[Freedombox-discuss] updates to plinth

[Deborah Nicholson]

When the time is right, I'm happy to help gather information and feedback
on both gender and experience bias, via surveys, focus groups or whatever
other methods seem most appropriate. Thanks for helping to keep the end
user in sight, I think its critical to the success of fbx!
Cheers,
Deb

On Monday, 12 March 2012, Ted Smith <tedks at riseup.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-03-12 at 14:59 -0400, James Vasile wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:15:27 +0000, Ted Smith <tedks at riseup.net> wrote:
>> > On Mon, 2012-03-12 at 18:47 +0100, Mathieu Jourdan wrote:
>> > >
>> > > - my girlfriend took briefly a look on it, she said those colours
were
>> > > for males.
>> >
>> > I'm no authority on this list, but I'd appreciate it if the freedombox
>> > initiative would use actual research for things like choosing
>> > gender-neutral design elements whenever possible. Most actual,
empirical
>> > research on gender differences runs against gender stereotypes and
finds
>> > mostly similarity, not differences, between genders. Further, the
>> > gendered context of design elements will change drastically between
>> > cultures. As such, our intuitive judgments as individuals will not be
>> > the best indicator of the actual gender-neutrality of design elements.
>> >
>> > I can devote some of my copious free time to doing some of the
>> > scholarship necessary for this (and I can act as a proxy to retrieve
>> > paywalled papers for anyone who asks). I will need guidance and
specific
>> > questions, rather than general ones.
>>
>> Ted, I appreciate the caution and the methodical approach.  I don't,
>> however, see tremendous value in testing what colors we use at this
>> stage.  At this point, tinkering with colors will distract us from
>> making more substantive progress.  We will test interfaces at a later
>> date, and if colors are a problem then we can address it later.
>>
>
> I agree completely on not getting caught up on picking colors right now.
>
> I just wanted to note that people are starting to focus on a very
> important problem: removing gender bias from the FBX interface. (this is
> more general than just picking colors, and I want to emphasize that.)
>
> When people start attacking that problem, they need to use the strongest
> possible weapon: empirical research. Otherwise, we risk putting a lot of
> effort into things that we have no way of knowing are right.
>
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