Leaping groundlessly into Louise and Ulla's discussion of "user experience"
At 09:47 30/01/2003 -0500, Ulla wrote:
Okay, I see how the term "user experience" can be interpreted in two ways.
Louise responded:
But I think there's really only one accepted use of the term in the profession itself.... My own field is 'user experience', which these days incorporates ideas such as information design, interface design, information architecture, navigation design, visual design, interaction design, content specification, user needs, requirements definition, etc etc.
It seems to me that part of what we are seeing here is that Internet Research spans many professions, so a term that has a clearly accepted standard meaning in one profession is used in a variety of ways in others. As an ethnographer/social constructionist in Communication, I associate the term "user experience" with any number of possibilities most of which are far more social and less technical than what Louise includes (which is not to say I wouldn't include what Louise does, but I would also want to look at the social history of a persons exposure to and use of the Internet -- i.e. relevant experiences people have had that shapes their use). This is not just my idiosyncratic ignorance, but accepted use of the term in my profession. This speaks to the need for us to be clear about our own definitions and to recognize that terms with seemingly standard meanings may mean different things elsewhere. When Louise says "user experience," I now realize she is referring to a very explicit set of ideas, and that when people in my field say 'user experience' to mean what we take it to mean, Louise and others in her field may view us as having mis-used the term. Don't even get me started on the use of the term "communication" in some other fields! We need these discussions, if not to find common language then at least to better understand one another's. 2 cents from the Peanut Gallery -- ________________________________________________________ Nancy Baym http://www.ku.edu/home/nbaym Communication Studies, University of Kansas 102 Bailey Hall, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS 66045, USA Association of Internet Researchers: http://aoir.org