Understanding women in tech
Two posts I have read these last few days have really got me thinking about the way that websites and services have been designet until now.
The first moment came when I read Scott Smith’s posting on Changeist about designing for women. Here Scott claims that the design proces is in reality broken:
The big push by these companies and others is to get beyond what one female salesperson I spoke with in an electronics store derisively called the “shrink it and pink it” mentality of developing technology for women.
How did we get to this point? Because a lot of the stuff that’s being put out there is designed, developed and programmed by - men.
This is also true in the world of Web 2.0. As Digital Natives point out, the majority of fx blogs among youth is being created by girls (at least in the US - I don’t have corresponding numbers for Europe).
This was the second thing that got me thinking. How come there is this gender-split between development and actual use? And what do we do about it - if anything?
Maybe it’s time for entrepreneurs and developers to really put a bet towards integrating and understanding women in tech from a user-based point-of-view? It could turn out to be a huge opportunity.
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1 comment
Thanks for the link. There is a lot of interesting development going on behind the scenes to create technology applications and products that take into greater account the working, surfing, navigating and playing patterns of women, but it is almost invisible, whereas the sparkly pink devices aren’t. One driving factor in this change is the growing number of women on the design and development side, and another is the potential amount of revenue that can now be forecast in terms of sales of technology directly to women. As with the needs of the developing world, it often takes a hard market forecast to jumpstart attention. I agree it is a huge opportunity, and it also may open up new areas of usability, new types of applications etc.
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