[WEB4LIB] Re: In defense of stupid users

[Patricia F Anderson]

Beth Reiten said:
> I have personally found some of my more useful user-story conversations 
> at conferences to start with a SU story that then leads to a discussion 
> of how to remove the barriers that we may have unwittingly placed in 
> their way.  To enable that SU to go back to being a user in our minds, 
> rather than to just label them and let them rot in that pigeonhole. 
> The conversations that distress me are the ones that are *only* rants 
> about SU, that turn into one-upmanship contests.

Beth, thank you for your insightful and compassionate addition to the SU 
discussion. :-) The sort of thinking you encourage is not only true in the 
general, but across the board when thinking of diversity issues, 
ability/disability issues, cultural and communication differences, 
etcetera. Not everyone who 'looks American' speaks English, and there are 
'invisible' disabilities (and those people sometimes need that seat on the 
bus as badly as someone on crutches).

When I was a child, reading Highlights magazine, there was a story about 
the old idea of 'walking a mile in the other man's shoes.' In this 
children's story it was called the "In-the-Skin Game", and the goal was to 
try to understand what it would be like to be in the other person's skin. 
For some reason that story made a huge impression on me and I've never 
forgotten it. This approach applies to every area of life (at least those 
with other people). For example, if someone doesn't answer a question, 
maybe they're cranky/rude, or maybe they're low blood sugar, or maybe they 
don't speak English or didn't hear you or understand what you meant or 
understand that it was a question and not a comment. It is an interesting 
exercise to try to think of a positive reason why someone might have done 
(or not done) something that was perceived as rude/ thoughtless/ selfish/ 
mean/ or stupid. Giving them the benefit of a doubt.

Thank you for adding your voice to a different way of looking at this 
discussion.

Patricia Anderson, pfa at umich.edu