The user at the centre – or possibly in the back seat?

Usability, user-friendly, usable …. over the years, the terms in use have changed and so have the attitudes towards user inclusion, user participation, user-centeredness (…).

Although too many decisions on everything from content to functionality and design are still made with a naïve (or downright stupid) internal perspective, my totally unscientific impression is that many more people today are aware of the link between user/customer focus and a successful product or service. If not before, the penny usually drops when the complaints start coming in.

At the same time, technology companies that dare to try new things are exciting, and none of us would like to stand in the way of innovation, right? It was hardly focus groups of users who came up with the iPhone, and in order to stun the world we need to set imagination free and let the entrepreneurs invest, don’t we? The pace of technological development is breathtaking and even with AI support, we are just as incapable as before of foreseeing the future.

But, and this is important, this speed often takes its toll on quality, and when nothing is ever tested before launch, inaccessibility inevitably follows. Both the public and commercial sectors are creating new barriers to usage every day, resulting in growing frustration. In particular, many systems we use at work are surprisingly poor, in a world where we are supposed to trust self-driving cars. As users, we are exhausted by having to fight unintuitive technology that was supposed to be helping us. For people with disabilities, bad solutions risk hitting even harder. What impact will legislation and standards have when no one takes the time to read, learn, or reflect?

I really hope and believe that the amazing possibilities offered by technology will solve a lot of today’s accessibility problems. But I am concerned about how little thought seems to go into modern development processes and how rarely the user perspective is given the space it deserves. Not to mention how extremely rare it is that user testing is conducted with anything other than “average” users.

In research, we are lucky; we don’t have to keep up with competitors or release new versions every few months. Instead, we can take our time, look at old problems from new angles, and enjoy the inspiring and always instructive collaboration with users.

Susanna Laurin, Chair, Funka Foundation