[Air-l] Can User Centred Design be Harmful?

[Jeremy Hunsinger]

Well there are many issues of understanding here.  Fundamentally, I  
think we have real issues with the difference between the commercial  
constructions of subjectivity and the family and community, political  
constructions of subjectivity.  Those constructions are what yield  
the tensions between the collectivity and individuality and are  
arguments usually constructed in terms of the relationship between  
the nature of humanity (homo ludens, homo economicus, homo politicus,  
etc. etc.) and the culture of humanity  (homo ludens, homo  
economicus, homo politicus, etc. etc.)  (heh).   There is an ideology  
of computing and computer interfaces, but I think the conception of  
instrumentality, that of 'user' is also an issue.
On May 7, 2007, at 8:32 AM, Radhika Gajjala wrote:

> Perhaps instead of thinking of "user centred" and individual centric
> - we need to conceptualize a community and context based
> understanding of "userS"?
>
>
>
> r
> On May 7, 2007, at 7:46 AM, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote:
>
>> A short report from usability news about a workshop at chi 2007.
>> http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article3882.asp
>>
>> "A critical observation was that in these settings, the idea of a
>> single user owning and interacting with a single device, around some
>> individually oriented task, is often inappropriate. Instead, systems
>> are more often shared and used by communities, and their objectives
>> are also geared to development and growth of the community."
>>
>
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Jeremy Hunsinger
Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research,  
School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee  
(www.cipr.uwm.edu)

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a  
thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions,  
think. --Byron