Technology for women

A NY Times article features a woman who bought some consumer electronice items only after the manufacturers dumbed them down for women made them easier to use:

In short, Ms. Duarte fell for high-tech gadgets. Her basic feelings about consumer technology did not change. What changed was the design of the products. They were easy to use and that appealed to her.

“Women are busier than men,” she said. “I don’t love technology enough to sit down and spend two hours with a manual like it’s some great puzzle. Men get great gratification out of that. I’d rather read a book.”

So that's an interesting explanation, that women are too busy to learn how to use a digital camera. What are they too busy doing? Shopping for clothes?

With so many stay at home moms, and they being one of the primary target markets for digital cameras because they like to take pictures of their children, I don't see why they don't have two hours to learn how to use a digital camera.

The more likely explanation, which is not mentioned in the article, is that the innate aptitude for learning how to use digital cameras and other types of electronics is, on average*, higher in men than it is in women.

***

*On average means don't refute this by giving me anecdotal stories about individual women who are especially good at learning how to use electronics.

Comments

[Spungen]

Oh, go hunt a Sasquatch or look for space aliens or something.

Gadget fetishes are for male geeks, not men in general.

I'm going to see if the GSS has anything comparing number/frequency of sexual encounters with number of gadgets/frequency of use.

[Dennis Mangan]

Or numbers/frequency of sexual encounters compared with number of gadgets per encounter.

[Spungen]

Ha! Right, pleasure is worthless to some guys unless they can measure and calibrate it.

Seriously, HS, the article contains nothing to support your theory. The female concerns were mainly with size and how they fit into the home decor. The charger for men gives out less information -- to avoid insulting men's pride, not because it's more sophisticated. The target male customer pays $13 more for that face-saving minimalism.

With so many stay at home moms, and they being one of the primary target markets for digital cameras because they like to take pictures of their children, I don't see why they don't have two hours to learn how to use a digital camera.

How is being a stay-at-home mom relevant? What, you think motherhood is like being a blogger studying for the bar, you get to sit around in your underwear eating bon-bons all day?

Read carefully -- the story didn't say women weren't buying digital cameras. It said women bought 48 percent of digital cameras last year. This year, after some smaller, simpler models came out, women increased their consumption to more than half the market.

This is probably because women are more interested in snapshots of friends and loved ones. Portability and simplicity are useful features for that. Someone who hangs around Central Park doing squirrel portraits and nature shots probably has different needs.

We have a Nikon D-200, which is a great camera, but it weighs a ton, and I've missed some great shots of the kid because lenses had to be changed.

Women will shell out for complicated gadgets when they're motivated.

[David Alexander]

We have a Nikon D-200, which is a great camera, but it weighs a ton, and I've missed some great shots of the kid because lenses had to be changed.

I envy you as I own a lowly D50...

Seriously, why did you buy a D200 when the smaller lighter D40, D50, D70, and D80 models are available. Unless your husband and you are hobbyists, I think it's overkill, IMHO. BTW, get the Nikon 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 lens. It was pretty much designed for people who want to stick with two lenses. In contrast, I have two lenses, and I have plans to add at least 3 or 4 to my fleet eventually in the long term.

[Grey Swan]

I remember reading an article that said guys got a significant hormoal boost by solving problems and figuring things out. Fixing a broken handle, installing ram, etc, all made men feel good about themselves and if I recall, increased there sex drive. On the other hand they found women received no such hormonal boost. This study explains a certain reason why women do not like sitting down and figuring out how to use a camera while the differences in averages, while may be true, may not be.

[Jason Malloy]

I don't think it takes intelligence too much above average to navigate a camera, and most of the sex variance is at the tails. Here I think you overlook sex differences in motivation to learn specific things. The things that interest the average man are different than the things that interest the average woman.

This is the systemizing-empathizing difference. To quote Patricia Hausman:

"Reinventing the curriculum will not interest me in learning how my dishwasher works. It is a thing and things bore me. People are another story. I find them fascinating."

[Bob V]

I'm going to see if the GSS has anything comparing number/frequency of sexual encounters with number of gadgets/frequency of use.

Or numbers/frequency of sexual encounters compared with number of gadgets per encounter.

How about number/frequency of sexual encounters with gadgets?

[Bob V]

innate aptitude for learning how to use digital cameras and other types of electronics is, on average*, higher in men than it is in women.

HS, I agree that anecdotes suck at refuting statistics. However, if you are going to disallow anecdotes, you should provide the stats that show your generalization is valid in the first place. I'm guessing you'll find it hard to find anything that talks of an *innate* aptitude for using digital cameras though I'm open to the idea.

[The Engineer]

Yeah, that stay at home mom comment just confirms that HS has no clue. God help the man should he ever be blessed with children. It would be a rude awakening. Or he'll just get a nanny, which would probably be the best thing for the kids.

My wife says that I'm an early adopter, but she only wants to use gadgets when they have all the bugs worked out. She has no paitence for things not working immediately. For example, she used my Skype phone once, had difficulty with it, and won't go near it again.

On the other hand, she never had any difficulty with our digital cameras, and we've had a number of them over the last 5 years. What was there to dumb down? They're more or less point and shoot.

[Peter]

Well heck. I'm not a woman, nor do I have no understanding of technology, yet I have no patience whatsoever for devices that require you to RTFM before use.

I can honestly say... as a geek who loves gadgets... that I NEVER sit down and read a manual. I ant a device that is quick, simple and easy to use for my intent. If it can do 8 billion other things, fine... and if I want to use them I will look up those functions individually in the manual when I need to.

I really don't think men, in general, enjoy sitting down to read the manual of a new item they just purchased.

[Agnostic]

I don't mind making gadgets more friendly to non-geeks, and especially making them more aesthetically pleasing (e.g., the absence of boxes & wires gained from a built-in DVD player).

What pissed me off was how casually Ms. Duarte tossed out her contention that women are busier than men. Wrong. Let's take people who are pretty smart & motivated, like those who read the NYT regularly: Link

As you can see, more men than women want to work more than 50 hours per week. You don't really need stats for that one -- obviously women more than men prefer leisure time, shopping, etc. And in the very next sentence, what is the example Ms. Duarte gives to show how busy she is -- reading a book! _The Da Vinci Code_ or somesuch, no doubt.

I don't care who prefers doing what with their time; but no bullshit about who's busier than who. The only exception is among the underglass where women work and men mooch, but it's clear she isn't in this group.

People have responsibilities other than jobs. Time not spent in the office doesn't necessarily translate into leisurely shopping fun time.

[Dave]

Women are busier than men?!? My ass! There was a study not long ago that disproved that notion.

Our household is probably not unlike many: We have 4 remotes sitting on the coffee table. Each one has a plethora of buttons. Each one has been programmed to control all the AV components. But none of them are truly universal, so on occasion you still need to grab another. Despite the fact that my wife watches more TV than me, and she actually scores higher on IQ tests (she's in the 140's), she still hits the wrong buttons all the time and has to ask me to "fix it".

[Dave]

I might add:

I don't mind this - it usually takes like 5 seconds to figure out what's wrong. Then she looks at me, batting her big brown eyes. It's like I'm her hero, so everything's good.

[dearieme]

The problem with learning about many items of gadgetry is that the instructions are written by illiterate autistics. You are therefore driven to behave like a child, trying this and that, just because some schmuck can't write a simple English sentence. Moreover, unlike some lovely old-tech thing - e.g. a motor-bike, a rifle - you can't just take it to bits and have a look. It's peculiarly unmanly men, it seems to me, who love their gizmos.

[Turambar]

Is there is tacit understanding that if you read the NYT you have subnormal intelligence and therefor will credulously accept whatever their writers produce?

Headline: "To Appeal to Women, Too, Gadgets Go Beyond ‘Cute’ and ‘Pink’"

Story: "A short time later, she said, she was making homemade DVDs with slideshows and videos, and beginning to notice that various manufacturers “make really cute bags now to carry around your laptop.”"

Nancy Duarte is the main example in the story- and she is not doing anything the story claims! She plug the camera in and the pictures come up. Great. Then she has the option to burn them to DVD's. Wow, only her and ever other person on the planet. When will the Times run the story "Women now buying computers because CD-ROMS Autorun"?

The impact is being noticed. Women bought slightly more than half the digital cameras in the first four months of this year, compared with 48 percent a year ago, according to the NPD Group, a market analysis firm.
What is that? a 3% gain? Wow what a massive sea change... obviously more than buying a few ads in "O" and "Flex".

BTW, I think HS is right on track with the return on investment of spending a couple of hours with the camera manual. Its easy enough to get started with a digital camera out of box, but to figure out how to use all the features (before you are actually cursing because you need to take a picture from a train or in weird light) reading the manual is a good idea.

[superdestroyer]

The only thing that would make this post like most of them at Half Sigma is to claim that Asian Women are the best at running gadgets and that black women are the worst.

That said, juding from the use of cell phones, desktop computers, and GPS systems, I would say that the steoreotypes based upon ethnicity do not apply to gadgets and women.

[David Alexander]

Yeah, that stay at home mom comment just confirms that HS has no clue.

I'm confused, should I defend Engineer's stay home mom dream world knowing that a good number of stay at home mothers do various tasks around the house (e.g. cleaning while making sure the kids don't drink the cleaning fluid) and or should I defend Maitre Sigma's stab at the entire tomfoolery of stay at home motherhood?

My wife says that I'm an early adopter, but she only wants to use gadgets when they have all the bugs worked out.

I don't blame her. Many people, regardless of sex, are interested in sitting around tinkering with something to get it to work. It's quite possible our sample is jaded because it's filled with mostly high IQ people with the obvious exceptions.

If anything, we can chalk up the interest in marketing better electronic products to females to the increasing buying power of women, especially single women who are increasing in college attendance and (eventually) economic buying power by leaps and bounds when compared to their male population. Combined with better tech that allows for smaller and better products, and more attention paid to aesthetics, it's no wonder women are buying more products for themselves.

[Peter]

The impact is being noticed. Women bought slightly more than half the digital cameras in the first four months of this year, compared with 48 percent a year ago, according to the NPD Group, a market analysis firm.

What is that? a 3% gain? Wow what a massive sea change... obviously more than buying a few ads in "O" and "Flex".

Flex? You must be confusing it with some "O"-like chick mag. Flex is a bodybuilding magazine.

[Turambar]

I was thinking of "Shape". It features things like LeAnn Rhimes Workout playlist.

I was objecting to a 3 or 4% rise in sales resulting in article in New York Times. If someone believed everything they read in that paper they have a very confused view of the world.