Is stereotyping inevitable when designing with personas?
Lippmann (1992) describes stereotypes as ‘the little pictures we carry around in our head’ (Lippmann, 1922) and therefore they are partly subjective. Hamilton and Sherman then went a step further to conclude that a stereotype is a cognitive structure containing our knowledge, belief and expectations of, in this instance, a specific gender. If you take this as the description of a stereotype then is it possible to dispel them or should we be working to change the stereotypes that people have of others? Products are designed to appeal to men and women depending on the target market. In order to do this, products are made to appeal to a specific gender. This can be done through many means such as form, colour and size. When designing for a persona you tend to follow certain stereotypes in order to create a product that is going to sell and going to appeal to a target market. ‘Gender can be an explicit and an implicit element in the design process […] Existing or stereotyped images of project gender identities are transformed into design specifications that are in accordance with cultural symbols of masculinity or femininity.’ (van Oost, 2001). Here van Oost is stating that gender stereotypes are used to create a product that align with gendered cultural symbols associated with masculinity and femininity. When designing a product normally the first thing you consider is normally male or female? This in order to create a product that can be used comfortably by the intended user. When creating for a woman the product tends to be smaller, more delicate, not as tough and easier to handle. This is because, due to the research done around anthropometric data, women tend to be have smaller frames and body sizes and aren’t naturally as strong as men are. So in order to create a product that they are going to find comfortable to use and easy to handle this has to be taken into consideration when creating a product. A company that has taken this and used it to their advantage is Smith and Wesson. They took a different approach to most other gun companies when creating their female range and aptly named it the Ladysmith Range. They decided to make their Womens revolvers “look like serious, as opposed to ‘novelty’, guns.” (Kirkham, 1996) Previous to Smith and Wesson most companies took a visual approach to creating a female range and playing up to stereotypes by adjusting the colour and making it pink. Due to the fact that Smith and Wesson took this mature approach to creating a female range, they made a lot of small changes to making the gun not look so threatening and potentially scare off potential owners. They changed the grip from an aggressive looking and ‘masculine’ black rubber to a more feminine rosewood grip. They also added and shiny finish and added radiuses to the edges to make them smoother both to look and handle.
Another gun they took a similar approach to was the 3913 and 3913 LS range. They added a steady incline to the barrel and changed the colour from black to grey to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Although women do buy these guns they are not as popular as the revolvers, the sales of which outlay it 9 to 1. This might be due to the fact that the pistol is more aggressive and has more military associations than the revolver. As well as cosmetic changes they also and added small changes to the trigger mechanism to make it easier to fire. Due to the changes in the trigger mechanism the gun surprisingly proved very popular with male users and so Smith and Wesson created the same gun for men and called it the 3913-NL (Non-Ladysmith) and made it black not grey.
Smith and Wesson also used a non-stereotypical marketing strategy when advertising their guns. People expected them to take the approach of scaremongering when advertising by giving alarming statistics of females chances fo being knifed, raped or mugged but instead their sales brochure emphasis safety and security.
“As more women have entered the job market, become heads of households, purchased their own homes, they’ve taken on a while new set of responsibilities. For their own decisions. For their own lives. For their own and their families’ security. And security…has come to mean more than a good income and a comfortable place to live. Its come to mean safety.” (Smith and Wesson Ladysmith handguns brochure, 1989)
This shows how Smith and Wesson have set an example of creating a product while designing for personas but hasn’t used non-relevant or typical stereotypes but used positive ones to create a brand that has gone on to do very successfully and receive a lot of praise for its approach. So the argument of whether stereotyping is inevitable when designing for personas is one that Smith and Wesson have dispelled because they have shown that you do not have to use stereotypes but using good user centred design can lead to very well executed product.
Bikes are a market that have used very good user centred design in order to promote a product. When bikes were first conceived in the 1800s they were designed primarily as male products. The first bikes were the Draisiennes (designed by Karl von Drais in 1817) or as it was known in Britain as the Hobby horse or Dandy horse. This is because they featured a frame structure where the wheels were located below a connecting beam with the saddle mounted on top of the beam.
This was the adopted style and didn’t really change till the 1860s. Why was this a male product? In order to ride it you had a to sit on the saddle with your legs hanging on either side and use your feet to push you along this wasn’t something that was possible back then for women with their Skirts and also the ice of mounting it and swinging a leg over the connecting beam was seen as Un-lady like. ‘It is the skirt which rules the destinies of women on the cycle’ (Davidson, 1896). Lillias Davidson, who was the president of the Lady Cyclists’ Association’ is stating the fact that the skirts that women wore back them play such an integral part in deciding the future of women on bicycles. If bicycles were designed for women they would had to be designed with a drop in the middle so women would be able to step over the frame and allow enough space for the skirt to hang uninterrupted. ‘Had Drais designed his machine with a low-forked beam which allowed these requirements, the concept of male and female machines might not have been established so early.’ (Sparke, 1996). The first female bike was probably the female hobby horse created by Denis Johnstone in 1819. It was seen as a variation of the male themed Draisiennes with few alterations to accommodate for females. It was made to be easier for women to use and mount while avoiding ridicule within the strict conservatism of the time.
In Recent times its easier to say that bikes are gender neutral and this has been largely due to the emergence of the diamond frame bike in the 1890s. The high cross bar of the diamond frame was seen as male but then the female bike was a diamond frame with the crossbar removed or dropped in order to provide a step through frame with skirt clearance. Pinch and Bijker claimed that by 1898 ‘closure’ had been achieved in bicycle design and the type-form bicycles with which we are still familiar today had become established. Since the establishment of the diamond frame, bikes without a clear defined crossbar were presumed as female. The Mixte frame, from France, which was considered as a unisex design was quickly feminised because of its lack of crossbar. The Moulton frame is the only bike that was truly considered as a gender neutral bike due to its lack of Cross frame and drop frame.
Bikes are a product that was created using good user centred design as a tool for making a successful product. Although they are created for personas they have managed to be successful without using many stereotypes. Although some manufacturers can take the approach and use colour as a medium to appeal to different clients the basic design of the bike does not use negative stereotypes to appeal to users.