Consider deprecating the term "user"

[rhiaro]

Some consider the term "user" in tech to be dehumanising or exploitative. Should we replace "user" in this document with "people"?

Eg. See discussion on this recent thread.

Consider:

• is this a meaningful language change, or just ethics-washing?
• is "people" too ambiguous? What is a better alternative?
• understandability for non-native English speakers?
• already too entrenched / this would make this document inconsistent with others ("the Internet is for End Users", "user experience", "user-friendly")?

Discuss.

[torgo]

We discussed adding a brief glossary. We discussed changing some instances of the word user to people.

[torgo]

To clarify, we agreed to use "person" and "people" where possible but that there was still value to using the word user in some instances such as when we talk about "user needs" which is a core concept that underlies the Design Principles. In general we should not be refering to "users" in the abstract unless qualified - e.g. "web users" or "device users".