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Women Need Larger Screens for Desktop Navigation?
Mac of Macistan writes "In a recent
article in the New Scientist, Microsoft's R&D claims that women have a harder time navigating the desktop because their spatial abilities are roughly 20% lower than men's abilities. Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."
Well, that would explain why most men don't stop and ask for directions, eh?
Wider screens and more realistic 3D animations, they say, will boost women's spatial orientation and 3D map-reading skills to match those of their male counterparts.
Heck, this'll boost anyone's spatial orientation.
Women, they found, find it easier to get their bearings when this animation is smooth and realistic, rather than jerky.
Just about everyone does.
Is it possible that with more intensive training, this spatial perception inequality might be eliminated?
(Hint: Use this as an excuse to get more UT2K3 playing in!!!)
... This one will really make the sh*t hit the fan in terms of gender equality. To make a blanket statement about the abilities of either gender is bound to form harsh criticism from many fronts.
.. that women possess lower spatial abilities, and it tends
I mean perhaps the "spatial ability" of the different genders is tuned to a different form of interface. Perhaps the symptom we should be addressing is that current user interfaces are designed for use from the male aspect, and therefore the generic woman (whatever that is) functions in such an environment.
In my psychology days we looked at many examples of studies that were swayed in a particular direction to to flaws in the testing procedures.
Not to say that this article in new scientist really backs up its claims - statements such as it seems
But that's aside from the point - I can accept that men and women interact with a user interface in differing ways. But to suggest that taking a "male" user interface, and making it bigger - to adapt it more to the "generic woman" (see above) - I find ludicrous, and a vast underestimation of the task at hand.
I'm just stirring, but I think it's really something to think about in the next decade as we move away from windowing environments to whatever is next - be it 3D interfaces on a 2D display, virtual immersion - or whatever... We need to think about things more than "lets make it bigger".
I work in this field of psychology and believe it or not, this is one of the few areas of human performance where genuine sex differences are observed - repeatedly and reliably.
You can see this principally in the visuo-spatial section of IQ tests. Some authors (e.g. Kimura) argue that this is because IQ tests tap a particular aspect of visuo-spatial awareness and that men are naturally superior in this regard, but that women excel in other visuo-spatial tests which tap different facets of the skill.
If you go back forty years, IQ tests used to "show" that ethnic minorities were less clever - now it is known that those early tests were highly culturally-specific ("If you give the maid twenty items of clothing to press but she already has another thirty-two from your Ma and Pa, what time can you arrive at your tennis lesson?") - I think in a couple of decades we'll be seeing IQ tests that are a whole lot less gender-biased.
Mod early, mod often.
don't you think the few women who DO use PCs are in the almost-like-a-man range of spatial abilities?
Maybe I've been trolled, but I'll bite anyway. More than 'a few women' use PCs. Every office worker these days has a PC. A large proportion of these office workers are women. Sure, maybe there are less female programmers out there (that's another topic altogether), but not only programmers use PCs, you know.
Heh. News flash, the genders aren't equal. One of them can bear children, the other can't. Other differences exist.
Instead of trying to say both genders are equal, why not try this radical approach: accept that one gender has advantages over the other in some areas, and vice versa in others, and use those differences for the greater good!
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Exactly. People whine and complain about how the DMCA shuts down research, yet don't seem to understand that you also can't do genuine research without an open mind. I think some people would be stunned at the number of genuine scientific areas of study that have more or less stopped because a bunch of liberals told them they were being sexist, racist, or homophobic.
Women are worse at spatial orientation. Who cares? I'm quite sure there's something they're also _better_ at than men. Doesn't make one gender or the other "better", it just illustrates that certain genders are better at certain things. Saying this is "sexist" is not only stupid, but impedes real scientific research.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
That these gender traits are statistics: that means there is a mean and a standard deviation (with probable overlap between men and women). There is no solid demarkation line in biology or psychology that says "No Men/Women Beyond this Point".
What this does say is that there is generally significant difference between the two groups... so why not use it?
In the future the key is to ask "Would you like a larger desktop?" instead of "Are you a woman?" Allow personalization without mandating bias.
Otherwise its like only making jeans in 32"I 32"W and saying to everyone "You better fit into these because this is all you're going to get."
What is music when you despise all sound?
I *am* a research psychologist. Heh.
/. territory, perhaps, where we're clearly not talking about Joe and Josephine Average.
:-)
I think that there are *many* outliers providing examples to the contrary. Particularly in
I should add that I'm no humour slouch either - apologies if I'm coming across like some dry, humourless old stick, but I think that applying such broad brush-strokes to say that men's and women's experiences and understanding of humour is fundamentally different, could be dangerous (I'm not being politically correct here, just aware that my own experiences have been quite, quite different from the trend you suggest).
Go back into psych! This is a terrific area of research
Mod early, mod often.
There are people who do use their cycles.... mp3 rippin' fiends, the divx encoding type, researches, gammers and graphic artists (especially if you count in the video card's work). But for the lonely programmer the CPU is very much like a politician, doing little work most of the time.
___________________
not fact or fiction
Is there any science to this article at all? I see references to numbers, but no ways that they obtained them other than asking MS.
This seems like a lot of BS to me. Women just don't seem interested in 3d games like most men. Therefore, I would suggest that we men develop more skill in the 3d world of computers than women at an earlier age. Most 3d games are about violence which is undeniably a greater part of male human mentality than female.
I happen to know women that will destroy you in counter-strike, and I'm sure most of you do too. If a girl played as much video games as men, then I bet you wouldn't notice a difference. Also, women using computers more slowly than men can be attributed to the fact that men are also generally more interested in technology at a younger age.
I don't think interest in technology is genetic though. I think it's a product of society. Girls are encouraged to imagine the perfect guy and starve themselves until they are married it seems. Boys are taught to protect siblings, themselves, women, and property with violence or by violence from a child that learned that violence is a solution to problems from fighting parents. (or even television like The 3 Ninjas, TMNT, etc.)
I dare them to try children with equal experience with computers. If it had been a reputable "discovery" I think that is where the research would have began. Or try men from third world countries where technology isn't available.
I think the trend will change the more technology is required to live and the more games are made for women (The Sims, Sim Park, etc.) or at least genderless (snood et al).
Karma Clown
I want to reply to this comment because I want to have my comment as close to the top as possible.
Slashdot SERIOUSLY messed this article summary up. Women do NOT have "problems nagivating the desktop". According to this article, women have less spacial cognizance when it comes to 3D environments such as FPS, MMORPG or games like Myst. 3D virtual worlds, NOT THE DESKTOP.
What I DON'T want to see is a bunch of jerks spouting "women have a harder time navigating the desktop" than men, because Slashdot farked up their summary of the article. I mean, SERIOUSLY FSCKED it up. Desktop = 2D. Get it straight, boys... A lot of your readers only read the summary snippets and don't bother with the articles.
For this kind of readership, you may just have spawned a whole new inaccurate generalization about women.
Thanks, we needed this new kind of misinformation.
I have no problem with the article, but I have a BIG problem with the summary snippet.
Get it right.
It doesn't matter -- Slashdot still deserves the blame. By being a part of the media, it has a journalistic responsibility to report things with integrity. It has to do due diligence when reporting things and has to verify that the summary accurately reflects the contents of the article. In this case, the summary clearly does not accurately reflect the article cited. Slashdot has editors who carry this responsibility and ensuring that submissions that are picked and branded as "News for Nerds" is actually news, not just what sounds like news. Otherwise, Slashdot needs to rebrand itself as a rumor mill and let the expectation be set that way. I realize that Slashdot isn't the New York Times, but it simply cannot post inaccurate/inflammatory/biased information and summaries and not expect people to react to it.