Every Friday, Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, talks to all sorts of people.
Mosseri hosts weekly "Ask Me Anything" sessions on Instagram. At meetings, anyone can ask him questions, as long as the questions are related to Instagram, its parent company Meta, and his own work.
I started watching these meeting videos a few years ago and I love them. He enthusiastically and sincerely answered technical questions such as "Why can't we add a link to the post?" and "My Explore page is weird, how can I fix it?".
As I became more interested in these meetings, I began to find something noteworthy in Mosseri's seemingly impromptu remarks.
On a recent Friday, Mosseri was congratulated on his success with the social networking app Threads. Meta launched the app in the summer of 2023 in a competitive relationship with X (formerly Twitter), who wrote: "Zuckerberg said that Threads has more active people today than it did at launch, which is great, congratulations!"
Dressed in a pink sweatshirt, Mosseri responded: "I want to explain what that means, we focus mainly on daily active users and monthly active users, and now we have over 130 million monthly active users. ”
Mosseri simply equates users with people, a subtle shift that is almost imperceptible, but I noticed it. Mr. Mosseri did not respond to a request for comment.
For a long time, people have been referred to as "users". It's a practical shorthand for executives, founders, operators, engineers, and investors.
In general, it's correct to use this word to describe the person who uses the software: the definition of a user goes beyond the customer or consumer.
Sometimes the user isn't even alone. For example, enterprise bots are known to manage and operate accounts on Instagram and other social media platforms.
But "user" isn't specific enough, it can refer to almost everyone, and it can be applied to almost any big idea or long-term vision.
We are also used by computers, platforms, and companies as well as by them. Although "user" seems to describe a transactional relationship, many technical relationships that treat a person as a user are actually very personal. That being the case, does the word "user" still make sense?
"People are a bit like machines"
The initial use of "user" can be traced back to the mainframe computer era in the 50s of the 20th century. Because commercial computers are bulky and expensive, they often require dedicated rooms and special equipment.
As a result, their operations are also done by trained employees (i.e., users). These employees work for companies that own or lease commercial computers.
In the 60s of the 20th century, as computers became more common in universities, "users" began to include students or anyone who interacted with computer systems.
It wasn't until the mid-70s of the 20th century that personal computers really made their way into the home. But as more and more people owned computers, the term "computer owner" never really caught on.
In contrast to other inventions of the 20th century, such as the automobile, which was owned by ordinary people from the beginning (so the owner of the car is the car owner), the computer owner is only a "user", not a "computer owner", although the computer has infiltrated every aspect of people's lives.
As computers took the 90s by storm, so did the matrix of user-related terms: user accounts, user IDs, user profiles, multi-users, and so on.
(Source: AI generated)
Cognitive scientist Don Norman, who joined Apple in the early 90s of the 20th century with the title of "user experience architect," was central to the widespread adoption of the term.
He was the first to write "User Experience (UX)" in his title, and it is widely credited that he was the one who brought into the mainstream the concept of "User Experience Design," which aims to build systems in a way that conforms to people's intuition.
Norman's 1998 book, The Design of Everyday Things, remains the "bible" of the UX world, putting "usability" and aesthetics alongside it.
Norman, now 88, explained to me that the massive popularity of the word "user" was partly due to the early computer technicians' misconception that people were a bit like machines.
"The user is just another component. "We don't see them as people, we see them as part of the system." As a result, early UX design did not seek to make human-computer interaction "user-friendly."
The purpose of this is to encourage people to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. People and their computers are just two parts of the larger system that tech companies are building, operating by their own rules and with their own plans.
Since then, the universality of "users" has subtly blended into an era when the tech world is doing whatever it takes to get growth.
When the concept of "user" is so malleable, it's easy to move quickly, break old things, and then take over the world with software.
The "user" is ambiguous, so it creates a sense of distance, creating a dodgy hacker marketing culture. In this culture, companies grow for the sake of growth, rather than seeking practical utility.
The "user" concretizes some unspoken rules and rules, and these features subtly encourage specific actions because it linguistically reinforces the growth of data rather than pursuing human-centered design.
UX designers tried to build software that matched all the intuition of unknown users, and we ended up with bright red notifications (to create a sense of urgency), an e-commerce shopping cart with a countdown (to encourage quick purchases), and a more prominent "Agree" button than "Disagree" (prompting people to accept the terms without reading them).
Of course, users are also people who struggle with "addiction". Being addicted to some software, at least to some extent, is living in a state of powerlessness.
Today, the title of power user, which was originally awarded to people who have mastered skills such as keyboard shortcuts and web design, is no longer measured in terms of technical ability. It's now measured by the amount of time they've spent on their device, or the size of their audience.
Defaults to "People"
Karina Nguyen, a researcher and engineer at AI startup Anthropic, recently wrote on X: "I hope more product designers will also consider language models as their primary users." What kind of information does my language model need to solve the core pain points of human users?"
In the old world, "users" were often for companies that created products, not companies that solved pain points for the people who used them. The more users, the higher the value.
This label removes the complexity of people and turns them into data that needs to be studied, behaviors that need to be A/B tested, and capital that needs to be earned. The term often ignores any deeper relationship that may exist between a person and the platform or product.
Back in 2008, Norman identified this shortcoming and began advocating for the use of "person" or "human" instead of "user" when designing for people. But in the years that followed, we saw a surge in the number of bots on the web, which compounded the problem.
"Psychologists call people 'subjects' and depersonalize them, while we call them 'users', and it's essentially the same.
Both terms are dejorative. He wrote at the time, "If [the product] is designed for people, why not call them that?"
In 2011, Janet Murray, a professor at Georgia Tech in the United States and an early digital media theorist, objected to the term "user" on the grounds that it was too narrow and functional.
In her book Inventing the Medium, she suggests "interactor" as an alternative term because it better captures people's sense of creativity and engagement in the digital space.
In 2012, Jack Dorsey, then the CEO of Square, urged the tech industry to drop the word "user."
Square will start using "customers," a more "honest and direct" term that describes the relationship between his product and the people he serves, he said.
He writes that while technology is meant to put people first, calling them "users" in the eyes of companies building platforms and devices diminishes their authenticity. Rethink your users, he said, and "how do you call people who like what you create." ”
The public is mostly indifferent to Dorsey's opinion. The Hacker News website has been debating the term for a few days, with some arguing that "user" seems oversimplified simply because it's too common.
Others explain that the problem is not in the word itself, but in the larger industry attitude, which is to rank the end-user below the technology. Apparently, Dorsey's post didn't prompt a lot of people to stop using the word "user."
Around 2014, Facebook followed Norman's advice in his book and dropped the "user"-centric wording in favor of defaulting to "people." But habits and internal language are hard to change, and Instagram CEO Mosseri is the best example of this.
Over the years, other tech companies have also adopted their own ways to replace "users". One fintech company refers to people as "members," and another screen time app has chosen the term "gems."
Recently, I met a founder who felt awkward when his colleague used the word "humans" instead of "users", but didn't know why. I guess that's because the word "human" seems a bit overkill.
But here's what we've learned from the mainframe era: there are never two parts to a system (man and machine), because all people, all "users", are affected by the design of new technologies.
Carissa Carter, academic director of the Hasso Platner Institute for Design at Stanford University in the United States, likened the framework to the experience of using Uber.
"If you hail a taxi with your phone, the people involved are the passengers, the drivers, the software company employees who control the process, or even the people who write the code that decides which car to dispatch," she said.
In our multi-stakeholder system, every decision about a user includes people who have direct contact with whatever you're building. ”
With the sudden advent of artificial intelligence, the point of contact between humans and computers, i.e., the user interface, has changed profoundly. For example, the popularity of chatbots has led to the popularity of generative AI.
It's a paradigm we're used to. Siri has been present in our iPhones for more than a decade, and is sincerely ready to help with everything, but there is only so much that Siri and other voice assistants of the same generation can do. Now, a more genuine partnership is in the works.
Tools that were once called AI bots are now given lofty titles such as "copilot," "assistant," and "collaborator" to convey a sense of partnership rather than automation. Large language models quickly abandoned the term "bot" entirely.
Anthropomorphism, which tends to attribute human-like qualities to machines, has long been used to create a sense of connection between humans and technology. We (people) are still users, but if AI is now a "partner" with a lot of information, resources, and knowledge, then what are we?
Well, at least for now, it's unlikely that we'll ditch the word "user", but we can default to more precise terms like "patient" in healthcare, "student" in edtech, and "reader" in media companies.
This will help us understand these relationships more accurately. For example, in games, users are often referred to as "players", a term that affirms their engagement in technology and even takes pleasure out of it.
On airplanes, customers are often referred to as "passengers" or "travelers", and when they are in the air, they inspire a warm and friendly spirit.
If companies were more concrete about the people they were going to be up against, and now artificial intelligence, rather than arbitrarily abstracting everything into the concept of the "user", perhaps our relationship with this technology would be simpler, and it would be easier for us to accept the fact that we will inevitably exist at the same time.
In my calls with Don Norman, I often get caught up in my own words. I'm switching back and forth between "user", "human" and "human", all the while consciously controlling my words, and not sure what their semantics are.
Norman assured me that my state was normal, and that it was a process of thinking about how we designed things. "We changed the world, and the world in turn changed us. "So we'd better be cautious about changing the world." ”
Support: Ren
Operation/Typesetting: He Chenlong