Gender HCI: What About the Software?

Опубликовано 8 сентября 2016, 18:55

Although there have been many studies designed to understand and ameliorate the low representation of females in computing, there has been little research into how software itself fits into the picture. Our focus is on how gender-neutral software interacts with gender differences. Specifically, we have concentrated on software aimed at supporting everyday users doing problem solving. For example, what if females' problem-solving effectiveness, using software such as Excel, would accelerate if the software were changed to take gender differences into account? This talk reports the investigations my students and I have conducted into whether and how software and its features affect females' and males' performance in computing tasks. It also describes an upcoming project I'll be leading at Microsoft, to investigate how gender differences might be playing out in Microsoft products. If you're interested in your project/product being studied as part of this, please come and learn how to join in.