Bannon, L. J. (1991). From human factors to human actors: the role of psychology and human-computer interaction studies in system design. In J. Greenbaum, & M. Kyng (Eds.), Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems (pp. 25-44). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (edit)

This article is a passionate battle cry for system designers to stop treating users as machine-like beings, or worse, assuming they are “idiots.” Bannon’s thesis is that human users and their environments are complex, and that each user is different; only by drawing on the intelligence of the user and allowing them have a part in designing their environment will we be able to create truly great software. The first step, according to Bannon, is to first view users as “actors” instead of just “factors” in the design; from this shift in attitude the author proposes a number of methods for involving “active users” in the design process. While many of his concepts have made their way into the mainstream of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) practice, this article serves as an interesting reflection on how attitudes towards users have evolved. -- Anthony Hempell (2003)