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Women Control the DVR
JeiFuRi writes "While men normally hog the remote, a new study commissioned by Lifetime suggests that women are more likely to be in charge of their DVRs . Results from a survey of 1000 married woman say that 48 percent made the decision to purchase a DVR on their own and 55 percent claimed they understood the system more than their husband. Three-quarters of the women surveyed said that the reason they fell in love with DVR is that they are extremely intuitive and much easier than a VCR." The study also found some interesting things about DVR users' ad-watching habits.
And a study commissioned by ESPN found that men control the dvr.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
While 99 percent of women say they use their DVRs to zap through commercial spots, 76 percent reported that they stopped for ads that are entertaining or relevant to their own interests. Women are also more likely to pause for TV and movie promos.
"DVRs give them a mechanism to find commercials that are relevant, and that's a big message," Brooks said. "It's not that people don't want commercials, it's irrelevant interruptions that turn them off."
Ok, that is a big hint to the tv industry. Women do not want irrelevant commercials, but are willing to watch and advertisement that they are interested in. Unfortunately for the tv industry, I don't think men want commercials at all...
Also FTA:
The study, which was commissioned by Lifetime,
Lifetime, the network for women, is saying, "ADVERTISE HERE! WOMEN WATCH COMMERCIALS!"
See, there's a slant to everything.
Keith
I bought my parents a TiVo with built-in DVD burner last Christmas (it's their favorite present ever, btw). My Mom is fairly technophobic, but picked up on how to program the thing right away. I wouldn't say she controls it necessarily, but let's just say I'm guessing she's pretty adament about certain show's being high up on the ole priority list.
Remember that old matra that was oft-spoke years ago: "someday the technology will be so advanced, it will be easy to use, and people will view their computers just like any other appliance"?
Guess what? It's here, and it's called TiVo! For the relative complexity of what it does, I'd have to say that TiVo has one of the most brilliantly-designed user interfaces I've ever seen.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Women especially with technology if they use it enough to get by will claim they're experts
Whoa, reel in the sexism there spanky. I work in a office that has some of the smartest women I've ever met. Level 3 hardcore technowizbang smart women.
Maybe you should work for a company that doesn't look for pants when they're hiring smart people. And dresses for receptionists?
Most idiots don't have a clue but claim they do. That's why so many people get hurt or ruin things doing DIY. Where as the true experts who do know what they are doing get so sick of the idiots they end up not caring for what they know about.
So sure Mrs. Smith might claim she knows how something works, but I claim to know how a clock works yet have no clue beyond "cogs and stuff" (to put it as simple as possible).
To claim knowledge does not mean you have it. It means you claimed it.
I like muppets.
It's not a matter of disagreeing, it's a matter of falisifiable science rather than generalizating from trite, vacuous proverbs like "Men hunt, women gather." Pretty much any behavior could be described as either hunting or as gathering, and there is no way to resolve disputes as to whether an activity counts for sure as hunting or as gathering. Hence unscientific, astrology-like stuff.
We could also say that men don't use the DVR as much because they are lazy, and women do because they are compulsive. Or maybe we could say that men are poor relaters and women like the interaction-like experience of using the DVR. Or maybe women use the DVR because they have exacting, varied tastes and men don't because they are generalizers and don't really care.
And it would probably all be complete bullshit. Which is why we try to make simple, scientific hypotheses and test them in a way that could falsify them without requiring metaphor or analogy.
I think a lot of people are confusing the intent of the article when it speaks of woment "understanding" the technology. Whenever you speak of a particular product, keep in mind there are nearly an infinite layers of "understanding" one might have.
To a user, "understanding" means knowing how to fully unitilize a product's features. This is not a completely illegitimate point of view. Software engineers think that they understand the DVR because they know how the code works. I'm guessing that hardware engineers could make a pretty good case that, compared to them, the software engineers don't really "understand" the machines either. It's also a pretty good bet that marketing and advertising executives think that they "understand" the DVR, since they know how it's positioned in the marketplace, etc, etc.
You get the point... Understanding is in the mind of the beholder.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Interesting that it's only sexism when something is said about women. But when women start talking about how much smarter they are than men ... that's headline news.
Well after reading the article, I'd say that this does nothing to prove or disprove anything.
Taking a statictic on a person's opinion is not scientific in the least, heck it might not even be proper measurement.
I'm suprised that only 55% of women believed that they knew more about thier DVR than thier husbands. That number seems a bit low to me, after all, this isn't a compentency test, it's a test about belief. I'd wager that 100% of all women believe that they can navigate to and from the grocery store quicker than their husbands, even though they both live in the same house, know where the nearest grocery store is located, and probably would take the exact same route.
It doesn't even matter what the men thought, because it's still playing around with perception testing, which is interesting if you want to gather information about a perception. However, perceptive information isn't consistent amonst members within a population (even a very homogenous population) so I doubt this information will have any pratical application other than sensationalisim.