![User icon 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/User_icon_2.svg)
A user is a person who utilizes a
computer or
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics ...
service.
A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username include login name, screenname (or screen name), account name, nickname (or nick) and handle, which is derived from the identical
citizens band radio
Citizens band radio (also known as CB radio), used in many countries, is a land mobile radio system, a system allowing short-distance person-to-many persons bidirectional voice communication among individuals, using two way radios operating on ...
term.
Some software products provide services to other systems and have no direct
end users.
End user
End users
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrato ...
are the ultimate human users (also referred to as
operators
Operator may refer to:
Mathematics
* A symbol indicating a mathematical operation
* Logical operator or logical connective in mathematical logic
* Operator (mathematics), mapping that acts on elements of a space to produce elements of another sp ...
) of a software product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product such as
sysops,
database administrator
Database administrators (DBAs) use specialized software to store and organize data. The role may include capacity planning, installation, configuration, database design, migration, performance monitoring, security, troubleshooting, as well as ba ...
s and
computer technicians. The term is used to abstract and distinguish those who only use the software from the developers of the system, who enhance the software for end users. In
user-centered design
User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or proc ...
, it also distinguishes the software operator from the client who pays for its development and other
stakeholders who may not directly use the software, but help establish its
requirements. This abstraction is primarily useful in designing the
user interface
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
, and refers to a relevant subset of characteristics that most expected users would have in common.
In user-centered design,
personas are created to represent the types of users. It is sometimes specified for each persona which types of user interfaces it is comfortable with (due to previous experience or the interface's inherent simplicity), and what technical expertise and degree of knowledge it has in specific fields or
disciplines. When few constraints are imposed on the end-user category, especially when designing programs for use by the general public, it is common practice to expect minimal technical expertise or previous training in end users.
The
end-user development
End-user development (EUD) or end-user programming (EUP) refers to activities and tools that allow end-users – people who are not professional software developers – to program computers. People who are not professional developers can use EUD ...
discipline blurs the typical distinction between users and developers. It designates activities or techniques in which people who are not professional developers create automated behavior and complex data objects without significant knowledge of a programming language.
Systems whose
actor
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...
is another system or a
software agent
In computer science, a software agent or software AI is a computer program that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency, which derives from the Latin ''agere'' (to do): an agreement to act on one's behalf. Such "action on beha ...
have no direct end users.
User account
A user's account allows a user to
authenticate
Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicatin ...
to a system and potentially to receive
authorization
Authorization or authorisation (see spelling differences) is the function of specifying access rights/privileges to resources, which is related to general information security and computer security, and to access control in particular. More fo ...
to
access
Access may refer to:
Companies and organizations
* ACCESS (Australia), an Australian youth network
* Access (credit card), a former credit card in the United Kingdom
* Access Co., a Japanese software company
* Access Healthcare, an Indian BPO se ...
resources provided by or connected to that system; however, authentication does not imply authorization. To log into an account, a user is typically required to
authenticate
Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicatin ...
oneself with a
password
A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...
or other
credentials for the purposes of
accounting,
security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...
, logging, and
resource management
In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective development of an organization's resources when they are needed. Such resources may include the financial resources, inventory, human skills, production resources, or i ...
.
Once the user has logged on, the operating system will often use an identifier such as an integer to refer to them, rather than their username, through a process known as
identity correlation
In information systems, identity correlation is a process that reconciles and validates the proper ownership of disparate user account login IDs ( user names) that reside on systems and applications throughout an organization and can permanently li ...
. In
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
systems, the username is correlated with a
user identifier
Unix-like operating systems identify a user by a value called a user identifier, often abbreviated to user ID or UID. The UID, along with the group identifier (GID) and other access control criteria, is used to determine which system resources a us ...
or ''user ID''.
Computer systems operate in one of two types based on what kind of users they have:
* Single-user systems do not have a concept of several user accounts.
*
Multi-user
Multi-user software is computer software that allows access by multiple users of a computer. Time-sharing systems are multi-user systems. Most batch processing systems for mainframe computers may also be considered "multi-user", to avoid leaving t ...
systems have such a concept, and require users to identify themselves before using the system.
Each user account on a multi-user system typically has a
home directory, in which to store
files pertaining exclusively to that user's activities, which is protected from access by other users (though a
system administrator
A system administrator, or sysadmin, or admin is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems, especially multi-user computers, such as servers. The system administrator seeks to en ...
may have access). User accounts often contain a public
user profile
A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify an individual, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as ...
, which contains basic information provided by the account's owner. The files stored in the home directory (and all other directories in the system) have file system permissions which are inspected by the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...
to determine which users are granted access to read or execute a file, or to store a new file in that directory.
While systems expect most user accounts to be used by only a single person, many systems have a special account intended to allow anyone to use the system, such as the username "anonymous" for
anonymous FTP and the username "guest" for a guest account.
Password storage
On
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...
systems, local user accounts are stored in the file
/etc/passwd
passwd is a command on Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and most Unix-like operating systems used to change a user's password. The password entered by the user is run through a key derivation function to create a hashed version of the new password, wh ...
, while user passwords may be stored at
/etc/shadow
in its
hashed form.
On
Microsoft Windows, user passwords can be accessed within the Credential Manager program. These passwords are located in the Windows profile directory
Username format
Various computer operating-systems and applications expect/enforce different rules for the format.
In
Microsoft Windows environments, for example, note the potential use of:
* User Principal Name (UPN) format – for example: UserName@Example.com
* Down-Level Logon Name format – for example: DOMAIN\UserName
Terminology
Some usability professionals have expressed their dislike of the term "user" and have proposed changing it.
Don Norman stated that "One of the horrible words we use is 'users'. I am on a crusade to get rid of the word 'users'. I would prefer to call them 'people'."
Users of computer systems and software products generally lack the technical expertise required to fully understand how they work.
[ Jargon File entry for ] Power user
A power user is a user of computers, software and other electronic devices, who uses advanced features of computer hardware, operating systems, programs, or websites which are not used by the average user. A power user might not have extensive tec ...
s use advanced features of programs, though they are not necessarily capable of
computer programming
Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as anal ...
and
system administration.
See also
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:User (Computing)
Computing terminology
Identity management
Consumer