Women are better with gadgets than men are… apparently
By Dave Parrack
We all have gadgets; some which we use on a daily basis, and some which we buy, mess about with for a week or two, and then abandon due to the novelty value disappearing. But how men and women approach the use of gadgets, especially when first bought, differs greatly. Men will assume they know best while women will study the instruction manual and take their time over a new toy.
That is, at least, according to a new survey from Gadget Helpline. The company exists purely to help solve people’s problems with gadgets, be they games consoles, televisions, or mobile phones. You pay a monthly fee and you’ll have someone ready on the end of a phone to help you deal with the increasingly complicated gadgets that are released each year.
In a recent study, Gadget Helpline found that 64 percent of its male callers and 24 percent of its female callers had not read the instruction manual before phoning up for help. What’s more, 12 percent of male callers and 7 percent of female callers turned out to just need to plug their gadget in or switch it on.
This shows a clear difference in the way the genders approach a new gadget and how they interact with it. Joanna Bawa, chartered psychologist and editor of the Usability News website, told BBC News:
There is evidence of a gender divide in technology, although a lot of it comes down to interpretation. In general terms men treat technology as something to be understood and conquered while women are more motivated by appliances that benefit them.
Which, for me at least, translates as “A man will tinker until a device does what he wants it to do while a woman will realize the device is in charge.” Clearly, a woman’s approach is best, especially in reading the instructions before even attempting to operate a gadget.
With the holiday season almost upon us, the amount of gadgets and gizmos being bought for and by people will increase massively. And I now have an image in my mind of a man and a woman in separate houses trying to figure a new device out. My money is on the fairer sex to figure it out first.
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November 8th, 2009
Must be a British thing. None of the women in my life bother with instructions and are quick to toss down a device in frustration if it doesn’t “just work” for them intuitively out of the box, where the males in my circle go over almost ever word of a manual.
From my BlackBerry Storm…
November 8th, 2009
It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to make technology easy to use. If I need to read a manual to work-out how to use technology, then the manufacturer has failed! I agree with having a manual for assistance for trickier and less used parts of functionality of a device; however, basic operation should be so straight-forward that no manual is required.