I coined the term ‘IT Psychology’ in my last job.
When I tell people that I am a psychologist in IT, I always get a shocked reaction. Even my psychologist friends had no idea about this essential and growing area!
Most technology exists only because it augments what would generally be done by people. If we don’t understand how people would normally do things and then make the IT conform to those requirements, then IT is destined to fail.
Organizational psychologists are expert at observing and documenting peoples’ work activities, identifying what creates high and low performance and understanding causes of variance between people. Most importantly, psychologists can manage change by researching and diagnosing why people do what they do. Not to mention helping businesses understand why people don’t do what they’re supposed to!
In the user experience community Paul Sherman suggests that UX professionals ‘most valuable contributions are not our design or user research efforts. Rather, our most valuable contributions occur when we function as change agents.” I‘d say psychologists are very good at that too!
So, if Psychologists working in IT can:
- Scientifically diagnose the root causes of human performance issues,
- Understand humans’ technology needs
- Measure how people do things in order to optimise performance, and
- Predict what they are going to do in the future.
It is only sensible to label them an ‘IT Psychologist’.
So next time someone tells you that their project all about IT, take a moment to think about what IT is actually for. It’s for us — people — to get things done better than before. IT is a means to an end, and its design and development starts and ends with people. Psychologists know a thing or two about people, how to manage change and improve peoples’ satisfaction with technology, so get them involved as early as possible in your next project.