On women and Max/MSP
At the end of the Jamboree opening talk with David Ziccarelli, there was short discussion about Max/MSP’s overt and obviously masculine user base - and how this concerns David. This is something I think we’re all somewhat conscious of - in interactive art work, computer music, and technologically implicated arts of all kinds. Diversity is key to the advancement of a form, in my mind, as it helps develop voice as well as helps integrate. Also - myself and Atau are currently recruiting for the second year of an interactive digital media masters course we’re running out of the Culture Lab, and so have become very interested in questions of heterogeneity amongst our student population.
Yolande Harris - one of four women in the room when David brought this point up on Monday - put up a good post addressing the issue a bit on her blog scorescapes.net. I thought it might be good to try and move the discussion over here, if anyone’s up for it! (See my first comments on Yolande’s blog.)
David Zicarelli - on women and Max/MSP @ scorescapes.net
December 10th, 2008 at 19:17
I can understand how the look and feel of a piece of software can make it more or less attractive to men and women. My girlfriend loves Little Big Planet on the PS3 for totally different reasons to me, she seems to like the colours and the configurability of the look while I’m more interested in the physics of playing the game. I think Max 5 was a huge upgrade for the GUI that made it a lot less forboding to look at but if it is to go further then easier integration of ’skins’ for the look of patchers could be a good place to start.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:21
Someone (I think it was Daynah Boyd) did some analysis showing that VR CAVE systems are gender-biased. 3D visualization systems might actually be putting women at a disadvantage (this statement is “on average”). HCI design *must* consider human cognitive processes. The preference/tendency towards certain representational models (or “design patterns”) is natural, but it should also be inclusive and representative of the user-base.
Eventually HCI practice will consider *individual* cognition to the extent that the user will be able to customize the preferences in all areas of the design including high-level decisions about the interaction models. Incidentally this sort of UI logic is a good use for the extra processing power of many-core computers.
Of course certain economic realities are necessary in consideration of the allocation of programmer-time to a product like Max/MSP. That being said, the final answer to the argument (and by this I mean final in the fatal sense) is simply to make the box-corners a customizable preference.