Burnett, M., Stumpf, S. , Macbeth, J., Makri, S., Beckwith, L., Kwan, I., Peters, A. and Jernigan, W. (2016) GenderMag: a method for evaluating software's gender inclusiveness. Interacting with Computers, 28(6), pp. 760-787. (doi: 10.1093/iwc/iwv046)
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Abstract
In recent years, research into gender differences has established that individual differences in how people problem-solve often cluster by gender. Research also shows that these differences have direct implications for software that aims to support users' problem-solving activities, and that much of this software is more supportive of problem-solving processes favored (statistically) more by males than by females. However, there is almost no work considering how software practitioners—such as User Experience (UX) professionals or software developers—can find gender-inclusiveness issues like these in their software. To address this gap, we devised the GenderMag method for evaluating problem-solving software from a gender-inclusiveness perspective. The method includes a set of faceted personas that bring five facets of gender difference research to life, and embeds use of the personas into a concrete process through a gender-specialized Cognitive Walkthrough. Our empirical results show that a variety of practitioners who design software—without needing any background in gender research—were able to use the GenderMag method to find gender-inclusiveness issues in problem-solving software. Our results also show that the issues the practitioners found were real and fixable. This work is the first systematic method to find gender-inclusiveness issues in software, so that practitioners can design and produce problem-solving software that is more usable by everyone.
| Item Type: | Articles |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: | Stumpf, Dr Simone |
| Authors: | Burnett, M., Stumpf, S., Macbeth, J., Makri, S., Beckwith, L., Kwan, I., Peters, A., and Jernigan, W. |
| College/School: | College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science |
| Journal Name: | Interacting with Computers |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| ISSN: | 0953-5438 |
| ISSN (Online): | 1873-7951 |
| Published Online: | 19 October 2016 |
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