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Science

Women Need Larger Screens for Desktop Navigation? 693

Posted by michael from the francis'-2000"-LCD dept.
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."
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Women Need Larger Screens for Desktop Navigation? More

Women Need Larger Screens for Desktop Navigation?

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  • Then why do they.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dcw3 ( 649211 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:21AM (#5772189) Journal
    keep telling me that size doesn't matter!?!

    • Re:Then why do they.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by jpkunst ( 612360 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:20AM (#5772335)

      I suppose you haven't been paying attention to your e-mail [devin.com] lately?

      JP

    • Re:Then why do they.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @12:54PM (#5774024) Homepage Journal
      Then why do they.... keep telling me that size doesn't matter!?!

      Maybe in your case their lack of spatial acuity works in your favor.

    • Re:Then why do they.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jwilson ( 38486 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @02:04PM (#5774618)
      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.

      • Re:Then why do they.... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by sweetooth ( 21075 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @02:31PM (#5774792) Homepage
        While you are right the summary is completly wrong, you should blame the person that got it wrong. Mac of Macistan, the article submitter and summary writer, is the person that got it wrong.

        If you are going to bitch about the summary at least bitch about the person that made the mistake. Or be more specific that the person approving this article should have appended the summary with a correct description of the article.

        Get it right.

        • Re:Then why do they.... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by marauder404 ( 553310 ) <(marauder404) (at) (yahoo.com)> on Monday April 21, 2003 @03:15PM (#5775120)
          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.
      • "For this kind of readership, you may just have spawned a whole new inaccurate generalization about women."

        Have you seen the dudes that visit Slashdot? Trust me when I say this generalization is safely contained.

  • at least (Score:2, Funny)

    by MrChubble ( 576890 )
    we don't ask for directions

  • Generalizations (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    are all very well, but don't you think the few women who DO use PCs are in the almost-like-a-man range of spatial abilities?

    • Re:Generalizations (Score:3, Interesting)

      by itchyfidget ( 581616 )

      all very well, but don't you think the few women who DO use PCs are in the almost-like-a-man range of spatial abilities?

      FWIW, my bf (household alpha geek) can't navigate for s***, whereas I (less geeky, but maybe some modding up on /. will help) have great visuospatial abilities. Yesterday we went to the park to fly our kite and by the time we were leaving, he was completely disoriented ... heh.

      • You are dating the world-famous Sloppy? (dang it, his picture from Summercon is gone)

        Super geek, super brain and the worst navigator/easiest to get misoriented living being I have ever met!

    • Re:Generalizations (Score:4, Insightful)

      by owenb ( 91248 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:45AM (#5772260)

      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.

  • Uh-oh (Score:4, Funny)

    by itchyfidget ( 581616 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:22AM (#5772193) Journal

    But widescreen will make my butt look bigger!!!

    *wail*

  • What a girl wants... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:22AM (#5772194)
    "Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."

    Uh... yea. Because Linux and women go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

  • 3D, not desktop (Score:5, Informative)

    by Brown ( 36659 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:24AM (#5772198) Homepage
    This is not about 2D desktop navigation, but about orientation in a 3D environemnt such as a computer game or a 3d design program. It appears be that the restricted field of vision with a small screen makes it hard for women to build a mental map of the enviroment and locate themselves within it.

    The arcticle speculates that this may be due to evolutionary reasons; men are on average better at spatial-awareness for navigation when hunting, while women wouldn't have needed such skills looking after the home camp.

    • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

      by videodriverguy ( 602232 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:36AM (#5772239) Homepage
      Maybe currently, but Microsoft is known to be working on including 3D elements on the desktop.

      So in the future it may be useful to allow for a gender related setting.
      • Really? Great!

        I can't wait until "My Computer" actually looks like my computer. Oh, and the "Recycling Bin" looks like a REAL recycling bin. Will they EVER stop innovating at Microsoft?

    • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:5, Funny)

      by shine-shine ( 529700 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:40AM (#5772246)

      Finally, I'll now have a scientific explanation why 'some poeple' shouldn't be allowed to drive.

      Humor. Don't shoot.

    • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Surak ( 18578 ) <surak&mailblocks,com> on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:09AM (#5772312) Homepage Journal
      I work as a CAD systems administrator, and it's true that when women see some of the wide screens that are available [esystor.com], they immediately want one. Guys tend to think they're cool, too, and they may want one, but women almost seem to demand them.

      Of course the number of women as opposed to men who are in the automotive design and engineering fields is disproportionately low, and this may actually be one of the reasons. Interesting... :)

    • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

      by vondo ( 303621 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:21AM (#5772338)
      The arcticle speculates that this may be due to evolutionary reasons; men are on average better at spatial-awareness for navigation when hunting, while women wouldn't have needed such skills looking after the home camp.

      This is one of the things discussed in a book called "The First Sex." The thesis is that men and women are different, because of evolutionary pressures. The author also argues that the areas where women excel over men (e.g. social coordination, as mentioned in the Counter Strike example) are the very skills that are going to be most needed in the near future, so women will continue to play a larger and larger role in the work force.

      An interesting read.

      • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dasmegabyte ( 267018 ) <das@OHNOWHATSTHISdasmegabyte.org> on Monday April 21, 2003 @10:00AM (#5772902) Homepage Journal
        Of course, the underlying problem with this thesis is the presumption that men hunted while women foraged. While this seems to make sense to us, seeing as we've been dealing with the male breadwinner stereotype for at least the past thousand years, the archeological record does not necessarily agree with it. While there is evidence that men hunted, there is no evidence that they did not assist in the foraging and domestic chores, and in fact fingerprints in pottery seem to indicate that both men and women shared in these.

        Keep in mind that hunting was a difficult enterprise, physically strenuous and dangerous. You couldn't just nick off to Wal-mart and buy a 22 -- you had a sharpened stick and some obsidian flakes and that's about it. So it makes evolutionary sense that cultures that kept their women away from the hunt would prosper -- fewer dead or injured women that way. That doesn't mean that men did nothing else -- there's a lot of evidence that foraging was the primary source of food. Anybody who thinks women were just going to shut up and let the ment lounge around while they toiled hasn't been nagged to clean the garage.

        Yeah, I think there's an evolutionary benefit to nagging.

        My Intro to Archeology professor was a feminist (ostensibly because he had an open marriage and wanted to tag some college tail, not happening the guy was sleazy and still wore tight jeans from the 1970s) and loved to bring up the dichotomy between the classic "Man as Hunter/Scholar" and post modern "Woman as Gatherer/Nurturer" theories of human evolution, as well as what was supported by the meager evidence. In essence, it seemed to prove that neither sex "had it easy" and he went on to tie this into the historical record and a nice long lecture about how modern gender roles are thrusting women into the workplace without removing their previous roles in the home and how this is changing faster than men's roles and how men should clean the the house more, blah blah. I kinda slept through most of that.

        My wife, however, took excellent notes, which she is referring to to this day.

      • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:3, Informative)

        by Aetrix ( 258562 )

        The arcticle speculates that this may be due to evolutionary reasons; men are on average better at spatial-awareness for navigation when hunting, while women wouldn't have needed such skills looking after the home camp.

        Sorry, Folks. That's bullshit. I"m calling it. It's what's called "Lamarckian evolution" and sadly, it goes on every day. Lamark believed that somatype mutations and changes are hereditary. For example, an adult has an arm removed, and when he/she reproduces the children should have onl

      • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TheLink ( 130905 )
        Perhaps women will play a larger role in the work force, but as long as more men are interested in fringe/cutting edge areas, more men will continue to be the leaders, pioneers and earthshakers.

        You get more guys doing weird/silly stuff (case-mods, lego, etc) despite lots of other people saying discouraging things. Same for hobbies/sports/tech/finance etc.

        In contrast one keeps seeing calls to encourage women to get into XYZ, requests for people not to discourage them etc. Personally I think most just aren'
    • True but let's be more accurate.
      men _on_the_average_ have better 3d (and numaric) abilities, while woman are _on_the_average_ better at linguistic abilities.
      the standard deviation in each group, however is bigger then the diff in the averages, so it says little about comparing any two individuals.
      This has been known for quite a while. IQ tests, for instance, give numarical and linguistic abilities equal value exactly because of this.

    • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Katharine ( 303681 )
      I have read elsewhere that women do better at remembering where things are in relation to other things than men are: they use landmarks more than men do. It has been theorized that in hunter-gatherer societies (men) who did most of the hunting had only to find their way home quickly and directly after chasing down game, while the gatherers (women) had to remember where they saw that berry bush that should have ripe berries on it by now.

      If this is the case, it is easy to understand how someone who relies o

    • Re:3D, not desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

      by j3110 ( 193209 ) <samterrell&gmail,com> on Monday April 21, 2003 @10:29AM (#5773048) Homepage
      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).

  • *I* need a bigger monitor - here's why (Score:5, Funny)

    by allanj ( 151784 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:24AM (#5772199)

    Halfway through the last sentence I must have skipped a line, since I read it as "Maybe Linux UI people will get more females". Now, if I had a bigger monitor, the lines wouldn't break right there, making my (sick?) mind leap to conclude what may well be an impossible, yet interesting, turn of events.

    • Re:*I* need a bigger monitor - here's why (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Negatyfus ( 602326 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:57AM (#5772282) Journal
      What's interesting to me is that Linux geeks keep on trying to get chicks with tactics such as bragging about their l33t over-clocking skillz and now apparantly by telling girls in bars that they work on a project to make Linux more accessible to them. When these girls have stopped laughing, maybe finally the light will dawn upon them, but I suppose they will just go and try that line on someone else.
  • Does anyone else see it?

  • Orientation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Whigh ( 663324 ) <afg205@yahoo.com> on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:26AM (#5772205) Homepage Journal
    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!!!)

    • Re:Orientation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:17AM (#5772327)
      Yeah, I noticed that they didn't say if men experienced similar boosts in performance if they were given larger screens and smoother animations too. It seems to me that it's just as likely that the men were rushing, while the women were taking a more cautious and careful approach. Did they compare accuracy rates? 20% difference in cognitive performance seems pretty high, I'm not sure I buy it.

      Also, why divide people based on gender? I'm sure SOME of the men had poor spacial oriention, and SOME of the women must have been good at the task. Why not simply divide people into "fast" and "slow" groups based on performance in the initial set of tests? They don't seem to have done any testing to determine if solutions which seem to work for average women also work for under-performing men.

      • I agree why the split on gender. I know for myself I like to turn the maps in the direction of the car. Typically women only do this. And when orienting I do not use logical, north, south, etc. Like women I use landmarks to orient myself. I never trust my north, south, east and west orientation. (Get left and right mixed up too often).

        But one thing I can do is remember my path even if I only drove or walked it once a long time ago. I have no idea if that is a male or female thing. My wife is consta

      • More display helps women more than men (Score:5, Informative)

        by Rommel ( 33210 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:59AM (#5772634)
        The article was very clear on this:

        They found that women were just as good as men at virtual navigation when they had a large computer display. "The gender difference simply disappeared," says Czerwinski.

        To summarize: The article does not state if the larger display helped men or not, but with the larger display, men and women tested equally.

      • Re:Orientation (Score:3, Funny)

        by Zoop ( 59907 )
        Yeah, I noticed that they didn't say if men experienced similar boosts in performance if they were given larger screens and smoother animations too.

        Actually it said the gender difference disappeared in that case. So presumably, the men experienced a slight increase or no increase at all, and women experienced a larger increase to bring them to parity.

        This might explain why my ex-gf would wait until I was cruising past an intersection in the left-hand lane to shout "TURN RIGHT!!!" and could never tell me

    • Re:Orientation (Score:3, Informative)

      by jjphtm ( 667435 )
      Surprise! woman here who uses linux and other and reads /. regularly - oooooo shocking.

      I usually hate this type of article and it is mostly **** but I must say from personal experience that when I play a 3D game, say UT2K3 or other, on my laptop with 14" screen I get major motion sickness. When I play on 17" or higher I don't. Not sure if that is a specific side effect from their study, as it isn't very clear from the article.

      Though this does not mean it's specifically a "woman" thing, it seems quite weir

  • Gender Equality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LordChaos ( 2432 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:29AM (#5772211) Homepage
    ... 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.

    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 .. that women possess lower spatial abilities, and it tends

    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".

    • Re:Gender Equality (Score:4, Funny)

      by GMontag ( 42283 ) <gmontag AT guymontag DOT com> on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:37AM (#5772241) Homepage Journal
      Is that a really wordy way of saying that women think the space between these brackets [ ] is 8"?

    • News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dsanfte ( 443781 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:48AM (#5772269) Journal
      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!

      • Re:News Flash (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:27AM (#5772356)
        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!

        How about an even more radical approach: accept that not all members of a given group are the same, and instead of assigning gender roles, encourage people to do whatever they're good at! If that means that there are more men doing tasks that involve spatial orientation, fine, wonderful. But it's absurd to say that women shouldn't do those tasks because they're not as good at them. People are individuals, not averages. Even your example of bearing children is not universal: some women can't give birth. So cut this evolutionary psychology crap and judge people for who they are, not based how a sample group of the same gender performed in a laboratory setting.

      • Re:News Flash (Score:5, Funny)

        by titzandkunt ( 623280 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:42AM (#5772386)

        "Heh. News flash, the genders aren't equal. One of them can bear children..."

        ...And the other one can walk past a shoe shop

        T&K.

      • "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!"

        Men: Better at orientation and navigation.
        Women: Better social skills.

        Right. In the unlikely event that I get lost if I'm driving somewhere with my girlfriend, she can get out of the car and ask for directions!
        • Bah, you don't know how many times my boyfriend has gotten us lost by using a map and his innate direction sense. He knows which higway to take. I'm the one who can figure out how roads fit together on a small scale.

      • Re:News Flash (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:34AM (#5772534) Homepage Journal
        The problem is, humans have a history of using these differences for the greater bad, or creating differences out of their imagination for the oppression of one sex or another (i.e.women unable to vote).

        That's why gender is a better explanation than it is a justification, if you get my drift.
      • Use those differences? How? By and pigeonholing women into tasks that take advantage of their supposed "intuition" and "social skills", like day-care center workers and elementary school teachers, while discouraging them from taking jobs, like science and programming, that require male rationality? Can you propose any method of "using those differences" other than this type of blatant sexual profiling? Following your train of thought to its logical conclusion leads to disgusting conclusions.

        How about

      • Re:News Flash (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Epistax ( 544591 )
        That is a pretty big debate: Do we ignore the differences, or use them? To use them would be to hire one gender for a job over the other, instead of looking at the individual (at worst case), and if it's ok to do this for gender, who's to stop it from spreading into race.

        Another way of looking at it is this. By just about any demographical difference in people, there are differences in performance areas as well, but nothing special needs to be done. If one race or gender is 20% better at something, the
    • Generalizations about gender, ethenticity, or race and the abilities of particular individuals are absurd. There are enough humans of every group so that the individual variation within a group far exceeds the variations between groups.

      That said, the "women need bigger screens" study strikes me as very much akin to the "blacks are genetically better athletes but worse thinkers" type studies. In the past these studies were used as a justification for forcing African-descended people into low-pay manual la

      • Re:Gender Equality (Score:3, Insightful)

        by budgenator ( 254554 )
        personaly I know more black medical doctors and lawyers than NBA NFL and MLB athlete's, and I think statisticaly this trend could easily be shown to be valid for a larger population than just me.

        One of the reason for the jewish bankers is that the christian theorcracy taught that it was unchristian to charge interest on lent money, also why there were also many more christian hog butcher at the same time.

    • Re:Gender Equality (Score:5, Insightful)

      by robbway ( 200983 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:11AM (#5772316) Journal
      Doesn't this article actually show some contradictory evidence to the hypothesis that women are less spatially apt?

      A larger screen doesn't increase your 3D visualization ability. It simply increases your sensory input--namely sight. The article implies the hypothesis that what women are seeing affects their thought processes.

    • I have to wonder if the men averaged faster because many of them were avid gamers. Those who play FPS video games like Doom, Quake and UT quite a bit are going to be much much better at navigating a 3D world than anyone else. The poor gamers will also have plenty of experience with small screens. Duh. I wonder if the reasearchers even thought of this.

  • Linux IS already more usable... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:34AM (#5772229) Homepage
    Women's linguistic abilities are on average much higher than men's. So it makes sense that women would find themselves more at home with God's Chosen Interface, the command line.

    I always suspected that God was a woman...

  • This is not really new (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cheezycrust ( 138235 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:34AM (#5772231)
    It has been said before that men orientate themselves by creating mental maps, while women remember visual objects. You can see this when people are explaining directions: men will say "it's the third street on the right", while women will say "it's on the corner of the McDonalds, there you should turn in the direction of that big, red house".

    So you could say: vector images are male, while bitmap images are female.

    But of course, this is a generalisation, I know a lot of women who can navigate on a map very well, while a male friend of mine is terrible at knowing where he is.
  • I guess this explains why you don't see many females in FPS games. I mean, it has to be that and not a case like women are less likely to get off on simulated violence and glibs everywhere! :)
  • While making the "virtual world" of the interface as easy as possible to navigate is something that we should all strive for it isn't everything.

    The majority of basic tasks are very easy to pickup with a little training. This is proved by the vast majority of computer users being able to perform basic common computer tesks such as email, web browsing, word processing, etc.

    The problem is in controlling the settings.

    In too many cases common configuration settings are buried too deep in the UI. Let's take t

  • Idiotic conclusion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jeorgen ( 84395 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @06:35AM (#5772237)
    To make a difference between men and women WRT 3D user interface design is completely idiotic. It is much smarter to make a difference between people with high spatial ability and low. You can measure it. It just takes a littler longer than to check the genitals.

    I score very bad on spatial ability, and I am a man. My father does the same. Incidentally we're both computer consultants.

    Wouldn't it be smarter to say that people with low spatial ability need bigger screens for the same performance? Why the gender thing? Battle of the sexes?

    /jeorgen

    • I do not agree with this politically correct attitude towards everything. Everyone is different. There! I said it. It is OK to have a opinion of which is better in what situation, according to your point of view. It's OK to disagree with this point of view.

      I stopped referring to dead people as "the encephalographically challenged" a long time ago.

    • Re:Idiotic conclusion (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 )
      To make a difference between men and women WRT 3D user interface design is completely idiotic. It is much smarter to make a difference between people with high spatial ability and low.

      In your post, you keep confusing the term "Politically correct" with "smarter". Please avoid this error in the future.

      Seriously, though... Would you also say "To make a difference between men and women WRT child-bearing is completely idiotic. It is much smarter to make a difference between people with wombs and without"
  • They could also say that women are tidier than me, so that will take care of the "desktop clutter" so typical of Windows users.

  • Don't know if it is true (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:06AM (#5772304)
    I am posting this anonymously because I don't really want everyone to know my medical history, but in 1999 I had a right temporal lobectomy (my brain's right temporal lobe removed) to try and cure me of epilepsy.

    The right temporal lobe is the part of the brain that controls spatial ability, so after it was excised, I completely lost my ability to orient myself, and have huge problems with getting home from the bus stop and things like that. Nonetheless, it has not stopped me being able to navigate a computer desktop at all.

    I am not sure why this is, but I would be interested to know if people like myself were included in this study at all.

    There could be other factors at play here.

    • Re:Don't know if it is true (Score:4, Interesting)

      by itchyfidget ( 581616 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @07:21AM (#5772341) Journal
      Gosh, I hope the op worked for you (since it's kinda non-trivial) :-)

      Navigating the computer desktop is a two-dimensional task, which does not require quite the same internalised map of the world as a three-dimensional task like finding your way home from the bus-stop. Experiments with rats and mazes (and rat-sized brain ops) show that the temporal lobe is critical for navigational success. In fact, other areas of your brain are also involved in spatial orientation, but spatially-orienting yourself to use your internalised map of the world cannot really be carried out without the temporal lobe. Saying that, you still have your left temporal lobe, so it is possible that some spatial-orientation functions will still be intact?

  • Now, not only does Microsoft lie, cheat, steal, and bully, but they're sexist too. What next? Racism? Ageism?

  • Bigger screen in linux ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mika_Lindman ( 571372 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:11AM (#5772468)
    "Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."

    So you are saying, that linux makes your screen bigger? Wow, I quess I'll try it right now! Does this screen largening effect also work if used with VMWare? How big will my 15" screen get when using linux? 17"? Or maybe even 19"? Is widescreen supported yet?

  • And remember folks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:29AM (#5772520) Homepage Journal
    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."

  • It's a pipe dream (no pun intended) (Score:5, Funny)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:49AM (#5772601)
    Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females.

    Yeah - because now all of a sudden Linux geeks will have some insight into what women want? If they could do that, they might make themselves presentable to women, not design a UI for them.

    On second thought, which is more likely?

  • spacial ability and medicine (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Skidge ( 316075 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:50AM (#5772606)
    My fiance, a soon-to-be radiologist, and also a woman :), just told me that one reason why there are few women in radiology is that they generally have a harder time taking 2D images (i.e., x-rays) and visualizing them in 3D to see the spatial relationships between the things in the 2D image. Of course there are probably many other reasons for the last of women in the field of radiology: lack of patient interaction and historical general roles in medicine that are still somewhat in place are a couple.

  • Children or no-children (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sleepy ( 4551 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:55AM (#5772627) Homepage
    The article was a bit short... I'll bet even most Slashdotters read it.

    It's interesting the researchers would conclude woman are 20% less effecient than men at spacially processing information.

    Assuming this is true (not taking a position), I'm a bit surprised no one tried breaking down the group of women to isolate the cause.

    Everyone jumped to the same "genetic" conclusion (women make lousy hunters). It could be as simple as physical and chemical changes after having children (sometimes derridingly called 'placenta brain'): perhaps women's brains go into a rapid form of job-specialization (rearing) which translates into other disadvantages.

    I don't have a position on any of this since it's a one pager (and New Scientist), but it would be interesting to see if the causes were genetic, as the article simply assumed.

  • Geez... doesn't this figure? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lethyos ( 408045 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @08:58AM (#5772632) Journal
    Men's perception of woman: it's all about bigger boob tubes.
  • Interesting (coincidence?) that the QOTD I'm reading at the bottom of this page says:

    Man's horizons are bounded by his vision.

  • A few details (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 16977 ( 525687 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @09:33AM (#5772766)
    Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but whenever I've heard statements like this before, they turned out to be just as true for both sexes after the proper testing. I know that when I switched from one desktop to virtual desktops, I had an easier time navigating, and the same thing happened when switching from one monitor to two monitors. And later in the article, they mention how women "need" smoother frame rates to keep from getting disoriented. It sounds to me like the women just hadn't gotten used to the computers yet. I bet when they do the control experiments, men will get even better when they have a widescreen monitor and smooth framerate, and then they find out that the guys spent all their time playing Counterstrike on laggy servers, with 15-inch monitors. Oh, incidentally, I'm astounded that more people haven't pointed out the irony of a Microsoft-funded study suggesting that all female computer users buy high-end graphics cards, and monitors which are fully two times larger than their current ones! Maybe their next study will suggest that women buy intellimice since they have trouble double-clicking.

  • Spatial relations: An observable fact in Tetris .. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adzoox ( 615327 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @09:47AM (#5772846) Journal
    Women's spatial abilities can honestly be measured in video games like Tetris as well. An ex girlfriend of mine could kick my butt in just about every video game but Tetris. While I considered myself a great player, she never understood the "stick down the left side theory" of Tetris. Even though I was in high school I understood that she had problems with spatial relations. (many jokes can be inferred I'm sure)

    I noticed it when other girls would play too.

    What's interesting about this observation and what I would like answered is this:

    Why was the Gameboy version the easiest to me? Monochrome?

    Why was the regular, original Nintendo the best version?

    Why was the arcade version so hard?

    Why is the computer version boring?

    Why does it make a difference with how the pieces are colored or how they look?

    I do agree with the find too. Girls see no "gadget, cool" factor in a small TV. I once took a Casio TV on a camping trip with the same girl so she could watch 90210. We ended up having to go out of our way and watch it on a "normal" TV.

    I think the real answer here is that women like consistency and normalcy. I find they hate big screen TV's as much as they hate Casio handhelds. All they want is content! (Something that can also be inferred and suggested)

  • And yet... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 21, 2003 @09:56AM (#5772894)
    ... they can undo those frustrating bra straps.

  • Whoa, wait a minute - this *is* a major discovery (Score:4, Funny)

    by Blondie-Wan ( 559212 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @10:12AM (#5772959) Homepage
    You mean to tell me Microsoft has a research and development department?!?

    ;)

  • might be a bias in the design and/or test? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @10:18AM (#5772991) Homepage Journal
    Although most posters have either joked about or felt insulted by these finding, they may in fact be important and correct. The issue could be, as it is in many cases, that computer products are designed to meet the needs of the designer and not the full range of users. Those who have designed significant products will see the truth in this. We all have fallen to the trap of designing products that fit our use patterns at the expense of other people. We design products that play to our strengths, that minimize the effects of our weaknesses, which result in an overly specific product that is not fully usable by the general populous. This not only causes use problems with non-dominant groups, but also can cause systematic errors in the test itself.

    As an example, let's look at the controversial SAT exam. This test has been, and may still be, written for, by, and of privately east coast educated white people. For example, when the ETS evaluats the suitability of questions, at least in the near past, the questions that make it onto the real test were those that upper class east-coast white people did best on. This not some because of some explicit prejudice, but merely because the conventional wisdom said upper class east coast white people, as a group, were better educated and smarted, and question that they did best with were in fact the best questions. The corollary is that minority off coast people were less educated, and if they did well on a question, it was obviously a bad question.

    Which is to say that history is written by the victors, and critical usability and evaluation points are chosen by the managers and designers. In this case, the computer programs and usability tests may be biased to a male population. Perhaps the issue is not so much screen size, but rather the assumption that a certain pattern of use, or a certain problem solving method, is going to be primary for all users. This is an especially good possibility for 3D technology as it is not yet in wide use, and would be particularly susceptible to these aberrations.

  • All hypothetical (Score:3, Interesting)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @04:15PM (#5775574)
    The problem with research like this is that solid evidence -- the fact that women have weaker spatial skills -- leads to random speculation -- that this weakness is somehow inherent/evolutionary. To tell the truth, we are still suffering from a society that has been dominated for thousands of years by men. A lot of western tradition, particularly in Britain and the US, makes the situation even worse than it is elsewhere (relatively, when you take into account that non-western countries are far less industrialized). To this day, I see huge social disparities everywhere I look. It's better in some places, worse in others, but nowhere is it very good. Now, it very well may be that these social factors cannot explain everything and that girls are inherently more limited in certain skills, and more proficient in others, than guys. However, until we analyze exactly what effects society still has on females (or better yet remove those social factors entirely) we cannot reliably speculate on the origin of perceived differences.

    PS> The words "male" and "female" are traditionally not applied to human beings. It would be like saying "two people mated" rather than "they had sex."

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