Every tech company should have a few lady geeks

I recently read something Belinda Parmar wrote in the Times Online Tech & Web section about a common strategy employed by technology companies who want to make their products appeal to women: “pink it and shrink it”.

euuuggghhh.

I totally agree that a hell of a lot of technology is very poorly aimed at women and I’m glad to see a company like Lady Geek exists, to provide some much needed guidance in the male-dominated tech industry.

Luckily at Miyowa our products are about simplifying the way we stay in touch with our friends – something that crosses any gender divide.
In fact, if anything, it’s refreshing to see instances like today where one of the female staff checked with the boys that the heart shaped logo that she had designed for the Rich AddressBook ‘favorites’ function wasn’t likely to put any guys off.
They were fine with it, but did insist it was red, not pink.

Fair enough.
It shows that getting the opinions from the opposite sex is always the most useful way to understand how ‘they’ are likely to feel about something. (no pigeonholing going on here, of course).

So anyway, I just wanted to share a traumatic technology purchase I made a few years ago, that utterly proves the point that some companies just don’t (or at least didn’t) ‘get’ women. I sincerely doubt any women had any input in to the decision making process that went into designing it.
Said company will remain nameless, as I promptly got rid of the offending purchase and I don’t remember who it was made by.

It was a phone, and I have to admit that I was actually seduced in to buying it due to it’s rounded contours and…dare I say it…pinkish stripe. It was indeed a whole lot prettier than all the other big bulks of black on offer, and I was caving in to the french femininity I was newly surrounded by. The problem was, having just moved to France, I didn’t speak a word of french – so when the sales assistant tried explaining the wonderful features of my new phone I didn’t understand a thing.
It was when I got home and read the manual in English that I discovered that my new phone had an integrated feature that allowed me to keep track of (look away boys) my friends and my menstrual cycles. This was bad enough, but yes, maybe it could be useful to some people? Like those trying to get pregnant? Or those who are horribly nosy? But what really got me mad was the incredibly inane section that asked me to fill in all my friends favorite perfume scents. Not just brands, but individual smells they like: ‘lavender’, ‘spice’, ‘citrus’, ‘fruity’, ‘wood’, ‘rose’. Because, yeh know, we girls all talk about that. A lot. Because it’s very important to us. Then there were shopping wish lists, shoe sizes and god knows what else. Suffice to say it annoyed me so much that I gave it away to a friend who needed a phone. To make calls on. Because that’s certainly the only thing that mobile was useful for.

Thankfully nowadays there are plenty of phones with lots of very useful apps and functions, and plenty of designs pretty enough not to need to be pink. And resources like Lady Geek to help tech companies make a better stab at giving girls what they actually want.

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