Stereotypes

Stereotypes are exaggerated beliefs about a given category, in this instance, people. These beliefs might be accu¬ rate or might be mistaken and as we shall see, stereotypes and stereotyping ap¬ pears to be widespread in user representations.

Each week, you should spend some time thinking about the course material before you come to class. To help facilitate that thinking, please post your thoughts in this discussion forum. Your thoughts will help prime our discussion in class. You are welcome to share any thoughts you have, but please make sure to respond to the following questions:

(1) What surprised you?

I was surprised about all the different groups that are being stereotyped. Here are a few:

"'expert users'; 'novice users'; 'older users'; 'younger users'; 'power users'; 'occasional users'; 'technophobes'; 'Unix gurus'; 'technophile'; 'earlier adopters', 'silver surfers'; 'the C-generation'; 'the mobile phone generation'; 'the Internet generation' and so on.(Page 4)"

I really enjoyed hearing about each one of these groups and I love that we can plan to design a system that will focus on each of these distinct groups who have different needs based on their abilities and catered to their disabilities.

This is my favorite part of the reading.

(2) What do you wonder?

I Wonder about the word archetypes. I think it is still a type of a stereotype but I winder how useful or helpful this can be.

So I looked it up in the dictionary:

1. An original model or type after which other similar things are patterned; a prototype: "'Frankenstein' . . . 'Dracula' . . . 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' . . . the archetypes that have influenced all subsequent horror stories" (New York Times).

2. An ideal example of a type; quintessence: an archetype of the successful entrepreneur.

3. In Jungian psychology, an inherited pattern of thought or symbolic imagery derived from the past collective experience and present in the individual unconscious.

(3) What are you struggling to understand?

This weeks reading was especially difficult for me to understand. However, after reading the first 3 pages THREE TIMES, I said a heartfelt prayer and was able to continue on reading and understanding came with time and effort.

Come to class prepared to discuss: What different perspectives are presented in the readings? How do you reconcile them? Which do you most identify with? What are important affordances or constraints of these methods? Why? When do you think these methods would be most applicable? Why?