Equal opportunities in User Centred Design?
Posted on | July 13, 2009
IDEO, The worlds greatest proponent of User Centered Design have released a ‘toolkit’ to promote a human centred approach to social development projects.
It’s full of top tips… one of which seems worryingly chauvinistic…
If you can’t read the image, it kindly reminds us; “To ensure there is a balanced gender perspective involve female staff in all aspects of this process” … (eek!)
I’m sure IDEO had the best intentions, but with half of the world’s humans being female, do we really need to be told to include women in a Human Centred Design process ?
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7 Responses to “Equal opportunities in User Centred Design?”
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July 13th, 2009 @ 11:43 am
Well… At least you save research costs since woman staff are paid less! #PayParity
But seriously, I think it’s a good to remind people to ensure that woman are represented – especially in studies involving societies where they don’t typically have an equal voice.
Sure we might take that for granted, but I’m sure a huge group of people would unfortunately not take that into consideration
July 13th, 2009 @ 11:54 am
That’s a good point Mathew, not all of society is as well balanced as we’d hope.
Perhaps that was their experience so they felt they needed to add that comment.
or … maybe the only photo they had to hand when they went to print was this one with the three blokes in it and they thought it looked a bit one-sided.
July 13th, 2009 @ 11:59 pm
From the David Brent school of design advice?
July 14th, 2009 @ 12:32 am
Hmm.. yes, maybe they simply skipped the first two letters and it’s become ..Man Centred ?
Three of the UX companies I have worked for were founded by women… I’m sure they’d be chuffed to be considered worthy of participating in an affinity sort.
July 15th, 2009 @ 9:47 pm
I think what disturbs me about this the most is that it so clearly implies that it was written for the guys, by the guys.
I’d find this depressing, except that it is such a long way from my personal experience of working in this field, thank goodness.
Having not had a chance to read this document in full, I wonder whether they had equal concerns about involving other non-white-male perspectives?
July 17th, 2009 @ 1:11 am
UX is gender neutral, however other industries, such as railways and to a perhaps finance, are more male dominated.
My experience is that clients prefer to work alongside consultants with whom they identify; they feel safer. This includes less challenging aspects, such as matching the size of company to the size of the consultancy (big clients, big consultancies).
In turn, then, if our client isn’t practiced at inclusion, I wonder if usability tips the place to encourage change to individual and corporate behaviour?
July 17th, 2009 @ 4:05 am
I’m sure IDEO is not dominated by men, but if male dominated industries, (rail for example) haven’t recognized that half of their passengers / customers are female…
…heaven help them when trying to cater for their future needs.
If including women in UX type projects is a first step to their recognizing the value of a balanced team, you might be onto something there Catherine.