Tool? Medium? What is software?

Bob Buxley recently stated that how we approach our UX work as a UX Designer "largely results from whether you see software as a TOOL – purpose-built for others, or as a MEDIUM – a peer to movies, music, and books". Peter Merholz argued that Software cannot be reduced to tool nor medium. Now I've just read in Bob's "About" that you he's "Believing that software is a uniquely modern medium on par with literature, movies, and music".

And I thought about that for a bit.

As a user I see a lot of my software as tools, because I want to achieve something with it. Surely software has components of media, especially if you are creating and designing software. But is it a medium like others? While works of artists and creatives from other media surely inspire us UX Designers, I argue that software differs.

It differs a lot.

So, let's dive into this. Yes, I'd say software can be seen as a medium in its aspect of communication:

• Question in, answer out.
• Command in, result out.
• Data in, insight out.

This communication makes use of texts, visuals, timing, sounds, haptics, and more, so it's a medium that combines many, thus multimedia, but then a movie is multimedia, too ;) Anyway, I find the term "multimedia" a bit 90ies style and overused for a long time already. Software seems to be a new thing that is not thoroughly understood.

I think the point is that it's a bidirectional medium. So the aspect of software as a "communication channel" may be the more interesting point than it being a medium.I think of software as a dialog between user and... no, not the machine. But between user and developer. It's a dialog with a tricky medium, which is software. It's tricky, because half of the conversation between user and developer is put into stone... uh... into code, and thus fixed.

With lots of software out there, the fixed parts of the dialog, formulated by the developer, don't fit the variable parts, formulated by the user. So it feels like talking to someone who just doesn't get you. We all know the resulting frustration all too well, right?

Software is bi-directional communication between user and developer.

With that in mind, you can apply a lot of what we know about communication. Think of your favorite communication theory or the 4 sides of a message and so on. It's also useful to ask questions to your product team:

• What do we need the user to tell us so that the program can do the right thing?
• What behavior of the user helps us find out if the user trusts our software?
• Can the recipient decode this error message and decipher what he/she needs to do to resolve the error situation?
• What information about the system status do we need to reveal so that the user can make sense of the situation?
• Do we want the user to do something in this situation? If so, how do we tell the user?
• What does the user tell us with his/her behavior that the user wants our program to do?

I'm sure you can quickly think of more. And as a UX designer I ask these questions, no matter if I have in mind that this is a bi-directional communication. Thinking

The job uf a UX Designer is to make this dialog a meaningful communication, a conversation that suits the user's mindset, language and needs.

So that's it? Software is tool, communication and medium? Oh, it's much more, it's games, automation, art, annoying, playground, distraction... and you quickly get metaphysical and philosophical once you get started thinking about it. You can see that in the comments of the post I mentioned above.

My take-away is: today we haven't understood software really well. Our frustration with software every day is proof enough for me. We are still at the beginning of a long exploration, and the next decades will be exciting. UX as a discipline will be a main contributor, pioneering and scouting paths ahead. And I'm looking forward to explore the things to come.