User artifacts – people annotate their stuff

Jon Howarth / Human Factors / Usability / User Research

As I was walking from my desk to the company break room, I noticed the variety of ways in which my colleagues and I have “annotated” computer equipment that we use. Here are a couple of examples:

1. I put a piece of tape on one side of the USB dongle for my wireless mouse, so that I know which way to insert it into a USB port on my laptop. The dongle is symmetrical; without the tape, I would have to guess which side of the dongle should be facing up.
2. One of my colleagues has drawn a red arrow on the lid to her laptop near the back hinge. The power port is on the back of her laptop and the arrow allows her to plug in her power supply without having to turn around the laptop.
3. Another colleague uses a blue Velcro strip to wrap her computer power supply. The strip is permanently attached to the end of the power supply that plugs into an electrical power outlet, not the side that plugs into the computer. The strip helps her easily identify which plug is hers when she wants to unplug her laptop from a power strip that has other devices plugged into it.

These “annotations” are often referred to as user artifacts. People create user artifacts to supplement the cognitive and physical affordances provided by products or to repurpose products for use in contexts or domains in which they were not intended to be used. These user artifacts are often clues to how to improve products or suggestions for new products. Additionally, users often want to “fix” a product with the least amount of effort possible. As a result, user artifacts often represent incredibly simple and inexpensive fixes or solutions.

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