Gender HCI is a subfield of human-computer interaction that focuses on the design and evaluation of interactive systems for humans, with emphasis on differences in how males and females

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

 interact with computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s.

Examples

Gender HCI research has been conducted in the following areas (among others):

• The effects of confidence and self-efficacy on both genders’ interactions with software.
• The design of gender-specific software, such as video games created for females.
• The design of display
  Computer display
  A monitor or display is an electronic visual display for computers. The monitor comprises the display device, circuitry, and an enclosure...
  
   screen sizes and how they affect both genders.
• The design of gender-neutral problem-solving software.

Overview

Gender HCI investigates ways in which attributes of software (or even hardware) can interact with gender differences.
As with all of HCI, Gender HCI is a highly interdisciplinary area. Findings from fields such as psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, marketing

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

, neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

, education

Education

Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, and economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 strongly suggest that males and females problem solve, communicate, and process information differently. Gender HCI investigates whether these differences need to be taken into account in the design of software and hardware.

History

The term Gender HCI was coined in 2004 by Laura Beckwith, a PhD candidate at Oregon State University

Oregon State University

Oregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...

, and her advisor Margaret Burnett. They discovered that, although there had been some activity that could be characterized as Gender HCI work, people did not know about each others' work. The relevant research reports were isolated and scattered about various fields. Since that time, they and others have worked to help researchers know about each others' work and practitioners to be aware of the findings, so as to allow this area to mature as a subarea of HCI.

The following are a brief set of milestones in the history of this emerging subarea.

• 1987: Games designed as "gender neutral" look like games designed for boys. (Chuck Huff).
• 1989: Ethnographic research exploring women, programming, and computers (Sherry Turkle).
• 1995: Gender differences in self-efficacy and attitudes toward computers (Tor Busch).
• 1998: Gender factors in the design of video games (Justine Cassell
  Justine Cassell
  Justine Cassell is an American professor and researcher interested in human-human conversation, human-computer interaction, and storytelling. Since August 2010 she has been the director of the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute .-Career:Justine Cassell was born in New York City...
  
  ).
• 2002: Wider displays more beneficial to all users, especially females (Mary Czerwinski, Desney S. Tan, George G. Robertson
  George G. Robertson
  George G. Robertson is an American information visualization expert and Senior Researcher, Visualization and Interaction Research Group, Microsoft Research. With Stuart K. Card, Jock D...
  
  ).
• 2004: The concept Gender HCI made explicit (Laura Beckwith, Margaret Burnett).
• 2006: A research workshop on Gender HCI.

Selected Gender HCI Findings

Here are some results from the Gender HCI research conducted to date - ordered from most to least recent, within categories:

1. Confidence-Related Findings.
   • For spreadsheet
     Spreadsheet
     A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper accounting worksheet. It displays multiple cells usually in a two-dimensional matrix or grid consisting of rows and columns. Each cell contains alphanumeric text, numeric values or formulas...
     
      problem-solving tasks, (1) female end users had significantly lower self-efficacy than males and (2) females with low self-efficacy were significantly less likely to work effectively with problem-solving features available in the software. In contrast, males’ self-efficacy did not impact their effectiveness with these features.
   • In a study of the computer attitudes and self-efficacy of 147 college students, gender differences existed in self-efficacy for complex tasks (such as word processing
     Word processing
     Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter.-External links:...
     
      and spreadsheet software), but not simpler tasks. Also, male students had more experience working with computers and reported more encouragement from parents and friends.
2. Software Feature Related Findings.
   • In spreadsheet problem-solving tasks, female end users were significantly slower to try out unfamiliar features. Females significantly more often agreed with the statement, "I was afraid I would take too long to learn the [untaught feature]." Even if they tried it once, females were significantly less likely to adopt new features for repeated use. For females, unlike for males, self-efficacy predicted the amount of effective feature usage. There was no significant difference in the success of the two genders or in learning how the features worked, implying that females’ low self-efficacy about their usage of new features was not an accurate assessment of their problem-solving potential, but rather became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. Behavior Related Findings.
   • In spreadsheet problem-solving tasks, tinkering (playfully experimenting) with features was adopted by males more often than females. While males were comfortable with this behavior, some did it to excess. For females, the amount of tinkering predicted success. Pauses after any action were predictive of better understanding for both genders.
   • Males viewed machines as a challenge, something to be mastered, overcome, and be measured against. They were risk-takers, and they demonstrated this by eagerly trying new techniques and approaches. Females rejected the image of the male hacker as alienating and depersonalizing. Their approach to computers was "soft;" tactile, artistic, and communicative.
4. Hardware Interface Findings.
   • Larger displays helped reduce the gender gap in navigating virtual environments. With smaller displays, males’ performance was better than females’. With larger displays, females’ performance improved and males’ performance was not negatively affected.
5. Video Games Findings.
   • Several findings were reported about girls’ interests that relate to video games, with interpretations for the video game software industry.
   • Several researchers explored what girls seek in video games, and implications for video game designers. Among the implications were collaboration vs. competition preferences, and use of non-violent rewards versus death and destruction as rewards. These works argue both sides of the question as to whether or not to design games specifically for girls.
6. Other Related Findings About Gender and Computers.
   • In a study of the way people interacted with conversational software agents in relation to the sex of the agent, the female virtual agent received many more violent
     Violence against women
     Violence against women is a technical term used to collectively refer to violent acts that are primarily or exclusively committed against women...
     
      and sexual overtures than either the male one or the gender-free one (a robot).
   • In the home, where many appliances are programmable to some extent, different categories of appliance were found to be more likely to be programmed by men (e.g. entertainment devices) and by women (e.g. kitchen appliances). There is often one member of a household who assumes responsibility for programming a particular device, with a "domestic economy" accounting for this task.
   • Males and females had different perceptions for whether a web page would be appropriate for his/her home country, and further, females more often than males preferred more information on all web pages viewed during a study.
   • Women who entered mathematics, science, and technology careers had high academic and social self-efficacy. Their self-efficacy was based on vicarious experiences and verbal persuasion of significant people around them.
   • Factors affecting low retention of women in computer science majors in college included women’s lower previous experience in computing compared to men, their low self-perceived ability, discouragement by the dominant male peer culture, and lack of encouragement from faculty.

See also

• Human-computer interaction
• Self-efficacy
  Self-efficacy
  Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
  
  
• Topics in human-computer interaction
• Usability
  Usability
  Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with. A usability study may be conducted as a primary job function by a usability analyst or as a secondary job...
  
  
• Usability engineering
  Usability engineering
  Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human-computer interaction and specifically with making human-computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness...
  
  

Further reading

• Beckwith, L. Burnett, M., Grigoreanu, V., and Wiedenbeck, S. [ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/burnett/Computer06-GenderHCI-asPrinted.pdf Gender HCI: What about the software?] IEEE Computer, (2006), 97-101.
• Beckwith, L. Sorte, S., Burnett, M., Wiedenbeck, S., Chintakovid, T., and Cook, C. [ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/burnett/vlhcc05-genderDesign.pdf Designing features for both genders in end-user software engineering environments], IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing,(2005) 153-160.
• Brewer, J. and Bassoli, A. Reflections of gender, reflections on gender: Designing ubiquitous computing technologies. In Proc. of Gender and Interaction, Real and Virtual Women in a Male World Workshop, (2006).
• Cottrell, J. I'm a stranger here myself: A consideration of women in computing. In Proc. ACM SIGUCCS User Services Conference, (1992), 71-76.
• Fisher, A., Margolis, J., and Miller, F. Undergraduate women in computer science: Experience, motivation, and culture. In Proc. SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, ACM Press (1997), 106-110.
• Grigoreanu, V., Beckwith, L., Fern, X., Yang, S., Komireddy, C., Narayanan, V., Cook, C., Burnett, M. [ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/burnett/vlhcc06-genderminers.pdf Gender differences in end-user debugging, revisited: What the miners found], IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, (2006), 19-26.
• Hartzel, K. How self-efficacy and gender issues affect software adoption and use. Communications of the ACM, (2003), 167-171.
• Huff, C. and Cooper, J. Sex bias in educational software: The effect of designers' stereotypes on the software they design. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, (1987), 519-532.
• Kelleher, C. and R. Pausch. Lessons Learned from Designing a Programming System to Support Middle School Girls Creating Animated Stories. 2006 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

External links

• Gender HCI publications public resource for anyone interested in Gender HCI research.
• Gender HCI Project page for EUSES-based work on Gender HCI.
• Girls Tech - Girls, Science, and Technology page.