User oppression in human-computer interaction: a dialectical-existential perspective
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0233 |
| Published date | 14 March 2022 |
| Date | 14 March 2022 |
| Pages | 758-781 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Rodrigo Freese Gonzatto,Frederick M.C. van Amstel |
User oppression in
human-computer interaction:
a dialectical-existential
perspective
Rodrigo Freese Gonzatto
Polytechnic School, PUCPR, Curitiba, Brazil, and
Frederick M.C. van Amstel
Industrial Design Academic Department (DADIN), UTFPR, Curitiba, Brazil
Abstract
Purpose –This research theorizes the condition of human beings reduced to being users (and only users) in
human-computer interaction (HCI), a condition that favors them becoming objects or targets of commercial
dark patterns, racialized profiling algorithms, generalized surveillance, gendered interfacesand heteromation.
Design/methodology/approach –The reconceptualization of the users’condition is done by confronting
HCI theories on users with a dialectical-existential perspective over human ontology. The research is presented
as a conceptual paper that includes analyzing and revising those theories to develop a conceptual framework
for the user oppression in HCI.
Findings –Most HCI theories contribute to the user oppression with explicit or implicit ontological statements
that denies their becoming-more or the possibility of users developing their handiness to the full human
potential. Put together, these statements constitute an ideology called userism.
Social implications –HCI needs to acknowledge its role in structuring oppression not just in sexism, racism,
classism and ableism, but also the specific relation that pertains to HCI: userism. Similar to other fields,
acknowledging oppression is the first step toward liberating from oppression.
Originality/value –The user is an existential condition forHCI theories, yet few theories can explain in depth
how this condition affects human development. From the dialectical-existential perspective, the user condition
can be dehumanizing. Computers may intensify existing oppressions through esthetic interactions but these
interactions can be subverted for liberation.
Keywords Users, Human-computer interaction, Oppression, Ontological design, Social justice informatics,
Userism
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Users [1] are an existential condition for human-computer interaction (HCI), working as a
common ground between designers [2] concerning the people who engage with the products
they develop (Hyysalo and Johnson, 2015). HCI uses this concept to define a dedicated object
or a matter of concern within the larger informatics area (Cooper and Bowers, 1995), playing
the role of a user science, user research, or interdisciplinary user studies. Several theories,
approaches, methods and techniques lie around the so-called users (Cooper and Bowers, 1995;
Grint and Woolgar, 1997;Gonzatto, 2018). HCI strives to represent users (Suchman, 2002,
2007), and by doing so faithfully and accurately, seeks to legitimize itself as an academic field.
HCI claims to develop knowledge on the so-called users’internal configuration (Nicolaci-da-
AJIM
74,5
758
This research stems from the groundwork done by the first author in his doctoral thesis on users and the
production of existence. The second author built upon that work and brought userism as a discussion
theme in the Design & Oppression network meetings. The authors are grateful to all the people who
joined these meetings and to Mateus F. Lima Pelanda, Luiz Ernesto Merkle and Eduardo A B M Souza
for the insightful comments on earlier versions of this text.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 15 August 2021
Revised 6 December 2021
18 February 2022
Accepted 21 February 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 5, 2022
pp. 758-781
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0233
Costa et al., 2004), advocate for their interests (Cooper and Bowers, 1995;Cooper, 1993;
Woolgar, 1990), place them at the center of the design (Vandenberghe and Slegers, 2016;
Spinuzzi, 2003), protect them from security risks associated with usage errors (Pereira et al.,
2015), satisfy their human needs (Kaptelinin and Nardi, 2012) and make their life functionally
easier (Bannon and Bødker, 1991).
HCI theories typically define so-called users by how they relate to a system (Bardzell and
Bardzell, 2015b), ranging from a physical body, an interactive information processor, an
information receiver, a meaning producer, a consumer, or a worker. Kuutti (2001) organizes
the body of work on this topic into four different waves: (1) users as cogs in a rational
machine; (2) users as a source of errors for those who develop systems; (3) users as partners in
social interactions; and (4) users as consumers. None of these waves, however, captures the
existential condition of being a user or, better put, being a human that has gone through a
process of userization [3] by own effort, by coercion, by education, or by any kind of motive
that prevents developing further than a user by interacting with computers.
There are, nevertheless, some critical studies that problematize the ideological and
rhetorical use of users in HCI. They identified users’as a mere scenic resource in the design
space (Sharrock and Anderson, 1994), playing the role of naive (Bannon, 1991), exotic (Cooper
and Bowers, 1995) people (at least in comparison to alleged designers), who become prey to
usability problems, and for that same reason, demand the constant salvation of heroes who
know their ways of interacting with computers (Spinuzzi, 2002;Cooper and Bowers, 1995;
Lima and Almeida, 2016). These people are abstracted from their historical or community
references (Bannon and Bødker, 1991;Oudshoorn et al., 2004), stereotyped (Melo, 2012),
pathologized (Cooper and Bowers, 1995), disembodied (Lupton, 1995) and disempowered
(Kerssens, 2016;Clement, 1994;Spinuzzi, 2002) to become passive beings on the designers’
hands, similarly to an imaginary friend (Massanari, 2010). Sometimes they are
instrumentalized to build and maintain information infrastructures (Star and Ruhleder,
1996), create content in social networks (Kushner, 2021) and work for free in heteromation
(Ekbia and Nardi, 2017)—automation that relies upon invisible human labor like that
provided by mechanical Turk platforms (Irani, 2015). The prevailing conceptualization of so-
called users as abstract minds that freely interact with computers ignore the concrete
characteristics of their physical bodies (Lupton, 1995;Klemmer et al., 2006;Asaro, 2000), but
also the equally concrete characteristics of their social bodies —race/ethnicity, sex/gender,
class, disability and others (Van Dijk et al., 2014). Reading between the lines, we can see a
fundamental ethical question coming across these critical studies: does HCI dehumanize
people by treating them as mere users of computers?
The present research seeks to answer this question by framing the condition of being a
user in the current HCI production relations as an oppression that reduces general people’s
participation in computer production. Computers are increasingly necessary to produce
human existence in modernized societies. The oppression safeguards the privilege of
designing computers to alleged designers while denying these same possibilities for those
defined as users as if this was a natural, logical or unavoidable production relation.
Scrutinizing this production relation may explain why there are so few considerations of
the existential implications of becoming a user and developing further from that condition in
HCI. Even participatory design that, in the past, questioned and fought the user oppression
with concepts such as deskilling (Ehn, 1988), ended up being co-opted to reproduce the
oppressive relations of production (Spinuzzi, 2002;Berg, 1998;H€
o€
ok et al., 2019;Ehn, 2014,
2017). This issue requires seeking theoretical resources beyond design, computing and
informatics, and perhaps, beyond the epistemic center of the academic world, the
Global North.
By looking at our existential condition of being HCI users living and working in Brazil, we
found plenty of theoretical resources to understand the user oppression in the works of the
User
oppression
in HCI
759
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