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Conclusion

Firstly, do I think that designers are responsible for creating stereotypes? During this series, I have seen that many factors are responsible for creating stereotypes.  I believe we as designers have a part to play in the enhancement off stereotypes but I do not believe that we are solely responsible for the creation of stereotypes. I have seen that even the most non stereotyped objects like a hearing aid has become a stereotyped object due to social pressures and the way we are as a society. I believe designers use society as a justification to the reasons why we create products that fit into stereotypes and almost enhance them but I do not believe we create them. It is easy to say that we should just create products that do not fall into stereotypes like Saana Hellsten's Basik or follow in the footsteps of Aesop and their gender neutral products but when society are demanding products that fit into certain stereotypes it understands to see why designers still create these products. That leads me on to my second point and whether designers have an obligation to break the mould. I think we as designers play a very important role in the way society interacts with products. If you look at mobile phones they are a product that are created without much gender stereotyping in mind. Apple have made a very solid platform by creating phones that are not created for male or female but creating a range that appeals to all types of people. I feel this is where designers can have an impact in the promotion of Gender-neutrality. We can create products that are going to appealed to a wide range of people but not specifically targeting them at people. They should be encouraged that anyone can buy it and that it is for anyone not creating products for a certain gender that makes others that do not conform to that label feel like it is not made for them. It very normal for a male in todays society to walk around with a rose gold iPhone or a female to walk around with a black iPhone but when it become a guy using a pink rucksack or a little girl demanding a boys set of Legos society seems to be uncomfortable with these all of a sudden. We as designers have a part to play in starting to promote this as the normal and showing it is ok for people to feel comfortable using whatever product they want but at the same time society need to follow suit by accepting change and not shooting down companies and designers for trying to promote this change. Im going to finish off with a quote from Emma Watson’s speech for the HeForShe campaign at the United Nations Headquarters.

“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong…it is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideas.”

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Design Precedents

Although I have included some of my design precedents in the series already and used them as tools to support the arguments relating to my hypothesis, literature review, and critique, there were a few more that I couldn’t fit in so I want to briefly talk about these and explain why I believe these are useful in arguing whether or not designers are responsible for creating gender stereotypes and whether it is our responsibility. The Design precedents I am going to look at are:

1. Lego as a company and their gender neutrality drive

2. Basik as a brand that is working hard to break down boundaries

1. Lego

Lego created their people without any stereotyping in mind. All the people in the Lego all have the same boy sizes and the clothes all fit on another the only way to really differentiate is maybe by the hair and the clothes they wear. Lego were praised because all the people could do any job, all had the same poses and so it was false to say they were creating a brand around stereotypes or the people ad stereotypes. Where they have come under a little bit of fire is with their branding and their bricks specially the Technic and friends range. It has come to see that on the Technic range (this includes building, spaceship, cars, etc.) all are targeted towards males with darker bricks, males on the packaging and the adverts used to have boys playing with these while the friends range (shopping malls, houses, cooking) had more feminine coloured bricks and had girls on the covers and not boys. In their adverts it used to have girls playing with these more than boys. So although they created a brand that didn’t stereotype people and allowed all genders to all the same things while kids were playing with it but their branding was definitely targeted towards male and females the stereotypes of children they thought would demand it.

2. Basik    

Basik was a gender neutrality project by Saana Hellsten. She was looking at ‘packaging that perpetuates gender stereotypes’ because she believes gender neutral packaging can be a way to creating gender equality. She argues that our first interaction with a product is it's packaging and currently the way products are packaged encourages gender stereotypes. Basik is a series of household and cosmetic products that uses gender neutral packaging to appeal to people. Household products at the moment are created to appeal to women by using soft tones and sensitive products because it is still playing on the stereotype that women should be doing house chores. Saana Hellsten was trying to create household products that is designed for the neutral not targeting either male or female in order to break down the stereotype that women should be in the kitchen. She also created a series of razors because although male and female razors do the same thing (cut hair) they have such a different visual language. She wanted to strip away the gender form the packaging and instead concentrate on the function. The razors she created are for the neutral and could be bought by anyone and wasn’t targeted to a gender. She has started a conversation about the way we brand household and cosmetic products because effectively they are demanded by everyone for the same reasons so why are they targeted so differently towards males and females.

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Do designers create stereotypes and is it our responsibility to create all access products?

As a designer your number one goal is create a product that is going to be demanded. That may be by making the product easier to use, more appealing to the eye or more efficient to manufacture. In order to do this you look at trends and consider where the market is and where it is going in order to get ahead of the competition and create a product that is going to be demanded. As a result, as designers we create products that people are demanding and these tend to fall into a certain stereotype. In this way, if we are creating products that are flowing certain characteristics and as a result tend to be stereotyped towards what people want. If the market shows that girls buy more pink toys and boys buy more blue toys then designers are going to keep creating products for boys that have a blue theme and ones for girls that have a pink theme because they will be demanded more. Surely due to this designers do not  create stereotypes but create products that follow stereotypes. There are a lot of products out there that were created without a gender in mind and so at the moment it is hard to see how they can be gendered. These products haven’t been created with a gender in mind but instead are created for the purposes of making a successful product that can be used by anyone. Surely if this was the starting point for all products surely no product will be gendered at all. A product which is gender neutral and is hard to argue being created to stereotypes is a hearing aid. It is a product that in itself if a very neutral and genderless product but social constructs allowed it to have different connotations depending on which gender used it. The heading aid started of as more of an ear trumpet (figure 4.1) in the late 1800s and it was a product that was very ostentations and obvious as it was. It was very subtle and had to be spoken directly into to be used. Kirkham says ‘Womens ears, unlike mens, served  ornamental purposes’ he then goes on further to say ‘Women’s ears were also supposed to  be more naturally acute, more musically refined; to wield an ear trumpet or sport a silver auricle was to confess to a loss of womanly character.’ (Kirkham, 1996. Pg 51) This shows that the stigma around women in the society is what created the stereotype around hearing aids and why they were seen as such a masculine product. Women were seen to be sensitive listeners and to use their ears sparingly. Using an ear trumpet would be seen as an “Elemental handicap to the social fluency of so necessary to womanhood.” (Kirkham, 1996. Pg 51). For a man using the ear trumpet It was mire acceptable in society as it was seen as a grace to ageing as it was more vital for men to be heard and to be able to hear in public. It was the same as the way that men took up eye glasses. It was seen as a tool for class, ageing and importance. The two both became a symbol of age and importance in society. As the hearing aid became more what we know it as now, it became more acceptable for women to use as it was more subtle and could be hidden a lot easier. In the new way they were moulded and much smaller it became something to have that you didn’t have to be ashamed of much like glasses. In the post war era of the 1920s, as women started to wear less layers, they started to lose pockets and spaces to put things and so invisibility became the desired thing of the time. They started to become more fashion accessories and Mrs R. H. Dent started to create hearing aids that were more ornamental and attractive objects that could be attached to clothing, hats or even be used as accessories. In the nineteenth century after hearing aids become pretty much the same for men and women, women were still expected to do more active and serious work to conceal the hearing aid. Deafness made women seem cross, paranoid and unpredictably responsive and it made men seem puzzled unintelligent and slow-acting so the hearing aid restored people to the gender roles far more effectively. The hearing aid is an object that was made as a gender neutral product and wasn’t created with a gender in mind or to any stereotype. It was an all access product made simply to aid people with hearing. Due to the social constructs of the time regarding a woman and mans role in society it got made into an object that had a lot of stereotypes around it. As a result the designer of the time didn’t create the stereotype but instead societies reaction to people of different genders using it is what made it a stereotyped product. 

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Should stereotyping always have negative connotations?

Stereotyping has been used as a marketing tool for many years and has allowed designers to create some of the most successful products on the market. If you take Mattel as an example of a company that has used stereotyping to their advantage you can argue that they have definitely made the most of a stereotype. Mattel, the creators of barbie and Action Man, have made a name for themselves by creating arguably two of the most stereotyped toys in existence and the most popular and widely distributed ‘promotional doll’ marketed by name. ‘Here, Barbie and Action Man provide a case study through which to explore the contradiction if a gendered object which appears to be reiterating and reinforcing gender stereotypes but exists in a world which increasingly questions traditional gender roles. Gender stereotypes, as represented by Barbie and Action Man , become an antithesis to a popular culture that adopt androgyny as an image to redefine gender identities.’ (Kirkham 1996) Kirkham questions the position of Barbie and Action Man in todays society. They are  two products which seem to be successfully reinforcing gender stereotypes while existing in a society that is trying to dispel them. He then goes on to further explain that ‘the simplicity and minimal number of joints in Barbie suggests the priority given to posing rather than action.’ Here Kirkham argues the fact that Mattel has created the barbie doll with one thing in mind, posing. It is suggested that the idea for barbie came from a German doll called Lilli that was created by cartoonist Reinhard Beuthien in 1955 for adults. Lilli was portrayed as a ‘three-dimensional version of a pinup poster’ (Thomas, 2003)  Since then the company has played on the stereotype that a young age girls want to grow up to be this perfect looking ideal posing humans. ‘Little girls in advertisements are usually pictured playing with Barbie dolls in their bedrooms.’ (He). This statement further supports the fact that companies use product placement to further enhance the stereotypes of what kids like. They have created a toy that its primary function is to be made to be dressed up, made to pose and to look pretty. 

‘Handler had mentioned her idea for marketing an adult doll who had well-made clothing to Mattel designers, who were male……. “They were all horrified by the thought of wanting to make a doll with breasts” (Lord, 1994)…… Thus barbie, named after Handler’s daughter, was born with an adult figure and nipples breasts that have remained controversial ever since.’ (Thomas, 2003).

 Barbie wasn’t created to do anything else and this is shown with its lack of joints and movable parts. This is also reinforced by the fact that on the barbie packaging the had the phrase ‘Now as posable as You are’.   The only parts that are moveable are the hips and head. Barbie is shown as this model like figure who always has to have the latest clothes, perfect hair and best accessories as girls grow up they see this as an ambition to recreate. ‘It's just so insidious and it shows how commercial forces can get under their skin even by that age’ (Palmer, 2006). This statement from Toxic childhood shows that Mattel has used the stereotype of girls wanting to be the prettiest and most desired to create a product that has sold in the masses since its first inception in 1959. They did the complete opposite with Action Man. They created a product that made males want to be the toughest and most action driven men. They preyed on the stereotype that men should be tough and not be wimps in order to desired by women. Action Man was seen as the complete man and he was marketed always in a jungle situation or in some a place with a sense of danger. He was always the hero that was portrayed in films but was never caught in a shopping mall or doing anything that didn’t portray him as the complete man he was. He was made with multiple joints in the elbows knees and shoulders. He even had moveable arms and feet on some models while barbie could only stand and pose he could do all these other things. ‘The Joints of the dolls provide material evidence of the ability for movement. The technical improvement added over the years to the joints in the  Action Man figure embodies the increasing possibility of complex movement.’ (Kirkham, 1996) Although this might be seen as wrong because of how they were market and they preyed on the vulnerability of children, it also enabled Mattel to create two of the most marketable products on the planet. The clothes industry is a market that also has played an integral part in gender stereotyping towards children. Recently, Next and Tesco came under fire for creating products that were aimed at certain genders and by using negative stereotypes to promote their clothes. Next released a line of baby grows that had different phrases on them based on the theme of space. They made the baby grows targeted at boys  blue in colour and had phrases like “in space I’m taller” and the baby grows targeted at girls were pink and had the phrase “I need my own space” on it. The reason that they faced so mach backlash is because they were implying that males were the gender that needed the scientific facts and that baby grows with  facts about space would appeal to while girls would be intrigued by emotional phrasing. This plays on the stereotype that girls are emotional and they should grow up and be able to express their emotions while males should grow up suppressing emotions and concentrate on their work. Tescos baby grows were similar to this in the fact that the phrases they used in the male and female baby grows had different connotations around them. The female ones had phrases like “beautiful” and “I feel fabulous” which plays on the idea that they should concentrate on their appearance and being this posable object and the males had phrases like “Desert adventure awaits," “Hero” and “Think outside the box” on it which support the idea that men should always be active, adventurers and always moving. This goes back to Barbie and Action Man mentality of Mattel that girls should be objects for posing and thinking about how the look and guys should be the rough and rugged one. I am not saying that they shouldn’t create baby grows without these phrases on, I am saying that with the argument of gender neutrality the baby grows that they created for both male and females should have had both these phrases and so males can have baby grows that talk about emotion and females can have baby grows that are filled with fun scientific facts. An increase with this kind of marketing and equality within products will reduce the stereotypes that children grow up with and will help them to grow up not feeling subjected to behaving and acting in a certain and will allow them to express themselves run whatever way they like. 

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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.

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Gender Neutrality is a topic that is becoming more widely discussed in todays world with more emphasis going into breaking down stereotypes and creating a world where people do not  feel pressured into conforming to a certain label. 

Are we as designers responsible for creating stereotypes and is it our obligation to break down the mould? 

Introduction

Gender Neutrality is ‘the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people’s sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than the other.’ Designing in a gender neutral manner does not mean designing for everyone it means allowing people to choose a product and not feel like it wasn’t designed for them. If you are designing for a specific gender you are ruling out another gender. As designers we shouldn’t create products that rule out certain gender from using it.

According to the 2011 national census of the U.K, when asked if people were male, female or other, 0.3% of the population identified as other while in America that number is 0.7% according to the Williams institute. Gender Neutrality is a topic that is becoming more widely discussed in society today with a big effort going into creating all inclusive products that allow people to feel safe in the choices they make. Traditionally products where created with a target market in mind whether that be male or female, black or white and old or young. This led to designers creating products that were designed with certain stereotypes in mind. They were made with different considerations to colour, form and size. ‘Stereotypically women’s tastes still stand outside the true canon of aesthetic values of the dominant culture’ (Sparke, 1996). Sparke here is referring to the fact that when designing for women we do not design products that emphasise the role that women play in our society today but instead create products on outdated and historic pre conceptions of what we believe they want.  It goes on to say that ‘women would be quick to disassociate themselves from those tastes.’ This supports the fact that stereotypes are made and that products of today are not doing any justice to dispel the gender stereotype towards women. As times have gone on there has been more of an emphasis put on creating products that do not appeal to certain genders but instead appeal to a wider audience and can be used by all types of people. I am going to use this series to explore three main questions:

1. Is stereotyping inevitable when designing with personas?

2. Should stereotyping always have negative connotations?

3. Do designers create stereotypes and is it our responsibility to create all access products?

Within these headlines, I will use literature review, critique and design precedents to make arguments that I believe will allow me to come to a conclusion on if designers responsible for creating stereotypes and whether it is our obligation to break down the mould.