UXINDIA 2015- Is Your Product Gender Neutral?(Gayna Williams) by uxindia

Can an engineering team that is 80% male successfully design a product for an audience that is 50% female? This was a question Gayna Williams posed to men and women working in software. The women responded 'Definitely not' and the men responded 'I'd never thought about it, but now you've asked probably not'. First the research unpacked how personal opinion is brought into the work place and influences business decisions. Both genders confessed to using personal opinion; however it was discovered that women rarely raised a feminine opinion.

Transcript

2. IS YOUR PRODUCT GENDER NEUTRAL? Gayna Williams @ifshecanican Research Paper: Is Your Product Gender Neutral ifshecanican.com/zdb-reports.html gayna@ifshecanican
3. A QUICK HISTORY LESSON
4. A brief history… Centralized mainframe computer systems
5. A brief history… The personal computer at work and then at home
6. A brief history… Mobile, Wearable, Social Computing, IoT
7. The future… Tech is everywhere
8. Who makes the products? male female 80% male?
9. Who makes the products? male female 90% male?
10. Can the team develop for the customer base?
11. My fear of the future….
12. SOME DIFFERENCES
13. Our bodies are different Men Women 2.5%tile 50%tile 97.5%tile 2.5%tile 50%tile 97.5%tile Hand length 6.8 7.5 8.2 6.2 6.9 7.5 Hand breadth 3.2 3.5 3.8 2.6 2.9 3.1 Thumb length 2.4 2.7 3.0 2.2 2.4 2.6
14. Women Shop Men Buy Cunningham, & Roberts (2006) Inside her pretty little head. Lifestyles are different
15. Lifestyles are different Females do twice as much housework as males, have less leisure time, and sleep less Leisure Time Study compared behavior of female scientists & male scientists - http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2010/JF/feat/schie.htm
16. Inflation? Longevity? Health? Will I be bored? Women worry about different things when anticipating retirement Lifestyles are different http://agelab.mit.edu/2007
17. Technology use is different Adoption paths are different “More than half the bloggers in the US are women. They persevere longer and write more” “Twitter behaviors are different. Women actually say things, guys give references to other things” http://www.forbes.com/sites/gyro/2012/08/20/women-are-from-pinterest-men-are-from-google/ Women using Pinterest 72-97% of user base Google+ 71% male user base
18. Buying power & influence is different “2/3 of consumer wealth in America will belong to women within the next decade” “$7 trillion is contributed by women in the US in consumer & business spending.” http://www.smartdesignworldwide.com/pdf/SmartDesign_DesignandGender.pdf Women buy or influence 80% of consumer and business goods or services
19. OPINION & DEVELOPMENT How does personal opinion influence decision making?
20. Deciding what to build Initial Tradeoffs Customer Business Technology Date Resources Quality Continuous Tradeoffs
21. Does personal opinion influence decision making? Yes! Men & Women confessed Personal opinion influences decision making Note: Research disciplines claimed to only work from data and not use opinion in decision making
22. Does personal opinion influence decision making? 3 motivations • Personal Gain “I want this feature in the product” • Enthusiasm & bragging rights “This will make us the best product out there, people need to know about it, because we can…” • Opportunity to learn “I will be able to try out new practices if we add this”
23. Does gender influence opinion? Yes! Women do not like to share feminine opinions
24. Does gender influence opinion? 3 reasons “I do not want to raise any opinion that will identify me as a woman in the room” “I do not want to suggest an idea that will be voted down, so why put it out there in the first place” “I have forgotten to think like a woman at work”
25. THE ENGINEERING PROCESS
26. Building a product Concept Early Development Development Release & Adoption
27. Concept Phase Concept Early Development Development Release & Adoption Brain Storming Ideas Voting on ideas Market research assessment Pitching idea to executive approval Pitching ideas for VC/investors Prototypes
28. Categories Home Movies Holiday gifts Gas &parking Bars & good times Business food Games
30. Early Development Phase Concept Early Development Release & Adoption Development Explicit business-focused principles - Scorecards, bug counts, feature sets Implicit principles - Personal experience, priorities, opinions - Loud voices and forceful personalities
31. Release & Adoption Concept Early Development Development Release & Adoption Pre-release or Beta testing Exit criteria / quality gates Adoption path Advertising
32. TAKING ACTION For your teams & for you
33. Costs Nothing 1. Always use ‘She’ as the default pronoun 2. Execs should ask for female customers to be represented in prototypes and demos 3. Require all customer data to show gender percentages 4. Don’t allow men to misrepresent female family members in discussions
34. Small Effort 5. Only do research with women, if the team believes there are no gender differences in user group 6. Male execs/investors should have trusted female reviewer for balanced insights 7. Have a women-only brainstorming team or at least 60% women for generating product features/tasks 8. When using a voting system – provide gender proportional votes
35. Bigger Effort 9. Women only early adopter panels to balance feedback from pre-releases Foot note Customer/User focused Design! Give a voice to less empowered disciplines to bring value to the process
36. THANK YOU Gayna Williams gayna@ifshecanican.com Research Paper: Is Your Product Gender Neutral ifshecanican.com/zdb-reports.html Questions?