I’ve got my head buried in texts for finals and i realized how valuable one of my pieces would be for many technology creators, HCI folks and the like so i thought that i’d share it:
Grint, Keith & Woolgar, Steve. 1997. Configuring the user: inventing new technologies. In Grint & Woolgar, The machine at work: technology, work, and organization (pp. 65-94). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
This article addresses how technologists configure the user. In other words, what expectations do creators build into the technology and what are the implications when the users do not view the technology from the same perspective. It’s a great article, teasing out why you can’t expect users to do what you want them to, and why you shouldn’t.
Technologists should *listen* to what their users are doing, not try to educate them to do what they want them to do when they give them feedback. When users are having difficulty doing something, it’s not because they don’t get it, it’s because they read the technology in a different way than intended. Given feedback, the responsibility of a technologist is to try to see why this misperception occurred and try to fix the technology to shift behavior. Simply telling them that they’re wrong won’t do much good.
Reminds me of Scott McCloud’s story about his kids “misusing” the dynamite eraser tool in KidPix (in his book “Understanding Comics;” look on Wikipedia for a good summary). The kids made artsy concentric circles with the tool. Scott used this to demonstrate the opportunities that arise when users “misuse” technology to discover new possibilities. Technologists benefit from encouraging this — e.g., Friendster becomes fun when people make fictional characters, and the Friendster owners should accept this.
The concept is rife with business perspective as well. What you describe is the eternal debate between Marketing and selling. In the early days the factory made what it though was a good product, and then sold it. This is the selling concept. Then some crazy sociologist came up with the idea of the modern focus group and this gave berth to the Marketing concept. This involves listening to the customer and building what they want. John Abrams built the system to fulfill his needs, and now if they begin to add features to satisfy the needs of others they are fulfilling the on-demand marketing concept by constantly updating the product to fit desires.