example of people using technology creatively and finding their own meaning in it. This happened without initial standard setting and research into use.

Early standard setting and its potentially stifling effects on creativity emerged recently as a bone of contention between designers and usability practitioners (see Stop, or Dr Nielsen gets it! - the Backlash in Usability?). Is this part of the same debate?

'Like anybody else, I like standards, I'm a collectivist, so I vote for all of that and I look forward to a world standard for nearly everything because it would make life so much easier.

'But the best, the most user-centred, can often be an enemy of the good. If you are interested in innovation, although you always want the best, the fascination with standards, especially in a competitive economy... whether we should be so obsessed with an ideal world of standards, like an ideal world of usability where users never have to think - I worry that that too is inimical to innovation.'

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