User's knights in shining armour?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to address the relation between a user-centred objective and social constructionism and the possibility to refine user-centred fundamentals by enhancing the awareness of the relation between humans and the constructed environment. Through social constructionism we could enter a bit deeper into questions like; (1) reality's subjective character especially concerning technology development, (2) the importance of a power analysis while creating technological artefacts, (3) the importance of analysing our own role in technology's construction and (3) we are made aware of the importance of how technology is communicated to others. The article is in a way an extension of an argument put forward by Jacob Nielsen about usability as empiricism and/or ideology. © 2006 International Federation for Information Processing.