Perspectives on Gender and Product Design: Are we living in a ‘man-made’ world?

book-stack-and-ereaderSubmission Deadline: January 17th, 2014

Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: February 10th, 2014
Workshop Date & Location: Saturday April 26th 2013, Toronto, Canada

 

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Technology has a profound mediating effect on the way we obtain and contribute to knowledge, relate to each other and contribute to society. Given the impact and potential ramifications of technology on society, it is imperative that we understand, accommodate and integrate both men and women’s  perspectives in shaping our modern day technologies. This workshop focuses on the representation of women’s perspectives in technologies that we design, analyze, and use.

There are many barriers to getting feminine perspectives into system designs: 

  • the lack of discussion regarding gender politics in the fields related to technology design, including the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) whose very charter is to be “user-centric”
  • low grant support for research which looks at the representation of women’s perspectives in our current discourse, which in turn leads to a lack of reliable, informative and actionable technology & gender research 
  • the lack of focus on production of gender-agnostic design/development environments, including software tools and collaborative design/development settings
  • low representation of women in senior positions within the technology sector and within fields related to technology production, including computer science and engineering

This workshop will address these barriers with respect to the tools, technologies, and processes we experience and design.

To participate, please submit a 1-3 page position paper detailing your background, and interest, and experience in this topic. Participants will be selected on the basis of their potential to contribute to the overall discussion and the workshop goals.

See original posting and further details at:
https://sites.google.com/site/technologydesignperspectives/home