Thinking Beyond the Default User: The Impact of Gender and Stereotypes on Designers’ Interpretation of Users and Their Needs

Abstract

Abstract Throughout the mechanical design process, designers, the majority of whom are men, often fail to consider the needs of women, resulting in consequences ranging from inconvenience to increase risk of death or serious injury. Although these biases are well-studied in other fields of research, the mechanical design field lacks formal investigation into this phenomenon. In this study, undergraduate engineering students (n = 151) took a survey in which they read a Persona describing a student makerspace employee and a Walkthrough describing their interaction with the makerspace while completing a project. During the Walkthrough, the user encountered various obstacles, or Pain Points. Participants were asked to recall and evaluate the Pain Points that the user encountered, then evaluated their perceptions of the makerspace and user. Six different experimental conditions were used to investigate the impact of gender-stereotyped tasks and the gender of a user on designers’ interpretation of them and their needs. In addition to finding that the gender of a user impacted the way a task environment was perceived, results confirmed the presence of androcentrism, or “default man” assumptions, in the way designers view end users of unknown gender. Future work will explore methodologies of overcoming this bias so that designers are able to consider the diverse needs of a range of users.