Home
About Us
Contact Us
Site Map
Resources
|
|
Home
About Us
Contact Us
Site Map
Resources
|
|
|
 |
Online Distance Learning ForumMonday, October 31, 2005More gender issues - now it's the turn of web design
New research by the University of Glamorgan, Wales, suggests that men and women view the Internet in different ways. Research found that, in almost all instances, men and women preferred sites designed by their someone of their own gender. Gloria Moss, a research fellow at Glamorgan's business school, and statistician Rod Gunn found that the web design of 94% of the sites displayed a masculine orientation. Just 2% displayed a typically female bias in their web design.
Seventy four per cent of the web sites were produced by a man or a male team, while just 7% were designed by a female or female team. Even 78% of female sites were created by men. If we really do prefer web design by our own gender, then women are certainly getting short shrift. I realise that I am in danger of being seen as a man-basher - which I am not, but surely this research is a call to arms for more women to enter web design. But is it just that women are as interested in web design as in other areas of design? I would welcome any comments from female web designers.
Comments:
Wow, your post has brought up a lot of questions in my mind. Do know what the differences are between sites designed by men and those designed by women? Do these sites state who they are designed by? Are men and women consciously picking sites designed by their own gender? Are there tiny (or big) differences that make it possible to tell on any given site whether it was designed by a man or a woman?
That is a lot of questions Chilena! There was a series of articles on web design and gender a couple of weeks ago, but this link will take you to the horse’s mouth:
http://www.glam.ac.uk/news/releases/003056.php In brief, they got 30 male and 30 female students to create personal websites and then compared the web design. They looked at language, visuals and navigation - the main factors of web design. Immediate differences were apparent on over half of 23 factors. Males favor the use of straight lines, few colours in the typeface and background, and formal typography. They again favor the use of formal or expert language with few abbreviations. In terms of the text, they are more likely to blow their own trumpet! Got to dash off to my own web design now, but I’ll tell you some more tomorrow!
More statistics Chilena - well you did ask! When the websites were shown to the students, an overwhelming number preferred those done by their own sex.
Post a Comment
The study then looked at the web design of 32 educational websites, and a whopping 94% of the web designs displayed an overtly male orientation. When further research was done, it turned our that 74% of the web design had been done by a predominantly male team. When the study was spread further, it seems that these web design issues spread to Europe. More interesting still, even the web design of 78% of female-oriented beauty sites was done by men. It seems to me that web design companies are missing a trick here. It also seems obvious that not enough women are going into web design. It’s not up to me to judge, of course, since my talents lie in writing copy, not web design. But with the Internet growing at such an exponential rate, I hope that there will be more female web designers in the future. << Home Archives
|
Technorati Profile 
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
