Abstract
Feminist critique of design practice has drawn attention to continuing problems women have as design practitioners and design consumers. A case study analysis of BEME.com, a commercial online portal design for female Internet users, offers an opportunity to address some of the issues such a critique raises. Notwithstanding that Internet technology and design offer new means of communicating with women, a feminist critique highlights that particularly within a commercial context there is an unwillingness within design practice to problematise its participation in the processes that embody gendered meanings. Instead, gender frequently features as part of design practitioners’ creative toolkit when designing for female audiences. This paper maps out ways in which design practitioners, whilst creating BEME.com, ‘design’ their female audience through a reliance on gender as a tool of differentiation and definition. The paper draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and interviews with the design team and online/publishing industry professionals to substantiate the analysis. Its purpose is to argue that contemporary design practitioners need to recognise the significance of questioning women’s participation in and consumption of, design practice.
Keywords
feminism and design; female web users; design and information technology: interface design, user-designer experience; consumption
Citation
Sadowska, N. (2006) Are we designing female audiences? The case of BEME.com a women’s commercial online portal, in Friedman, K., Love, T., Côrte-Real, E. and Rust, C. (eds.), Wonderground - DRS International Conference 2006, 1-4 November, Lisbon, Portugal. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2006/researchpapers/74
Are we designing female audiences? The case of BEME.com a women’s commercial online portal
Feminist critique of design practice has drawn attention to continuing problems women have as design practitioners and design consumers. A case study analysis of BEME.com, a commercial online portal design for female Internet users, offers an opportunity to address some of the issues such a critique raises. Notwithstanding that Internet technology and design offer new means of communicating with women, a feminist critique highlights that particularly within a commercial context there is an unwillingness within design practice to problematise its participation in the processes that embody gendered meanings. Instead, gender frequently features as part of design practitioners’ creative toolkit when designing for female audiences. This paper maps out ways in which design practitioners, whilst creating BEME.com, ‘design’ their female audience through a reliance on gender as a tool of differentiation and definition. The paper draws on documents obtained from the commissioning publishing house and interviews with the design team and online/publishing industry professionals to substantiate the analysis. Its purpose is to argue that contemporary design practitioners need to recognise the significance of questioning women’s participation in and consumption of, design practice.