Thinking about words

February 18 2009
by

I would like to place a topic for discussion:

Yesterday I was talking to George and Jannes about the power of the words we use to name things or activities. Although we designers are very visual oriented people, words and textual concept still drive the way we perceive the world around us and also how we create new things. For example, if someone wants to design the new chair, she or he will most probably design another chair, because of the power of the archetype in the brain. Thinking about seating instead, might be better to create the new chair

Ok, my question is: we all use this Mystery Box, as called by JJ Abrams in his TED Talk, and we call it a computer. But is it appropriate in the present time to call this machine a computer? According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, a com·put·er (kÉ™m-pyōō’tÉ™r) is:
1. A device that computes, especially a programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information. 2. One who computes.

In the light of talking about experience design, user centered design, this term seems to me very obsolete, from the time of the perforated card and totally disconnected from its users. This machine now does so much more than compute if we think of the way it’s used: a device to connect to the web; a device that enables people to create whatever they want… Fair enough that it does that by computing data, but this original purpose has been now placed in the background, and new uses have come forward, and I wonder if a new name should follow this movement.

The point of this discussion, going back to the chair example, is that maybe rethinking the way we call this device we might broaden its uses and find newer ways and metaphors to design to and with this fantastic device.

Cheers,

Vitorio

from: Interaction Design

3 Comments leave a new comment!
February 19 2009
mariana vasconcellos permalink

from a designer’s perspective, you might be right. do your thing: change names, ideas, revolutionize.

but from a user’s perspective, unless you’re coming out with a whole new “chair”, renaming it, or trying to, seems useless. people will – as they’ve done with cars, refrigerators, games – just continue to associate new meanings and ideas to the “chair” as the product evolves, without necessarily needing to call it a different name.

February 20 2009
rc permalink

This reminds me of all names we give(/gave) the internet (information superhighway, cyberspace, the cloud, the web).

Interesting question, Vitorio. I wonder less about how the word computer limits us – those familiar with them and have a better guesses to the boundaries of what they can do – and more about how it restricts the understanding for those unfamiliar/uncomfortable with them. It is quite an offputting name, even if computers are hidden in so many things so many people use every day.

But the object still needs a name as object – outside of what it allows us to do – for us to have a catch-all way to refer to other objects of that kind when communicating with others with vastly different levels of understanding of what is done with tha object.

Have you been thinking of other names?

February 22 2009
vitorio permalink

I agree with you Roberto, that it is very important for those who are not familiar with it. I’ve been thinking of the word Enabler.

Inspired by that TED talk, now these machines are really democratizing many production tools and methods, communications and information access, in many ways enabling people to do something about their interests, or to know more about them.

I guess it leaves the former ambient where the word computer used to belong… the mainframes at the research institutions and gets closer to the devices present in houses all around the globe.

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