@stevenbodzinS Bodzin, Real American ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ we have countless words. The most generic is person / people. But in most cases we can refer their role, their profession, group they're part of, etc.

I decided to practice the avoidance of "user" some time ago, and found it becomes really natural to do so (few exceptions aside).

Even more I became very aware of the distancing, the othering effect, and how implicitly it places the designer/developer above those whom they should serve in an expert "we know best" role of privilege.

@smallcirclesjust small circles ๐Ÿ•Š
That's a whole lot of loading on "somebody who uses this thing."

Could it not be more useful to trace this back and position the attitude as the problem? The word is just an artifact; replace that with another artifact, and the attitude stands an excellent chance of simply getting attached to whatever you replace it with.

It also implies that the speaker doesn't use what they're building which, in a software context, probably indicates other problems as well.
@stevenbodzinS Bodzin, Real American ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ

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