Okay, I’m sitting in the back corner of the Hyatt bar at CHI, having a bit of a freak out. You see, I just read another set of papers, one by Daniel Fallman included, which has basically sealed the deal. I don’t want to have anything to do with the term “user.” Fallman’s paper, Design-oriented Human-computer Interaction, claims that designers are bricoleurs. I, however, think users are the same.
Because I don’t have time to be timid, I’ve emailed Fallman asking his thoughts on the matter. I’ve included a link to this sketch, which I drew during the drive down to Atlanta. Props to me for fighting my motion sickness!
Thoughts? Should I change the title of my capstone from Conceptualizing the User-Maker to Conceptualizing the Bricoleur? Argh this is so frustrating.
Binaebi Akah Calkins 
I would be cautious of the term Bricoleur because it is use in so many different ways in social science research and may be easily misunderstood. You might seek for a term that communicates more of the collaborative and co-design features of your population. And you have the option of creating a completel new term. Make sense?
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That completely makes sense. I’ll admit I’m afraid to use the term bricoleur for the same reasons you mentioned, but I’m unsure how to proceed. I don’t like the term User-Maker because I’ve disliked the word “user” for a long time. But it does, on the other hand, acknowledge the fact that someone else created a design, this person is now using it, but has also decided to tweak/make it into something else.
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