The Guidebook to a Female Interaction Strategy is launched at the end of February. The guidebook sums up research, methods and conclusions from our 3-year Female Interaction project. It signals the start of a year where implementation of the research findings and Female Interaction know-how in the industry is a top priority.
 
Womenomics potentials are rapidly growing year by year. With the Guidebook to a Female Interaction Strategy you acquire new grounds for user insights and decision making, helping you to successfully innovate and develop products for the emerging female target group.
 
Order the guidebook already now!  Send an e-mail to our office manager Karin Bech Hansen kbh@design-people.dk with your post address. The price is 45 Euro plus transport.

 
On January 11th Klaus Schroeder, head of the Female Interaction research project and Stine Vilhelmsen, project coordinator presented the outcome of 3 years research in an interactive 40 minutes live presentation.
 
The free master class made an introduction to female business insights and the innovation potential overseen in the (tech) industry, as well as specific Female Interaction principles for making the female tech approach operational.
 
The free live webinar was hosted by FEI – Front End of Innovation ® Europe (FEI 2012).

 The webinar is available for viewing here

 
Download the presentation here: part1 & part2

Keep informed on activities on the Front End of Innovation Facebook page and blog  

 
“An eye opener, highly relevant, both necessary and urgent” were some of the audience responses at the Female Interaction conference Women are your New Market, held November 8th at Danish Design Center, Copenhagen. Both Danish and international companies reflected their inherent challenges and opportunities in the methods and viewpoints presented.
 
Exploring potential for growth by targeting women
Among the delegates was E-commerce manager Ninoslav Miskovic from Secuyou, a Danish producer of a central door lock system for private homes.
“We measure on parameters like geography, age and previous incidents with burglaries, but we haven’t measured on gender before. Here we need other sources than quantitative business data. While the husband might be our named customer, his wife most certainly plays an important part of the decision making process. But how much and in what way? Does she value the aesthetics of the locking system or its ability to make her feel safe? Do families require a door lock system on her behalf or on his? Here we have some field work to do.”
 
Being a smaller Danish company with an emerging international market, Secuyou has set out to explore the gender aspect as a possibility for growth.
“The prospect of turning our product into a cherished Mate or maybe even a Darling to her, as one of the Female Interaction principles prescribes, seems promising - and attainable - within our line of products.”  
 
Gender aspects can be lost in business processes
From Microsoft Business Solutions interaction designer Morten Holm-Petersen joined the conference. He took home some other insights.
“Developing Microsoft Dynamics solutions for areas like sales, purchasing, inventory and accounting, we are of course aware that the majority of our users are women, while both our developers and our clients’ IT purchasers are typically men.
 
We believe that designing for female values will increase our users’ satisfaction with the product, support them in using it in new situations – and even increase the product satisfaction for male users because the design principles are good common sense. They are just not the kind of common sense that first comes to mind for a typical male designer or developer. That’s why the Female Interaction design principles will be valuable to us.
 
In our case the challenge might lie in securing the gender aspects all the way through product development and the purchasing phase, where IT purchasers in most companies are in the habit of comparing technical features – not desirable experiences.
As I see it, organizational and cultural changes are the prerequisites for a true breakthrough for gender responsiveness in our type of business market.”

 
The 2 day Design Summit in Montreux is a place where international design leaders from a variety of different industries meet to be inspired.

In October the Female Interaction project was exposed at this prestigious event with the presentation "womenomics meets design" by Klaus Schroeder, design-director and partner at design-people. Present at the Summit were also Rasmus Falkenberg, partner at design-people, and Flemming Møller Petersen, design manager from Bang & Olufsen. Feedback from delegates on the Female Interaction approach, cases and development toolbox was definitely positive.
 
Also one-to-one meetings with design managers showed a clear urge from the tech-industry to better understand the preferences of their existing and potential female clients. The Female Interaction showcase for GN Netcom (including a female user experience movie) was seen as a great example of transforming female user insight and values into product innovation.
 
Represented at the Summit were companies like Audi, Vertu, Sony Ericsson, Chopard and Logitech.

The official Female Interaction launch will be held in Copenhagen, November 8th at the Danish Design Center.

Our latest newsletter is out. Download it here.

In 2028 women will be controlling 72 percent of all consumer spending worldwide, according to Boston Consulting Group. Womenomics is a reality, and designing technology for women has a huge potential.
 
This day we provide you with the essentials on:

• what motivates women to buy and use electronics
   
• how female user profiles will sharpen your design process
   
• guidelines on innovating for women, developed by the project partners including Bang & Olufsen, GN Netcom and Danfoss

The transformation of case products into new product concepts consistent with female tech preferences are presented. Also you get a chance to analyze your own potential for innovating for women – applying principles from the official female interaction tool box on your own product.
 
The event is held in English. It is relevant for CEO’s, designers, marketeers as well as product and concept developers.
 
Time and place:
Nov 8th 2011, 9 am to 4 pm at Danish Design Centre, HC Andersens Boulevard 27, DK 1553 København V.
 
Full programme (in Danish) and registration is available on www.ddc.dk
See you in November! 

 
Right now the new female interaction case concepts (to be launched in November) are embedded into short movies.
 
The films will show how the new alternative female design concepts (based on the analysis of case products from Jabra, Danfoss and B&O) will enter the lives of the female users - and unfold technological benefits and user interaction within mobile communication, indoor climate and home entertainment in a more subtle and female way.
 
The female interaction project has hired an experienced film maker - Christian Duus - helping to transform the user experience scenarios made by the design team into moving images. A process that includes casting and scripting like in a large film production - but don't expect to see Michelle Pfeiffer. Based on the budget limitations we recruit "actors" in our network.

7th of June 2011 the female interaction Advisory Board met to discuss how project findings will best be communicated in order to bring accumulated know-how and methods into play in the industry.
Among considerations was targeting the transfer of knowledge to different sectors of large organizations, e.g. providing management, marketing and development with the proper arguments and operational tools - thus enabling corporations to enter the field of gendered innovations fully qualified.
A consideration equally shared by the project team since we aim for the highest impact.
 
For that purpose the project team is currently preparing a tool box of e.g. concept cases relating to the case products submitted by B&O, Danfoss and GN Netcom, as well as guidelines and user driven innovations development  tools modified for a gendered innovation approach.
Also scientific papers, introductions to relevant gender research and interaction psychology as well as business trend data demonstrating the business potential of gendered innovations will be included in the project deliverables.  
 
The dissemination event in Copenhagen in November is held in co-operation with the Danish Design Centre.
Stay tuned - the agenda including list of key note speakers will be released in August.

 
When the female interaction advisory group met in November to review and inspire the project, the concept of “women as a future export market” was intensely discussed.
“We need a new refreshing look on globalization,” Christina Melander, project manager at Danish Design Centre (DDC), claims.
“Instead of targeting national markets we need ways to cross the boundaries of nationality, culture, language and other traditional criterias for segmentation. Traditionally we have defined new export markets by these data but there’s a layer that goes beyond that. The idea of looking at women as a new export market visualizes a much broader perspective.”  
 
Modulates basic tools to a gender reflexive focus
Kristoffer Okkels, Business Development Lead at Innovation Lab, notes that some of the principles and methods explored in the female interaction project are already well implemented basic tools for user driven innovation in most companies. At least on the surface.
“I see the potential of this project broadening the overall methodology by modulating the basic tools in a more gender reflexive direction. How should companies utilize e.g. focus groups with the purpose of creating female interaction design? Certainly not by just recruiting women instead of men. If you boil it down to that, you haven’t grasped the point at all.
So I’m looking forward to seeing basic innovation tools and methods redefined. The female interaction project provides a research based framework open for immediate use. In my opinion this is a radically new contribution to the field.“
 
Denmark the future centre of gender focused innovation?
Female interaction is partly funded by the government Programme for User-driven Innovation, a 4-year programme running from 2007-2010 with a yearly budget of DKK 100 million.
The programme aimed to evolve Danish innovative powers by making businesses more user driven and less technology driven - in fact a unique Government measure on the international scale.
According to Advisory Group member Gitte Just, CEO of the Danish Design Association (DDA), Denmark now has the potential of being a future hub for gender focused product innovation.
 “We have a strong market position as innovative territory. We also hold the right institutions and preconditions, as institutions and industry work closely together today.”   
 
Visible proof of economic effect needed
To Gitte Just the coming step will be implementing new methodologies as common practice in Danish businesses.
“However, to succeed you need to convince management that design is a direct parameter to competitive power and increasing sales. We know that industry craves business cases with valid and measurable results, as most companies normally keep this information to themselves for competitive reasons. Documenting the transformation of the female interaction case products it’s important we produce visible proof of the economic effect. This is really the missing link.“