#1 (again.)

Johnson, Robert R. User-Centered Technology.Syracuse, NY: SUNY Press, 1998.

Here are some of what I found to be the major problems and solutions/suggestions that Johnson offers within his book, User-Centered Technology. You’ll notice, shockingly enough, that most of the solutions Johnson offers point back to the title of his book and the notion of user-centered technology.

1.     Johnson writes, “the value placed upon stories of everyday knowledge—of “know-how”—has given way to the “knowledge of the machine” or the “knowledge of the system” (4). In this way, “the appreciation of know how (sic) and of use  (sic) has been lost” (5). He suggests an active reinvention of the “fundamental material makeup of our very educational systems,” which would prioritize practice and then theory—that is, learning by doing—rather than the traditional approach of theorizing and then implementing.

2.     Power imbalances between user and expert, where the users “unwittingly surrender knowledge and power due to [their] lack of reflection on [their] mundane interactions with technology” (10). This plays a part in setting up the idiot/genius dichotomy discussed in Chapter two, with the idea of “user-friendly” technology. Johnson suggests that the solution to this issue is user-centered technology, where users are included in the process from the beginning, rather than as a last, often obligatory, step.

3.     Always blaming the user for errors when the fault lies with the design. The solution? Wait for it—including users in on the design process.

 Some questions that I had:

1.     Johnson offers us the story of Promethus, who “brought to humans, through fire, the knowledge of art: the systematic, creative knowledge of craft and technique” (18). In discussing the user as practioner, he later explains that “when users are viewed as only the mere implementors of a technology, there is little room for a user epistemology other than as an “idiot” who receives technology and then puts it to use” (46). Given the mythic roots of how we, as a race, gained the use of fire, can all of us not be considered idiots?

2.     I’m still wrapping my head around how Johnson engages the user. He emphasizes that users come from different contexts, with different knowledges, and different biases, but, to this reader, he still groups them together into a general group. For instance, he quotes Lauer and Atwill as a means to demonstrate his idea of a “reconfiguring of the end of technology,” where the end rests with the user using the product, rather than the designer completing the design. In the case of Lauer and Atwill, “the end of the art of housebuilding… [is] the use made of the house by those for whom it was constructed” (22). No two users are alike, as Johnson explains, so, can we boil down his call to arms to the simple notion that people need to communicate more? In the case of the designers, the builders, and the users, for the users to be in on the process from the beginning, and the process ending with the users’ feedback after living in the home, there would need to be a lot more interaction than the simple act of handing over the keys and driving off into the sunset with a check. Also, a direction that I felt Johnson avoided (perhaps for good reason?) is the idea that once you include users in on a process in an integral way, they become more emotionally invested and attached to a product. What are the pros and cons to this? What might be gained/lost?

3.     I wonder, also, about the conflicting wants/needs of users and how to address them throughout the process of making. In trying to please everyone, do we really please nobody? I think we can relate this, too, to horrible instruction manuals that don’t contain any actual text. They have universal pictures that universally frustrate everyone.
4.    Can we consider the exercise we did in class to brainstorm syllabus ideas a user-centered technology?