Today I published the third edition of “The CUTGroup: Civic User Testing Group as a New Model for UX Testing, Digital Skills Development, and Community Engagement in Civic Tech”
It’s available in three ways:
- As a print-on-demand paperback from Amazon for $4
- Free download here
- In complete text on a stand-alone website at cut.group
The work, as always, is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.
I wrote a preface. I hope it is a preface to a lot of work & progress by us all.
Preface to the CUTGroup Book Third Edition
The purpose of this edition of the CUTGroup book is to make certain that it is widely available to user experience researchers, technologists, and people who work in community technology.
This new introduction highlights the limitations of the CUTGroup methodology and encourages the discovery of more and more effective methods of making technology that works for everyone
The CUTGroup model has been adopted in a number of places, including Detroit, Toronto, Seattle, St. Louis, Cleveland, Oakland, Miami, Chattanooga, and San Jose, and seems to still be offered in Chicago, though I have no strict proof of that.
Having said that, it would be inaccurate to say that CUTGroup— or any other system for deep listening and qualitative user research— is a dominant factor in the development of new apps, websites, and interfaces for people. Mass algorithmic calculations rule.
The systematic breaking of local laws by mobility companies to gain market share, the use of social media by foreign intelligence agencies to manipulate our election system, and the increase in surveillance products to deepen their store of data are accelerating trends of dehumanization in tech.
These trends were all present in 2014 when the CUTGroup methodology was published, and long before then. I just have to admit that I wasn’t in tune with it. I wasn’t willing to accept it.
That is changed now. I understand that companies like Facebook didn’t want to conform to the most basic expressions of user need, like conformance to the law. They allowed redlining racism and other terrors to be expressed in their ad product because they wanted more money.
How can we make a difference with user centered methodologies when the most important pieces of technology are actively working against our freedom?
The answer is we can’t. CUTGroup was designed to counter these systems of mass dehumanization, but it’s clear that those of us who practice these methods are merely playing around the edges of the tech industry.
It ends up like a horrendous Thanksgiving dinner where the large companies feast and civic-minded tech people are at the kids table or even worse, banished from the home.
User experience research appears to be a growing field, and has had a number of moments, especially in government services. But the discipline and its practitioners are marginalized. No one can credibly say that human-centered practices are at the center of the tech world.
We want to make a difference. We are not making a difference.
If we the people aren’t a part of the major software that runs people’s lives, it’s not only useless but downright dangerous to think that the tender actions we take will make life substantially better for people.
In order to be of use, we have to be deployed en masse. Let’s work toward that.