[Sigia-l] Usability preferences by gender

[Listera]

"Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com" wrote:

> Of course, one of the things that makes the usability field interesting
> (IMHO) is that human behavior changes.  Ziya makes a good point -
> computers are much more ubiquitous today than 10 years ago.  Of course
> that doesn't mean that men and women are suddenly the same in how they
> use them.  It just begs the question "what's changed?"

Let me put it this way: If you compare women's participation in collegiate
sports in 1971 to that of 2001, you'll find pretty drastic changes, even
though I'm not aware of any widespread X/Y chromosome mutations in those
three decades. What's changed? Title IX in 1972.

So it is with computers. In 1990 when presumably that research was done,
there wasn't much of a personal computer market out there. Today about 600
million people are online worldwide and a huge chunk of that are girls,
women and girlie men. In virtually every single category you can name women
have increased their participation, in absolute and proportional numbers.

There are usually time demarcations that are important for research and the
'90s when the PC revolution happened in its entirety is one such unique
period for computing. I think it makes a difference pre and post.

Having said all that, I should also add that I don't find useful any of
these gross/global/non-specific numbers about gender, or anything else for
that matter, so we agree on that.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba