Susan Harkus

User-centred architecture
Engaging content & communications
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Countering The User Illusion -
Designing for the Me

When users engage, the conscious is only the starting point

For some time, I have felt strongly challenged, as a designer of online information, by the fact that the user's objective is only the starting point when the user seeks information.

Something other than that conscious objective seems to drive browse and engagement decisions.

Where do these other drivers come from? In the past, I've 'located' them in the user's agenda and the user's context but neither agenda or context explain the real issue—what is the relationship between the conscious and unconscious parts of the self, and which part is the most influential?

'The User Illusion' will reshape the way we think about online design

For the past several months, my conscious self has been struggling through Tor Nørretranders's very demanding book, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size.

Nørretranders has devoted his book to exploring the relationship between our conscious and unconscious selves, between the conscious I and the unconscious Me.

He presents a summary of the research into information theory, starting from the early 19th century, and his conclusions have synergies with the current Australian marketing push to analyse customer brain reactions to phenomena, rather than asking customers themselves 'how they react' and 'what they think'.

He demonstrates that the conscious and unconscious, the I and the Me, are constantly in play, and concludes inevitably that the Me is pre-eminent.

Design cannot hide behind the illusion that the I  is in control

The implications of Nørretranders' slim tome are enormous.

• They challenge the very assumptions that most user experience specialists make about information gathering strategies involving users such as focus groups or usability testing.
• They issue stark challenges to writers and designers who seek only to engage the I.

Nørretranders published his 'work' in 1991. It took another seven years before the book was translated and published in English in 1998. I have been using techniques that target designing for the Me since I first took up online design in the mid-1990s but typically, the design we see everywhere around us continues to throw an avalanche of information at the I.

Nørretranders' book is a heavy read - definitely NOT written for the Me, definitely not providing an easy subliminal acquisition of insights. My paper is a much lighter work but may be useful as a starting point for designing for the Me.

Designing Information for the Me: Implications of the 'User Illusion' (pdf, 136 KB)
Published in Best Practices, Center for Information-Development Management, Vol 8, Number 2, Denver, USA, April, 2006.

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