Friday, May 6, 2016

interaction design - Does gender affect the results of a usability test?


There's a question on Quora asking for opinions about subjects' gender impact on usability tests. I think this topic is very interesting given that people of different genders prefer different visual designs. Thus, I would like to know whether there is any studies or at least anecdotal evidence comparing reactions of men and women to interaction patterns or information architecture in "unisex" products.


I know there's a similar question on UX.SE but it was dealing with gender-specific design.



Answer



I like Ben's answer, but I also just wanted to add that you should also keep in mind that there is a difference between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Personally, I view "gender" not as a binary distinction, but as a spectrum or range of characteristics a human being may or may not have.


What this means for UX is that there are probably more than two ways of grouping people in terms of gender that would yield interesting demographic statistics that could be used towards more accurately targeting your particular design.


It might also be interesting to not only study the gender of the target audience, but also the gender of the designer. All the little subconscious decisions that the designer makes are most likely affected by the designer's gender as well.


Further reading:



No comments:

Post a Comment

technique - How credible is wikipedia?

I understand that this question relates more to wikipedia than it does writing but... If I was going to use wikipedia for a source for a res...