[Sigia-l] Just for you women out there

[Listera]

Christopher Fahey:

> There's a fine line, but a line indeed, between a distate for sexism and a
> distate for gender markers in general. And then there's another fine line
> between a distate for gender markers in general and a simple distate for
> *feminine* gender markers. Which are you displaying?

Knee-jerk reaction to bad design.
 
> What about this laptop?
> <http://tinyurl.com/rbbdr>

As I have already said: ghastly.

> Is this a sexist stereotype of men as little more than mindless
> fantasy-driven adolescents, fetishizing weaponry and living in constant fear
> of femininity? 

Bad design.

> it's a free world

This is the notion I wanted to explore with my Long Tail question and
infinite monkey quip. If it's a 'free' world and beauty is only in the eye
of the beholder, is design dead? Virtually anything that can be assembled
will indeed be considered and purchased as 'beautiful'. *Any* design will be
good for *someone.*

> an idiosyncratic personality, something that automatically makes that person
> more interesting than the vast majority of the people in the world.

So design (evaluation) becomes simply a matter of percentages?
 
> Our laptops will look as different as our clothing and our hairstyles, which
> are already heavily gendered. Let's get used to it.

Are you saying that the fact that something merely looks different relieves
it of the necessity to conform to any design sensibilities? If a random
monkey can hot glue colored beads on a pinkish metallic surface attached to
an ugly box, we have to get used to it?

And if we did get used to it, why wouldn't we 'design' by automated
random-form generators? Or simply let users design their own objects?

And if those sound reasonable future directions, again, is 'design' dead?

----
Ziya

In design, interaction is the last resort.