Re: Gender and design

Luca,

Without any scientific research, I go along my life saying to those who want
to hear me these two things: there are more women than men in the
UI/usability business, and that women are better.

Once I read an article about a ongoing research in CMU about why there were
much many males than females in CS careers.
For me it was crystal clear, keep reading. We men like power while women are
practical.
For example a man might want to buy a Porsche because it *can* run at
200mph, while a woman would buy a Caravan because she *will* be able to go
elsewhere with all the family and the dog.
It happens that the max speed is 80mph, the man bought the power to run that
fast, albeit it's useless. The woman bought a less sexier transport that all
they will use, at 80mph.

What we men like of computers is that we can make them do what we want, or
at least this is what the advertisement says. Women don't buy that article
that's why they shy out of CS courses, until contents are changed to include
more humanly aspects.

But it happens that computer systems can really do things for the good of
the human people, that's where women buy.

Do a litle research. Open the "who we are" pages of several important
interaction desig companies, like Cooper, UIE, NN, and the like. Go Boxes &
Arrows too. Count women vs. men and see. Alse, go to tue UPA's salary polls
and look at the numbers, already calculated for you.

Computer systems are such a failure when compared, for example, with
contruction or mechanics or electronic systems, because the development
teams are staffed by men who want to do something bigger, men that go to the
media to tell how expensive their systems are )the more the better.)
On the contrary, women are capable of building completely reasonable
solutions that will not impress the media, on budget.

Nearly 50 years ago the (one of the) most succesful programming languages,
COBOL, was developed by a team leaded by a woman. Seven years ago many
mostly-male teams burned a never-before-seen amount of money in the internet
bubble.
Grace Hopper solved a problem with her language, while the internet bubble
teams (remember boo.com) bet on more bigger technology instead of looking at
the people.

I envision the monitor screen glass as a divider of two worlds, one inside
the computer populated by geeks, and the other in front of said glass
populated by perplexed users trying to make sense of what comes from the
inside. The people inside are the "interns" of Alan Cooper's book.

Well these are my ideas. I want to add that I'm not female. I used to be a
geek only many, many, years ago. Now I understood.

Luca, maybe this is not what you asked for. But I think it's something to be
kept in mind.

Ciao
--
Juan Lanus

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