There's nothing necessarily wrong with the term "unsophisticated," though "new" or "novice" might be more neutral. However, it sounds as if the developers & product folks in your organization have a specific perception of the typical end-user that no new phrase is going to change. If it's important to build empathy within your organization for this group of end users (and it usually is), then there's more to it than simply changing the name.
There's a long history of changing the names of negatively perceived groups that has no effect on the negative perception -- the negativity eventually infiltrates the new name and you're stuck where you were before. The only solution is to address the perception itself. -Sarah -----Original Message----- I am having a bit of a terminology problem within my company. Most of the product people and developers like to refer to our users as "unsophisticated" (a euphemism for dumb). My understanding of the majority of our users is that they are generally of a lower socio-economic level and so don't have regular access or extensive experience online. I mentioned this to the director of product and he asked me to come up with a different terminology for our segment of users, as we wish to expand to the more affluent and internet savvy segment. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
