Gender HCI: What About the Software?

Although there have been many studies designed to understand and ameliorate the low representation of females in computing, there has been little research into how software itself fits into the picture. Our focus is on how “gender-neutral” software interacts with gender differences. Specifically, we have concentrated on software aimed at supporting everyday users doing problem solving. For example, what if females’ problem-solving effectiveness, using software such as Excel, would accelerate if the software were changed to take gender differences into account?

This talk reports the investigations my students and I have conducted into whether and how software and its features affect females’ and males’ performance in computing tasks. It also describes an upcoming project I’ll be leading at Microsoft, to investigate how gender differences might be playing out in Microsoft products. If you’re interested in your project/product being studied as part of this, please come and learn how to join in.

Speaker Details

Margaret Burnett is a professor of Computer Science at Oregon State University. Her research focuses on human issues of programming languages and environments, especially when the programming is done by males and females not trained as professional programmers. She is founding Project Director of the EUSES Consortium, a collaboration among Oregon State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Drexel University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Cambridge, University of Nebraska, University of Washington, and IBM, to help End Users Shape Effective Software (EUSES).

Date:
Speakers:
Margaret Burnett
Affiliation:
Oregon State University