Klaus Schroeder recently returned from a four day expert meeting on gender and technology at Unesco in Paris. Returning to Denmark he brought new international connections and angles on the female interaction project – as well as a recognition of the adjoining areas of research and gender focused efforts.

“The dialogue with your end users is a crucial element in user driven innovation. However, finding suitable users for user studies can be a challenge.

When you take a look at the demographic change of the industrialized countries you will realize: Our future society is not only older, but first of all female!

Although we carry out loads of research projects we never had this gender specific angle on the agenda.

One of the qualities in this project is the thoroughness regarding user research. I see a well structured project – and I also see the perpetual challenge of any user research team - reading your users correctly by asking the right questions.

At NFBi (Network for Research-based Userdriven Innovation) we follow the methodical development of the Female Interaction project very closely.
There is en evident need of exploring new developing methods in order to address problems faced by both society and businesses.

Where possible I think design and technology should be seamless integrated into your life. Electronical devices e.g. should be completely intuitive to use based on natural gestures that you carry out already.

Kathrine Steen Urup, GN Netcom, finds the research team's theses about men and women's perception of technology particularly interesting. 
”Apparently, women are more focused on aesthetics than men. Also, in crude terms, women perceive technology as a means to obtain certain advantages – they need a reason for using it.

”In the research phase we uncovered a major research area dealing with gender and technology. What surprised me the most, however, was that this research field turned out to feature a marked discourse on working with women's gender-specific sense of self and identity in order that they come to find it attractive to work with IT and technology – rather than looking into whether technology discourses as such feature barriers which could be changed in order to oblige the women.

Klaus Schröder, design-people:

”Which role does design play in women's access to the products? This was what design-people decided to investigate by establishing a visual overview of a wide range of products used by all of us and surrounding us in our everyday life – the vacuum cleaner, the blender, the shaver, the perfume flacon, the camera, the detergent container, etc.