I’m glad I can blame the patriarchy, ‘cos I was feeling like a bit of a thicky, I can tell you.

Does Twisty get a cut when anybody uses that phrase?…

So what if they tell you what they want. You can’t trust what they say anyway. We all know when a woman says “no” she really means yes. So you make your product in pink and then she complains that you’re condescending and stereotyping.

It just goes to show you: Bitchez Is Crazzeee!…

[/snark]

***

Most women I know are extremely practical. Either something is helpful and easy to use or it’s a problem (and no, dumbing things down is not the answer either…). I think most manufacturers would be far better off having women design and test their stuff first, rather than using men first and leaving women as an afterthought.

My experience has been that a lot of men are rather dense when it come to usability issues…

The ‘feminine’ response is, hey, I spent $2,000 on this computer, it better just come out of the box and freaking work, or I’m not paying $4,000 for a television that doesn’t even fit in my living room. This is painted as something a little unreasonable, but understandable since women are a bit stupid, and the fact that companies have started to take this attitude under consideration is painted as a heroic (and novel) effort on the part of the manufacturer to cater to these neurotic demands.

If you think about it, the response that has been assigned “feminine” is actually the more reasonable one: these are luxury goods being discussed, and you wouldn’t call a male executive a pussy for demanding that he get his money’s worth out of a product or service. And a man who spent $2,000 on a computer wouldn’t think twice about demanding it meet his expectations. However, since the ‘male’ standard of technology was defined by engineers and geeks, who don’t mind if stuff is complicated or if wires are everywhere, then it becomes imperative to the article’s premise to ignore the fact that the ‘reasonable’ masculine standard really doesn’t make any sense for the majority of consumers. And since that’s the case, then any move away from the standard must be something foriegn brought in by women, because the men are all ready all in agreement, right?

That’s exactly it, and if you click on the one link I referenced where other people discuss the article, that guy says exactly that: dumbing stuff down for “women” is actually dumbing it down for “everyone who isn’t an early-adopting techophile.” Which is what makes the article so damn offensive: there was no reason to write about lighter, easier to use sophisticated cameras and normal-sized HDTVs as though these things are ‘feminine.’ It’s equally offensive to imply that men love to spend scads of money on poorly designed, unweildy products just because they’re all techie and cool.

But it’s true that engineers and software developers are predominately men, and often a specific type of man at that, and caring about the customer is a skill that women are better socialized to do regardless of their level of technical training, so it seems like actually giving a crap about the end user is gendered as feminine. This is of course crap, because at least half of your technically incompetent but wealthy end users will be busy men who will value ease of use and compatibility just as much as busy women.

So I guess my point is that chalking up this concern for ease and convenience to magic ovary rays is lazy journalism, and a very tired marketing campaign that has appeared many times in the past.

I once heard someone say that more women should get into the field of software because once that happens, computers will be simpler to use. I can’t help but get the same feel of that argument from your paragraph above. Maybe I misunderstood. But I think what is happening is companies are learning the good sense not to let engineers design user interfaces unless they are specialised in that field. Human-computer interaction is difficult and complex and a lot of things have gone wrong from bad user interface designs and absolutely ridiculous mistakes (like a pilot reading altitude in feet instead of km). I don’t think this is about women making electronics simpler for woman, it’s about making electronics simple for anybody outside of the lab it was developed in. And the oversized tvs, again not just men vs. women, but the “bigger is always better” culture.

For a minute, I thought, “This Mandy Iswarienko is pretty damned funny!” Then I realized it was all you. As usual.