Why We Hate "Users"

With Augmented Reality, the "Effortless Human Interface" Fundamentally Changes the Human / Computer Relationship.

Every company has its own set of core values.  Policies and practices may change over time, but the core values should remain constant.

At LogistiVIEW, one of our core values is this:  We hate "users."  ​

To be clear, it's the word that we oppose, not the actual people it describes.  In software, the term "users" is widely understood to mean the people who use the system.  The screens they see, keystrokes they make and gestures they perform are collectively called the "user experience" (or its less hoity-toity predecessor, "user interface").

As veterans of the software industry, we have developed a rather jaded view of the term.  Why?  Because it reduces humans to their relationship with the system.  It leads to system-centric thinking, and loses sight of the most important beneficiaries of our work - humans.  

Software developers tend to design from the system outwards, sometimes relegating the "end users" to just that - the end of the thought process.  Hearing your team ask, "but what will the users think?" may be an indication that the humans are an afterthought.

We strive to make the system serve the humans, not the other way around.  It's a passion that drives our concept of the "Effortless Human Interface."  Interacting with a system should come at no cost to human productivity.  We want the humans to have every available benefit of advanced software systems, with no physical hindrances as a trade-off.

We work with Augmented Reality technology.  It is not only important to relieve the burden of system interaction, we must augment the human's productivity beyond what they could do without us.  How can we display more helpful information, and capture more useful data, at still no cost to human productivity?

These notions are ingrained in the hallowed hallways of LogistiVIEW.  We do not say the word "users" with regards to our offerings.  We do not have a "users" table in our database.  We do not have "UX" or "UI" experts.  We say "humans."  Our database and code objects use "human" instead of "user."  We call our client-device building blocks, "HuXlets" - Human eXperience applets.

This is not a gimmick for us, as we firmly believe that keeping the focus on the humans who rely on us will result in better products for them. 

With all due respect to our future robot overlords, we will always place human concerns first, and the systems will benefit as well.