Think Before You Pink

Designing Experiences for Women

Assignment: Design a website for a female demographic.

Typical Solution: background-color: pink; img src: url(flowerprint.jpg)

Well, Jessica Ivins is here to tell you that's not always the right solution in her discussion, Designing Experiences for Women.

Jessica Ivins is an experience designer for Happy Cog, a website development company which handles everything from site structure to interface design and from branding to content development. She explains,

"Just because most of your users are women, it doesn't mean that you should create a site with pink and floral embellishments. Understanding women's behaviors and motivations for using the site (especially if they're different from men's) will truly help you make an informed design decision."

Women demand intuitive design because between cooking, working, and taking care of everyone around them, they don’t have time to fumble around with complex navigation and unnatural functionality. Ivins explains, not only what women want, but also what a designer can do to please both genders if the product calls for that. Products fall on a spectrum and some products require a design that caters to both men and women. Contrary to popular belief, women do watch ESPN and women are part of gaming communities.

Designing Experiences for Women will discuss many issues plaguing designers today. For instance, "Why would women and men respond differently to designs or when does gender matter with regard to design?" Ivins says that, "Understanding women's and men's roles in decision-making has helped me to create effective designs."

So why is it important that we please women on the web?

• Women account for 58% of the e-commerce market


• Women use social media more than men


• Women are gamers (Two words: Angry Birds)

For more stats, check out this TechCrunch article on the women and the internet.

Also, the discussion on designing for women extends upon previous talks on the subject. For more background on the topic there a serious of slides below where Ivins explains what it means to design experiences for women and why it's important.

On Shrink It and Pink It: Designing for Women

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