SCALE Media Doesnt Get It (Design)
Way to go media (particularly The Jem Report):
Celeste Lyn Paul, a human-computer interaction (HCI) expert with the KDE project, spoke about the challenges that usability and interface design contributors face in the free and open source software world. Since usability and user interface design were mentioned as more likely projects for female contributors than coding, Paul’s presentation was particularly relevant to the session’s rapt attendees.
Somehow I don’t remember myself or anyone else saying that usability and user interface design are “more likely projects” for women to participate in than coding. Infact, I would argue these projects are more difficult for anyone (men and women) to get involved with, because if you are a female contributor (some of who seem to think this makes life in OSS more difficult), you also have to deal with the every day challenges of being a designer in open source.
If you think the meritocracy to which developers must prove themselves is difficult, try being a designer who wants to get something done in a developer-centric world. Being a designer in open source has presented much more difficult challenges to overcome than any of my other metadata has presented me. Did they not learn anything from my presentation?
Argh. I learned about journalists ignoring what you have to say and putting their words in your mouth when I was interviewed about being a woman in computer science back at Penn State. Of course, that was a college newspaper, so I should have expected crap journalism, but still.
I think you misunderstood the article. It says that usability is a more “likely” project for women in the FOSS community to be involved in, not an easier one.
If you look at the women involved in the KDE project, you see this statement is not entirely without merit. Of the most prominent women in KDE (judging from public visibility), 3 are involved in usability and/or design activities (you, ellen, janet). I only know of one (Anne-Marie) that is involved in a lot of development. Maybe this is not true and I’m missing a bunch of silent female developers, but this is the impression that one gets from following KDE activity on the various web sites.
I read this the same way as Leo. Percentage-wise, I believe, there are a higher number of women involved in usability than in coding on KDE.
Sure, but you are trying to compare numbers from hundreds of developers to a group of less than ten people. That in itself is not statistically significant. As far as I know, there are no women involved in Gnome design activities, and even in industry there is an unbalance of women to men of comparable skills.
But back to my original point: 1) I never said women are more likely to participate in open source design and the quote implies it, and 2) according to all the gripes I heard in other people’s presentations that day, the conditions in which women supposedly don’t want to participate in (meritocracy and communication sensitivities) are not any better in the design community, open source or not.
Yes, woman are currently more likely to be involved in useability. This statement is supported by the distribution of women over the different aspects of free software development. But this does not mean that “Paul’s presentation was particularly relevant to the session’s rapt attendees”. The session was about improving female participation in software development. Since _less_ women actually write code, this is a field that should be addressed _more_ than useability research.
So, while Celestes’ talk was nice because it talked about practice, a practice talk on writing code would have been even better. And, yes, the journalist has to learn how to treat women with more respect, because I do think he was implying women are better for useability stuff. Probably because he thinks they look better, smell better and are less fit for logic which makes them perfect for talking to users and hearing (but not listenting to) their woes.
Did you try and contact the author to get the article corrected - it being online this should be possible - and then people who read the article in future might ‘get it’ (and the author might too).
I think your basic point is valid though, useability doesn’t look like an easy area for anyone - being a woman and in design exposes someone to two levels of prejudice.
Given that this Jem article devoted one very small paragraph to Celeste’s presentation, I don’t think what was written was particularly informative or accurate to anyone. They make it sound as if the whole point of her presentation was to point out that it was better for women to get involved in usability than coding.
On another note, how do you get anything done Celeste? It must be incredibly hard, and you must have incredible patience, because you’re trying to get certain things changed and bettered from a usability point of view - but you don’t, and can’t write most of the code. I would imagine that you’ve had a fair share of “You don’t write the code and you don’t get to decide anything!” comments from people.
I can think of at least 4 women in KDE who are not involved in usability, so the statement can’t even be excused by statistics.
“Since usability and user interface design *were mentioned* as more likely projects for female contributors than coding”
Damn you passive voice, damn you to hell! It’s lazy, vague, hard to read, Dilbert-esque corporate-speak, and downright misleading.
“Mistakes were made”, I mean “Jem Matzan erred in using passive voice”.
Cele,
it is very simple to understand.
There is no mistake.
They (The Jem Report) do not make their homework.
=(