Implicit User

A concept from semiotic engineering describing the hypothetical user that a designer envisions when creating an interface — encompassing assumptions about the user's behaviour, experience, competence, expectations, and goals. Every interface carries an implicit user embedded in its design choices: the layout, language, interaction patterns, and visual hierarchy all reflect who the designer imagined would be using the system. Communication between designer and user succeeds when the real (empirical) user recognises themselves in this implicit user. In accessibility, the concept highlights how interfaces often embed an implicit user who is sighted, hearing, and neurotypical, thereby excluding users with disabilities not from the content itself but from the communicative relationship the designer intended to establish.