In a 1995 interview, American singer Cher said the above quote. This was in response to all those questions she started getting about settling down and having children as she was approaching the age of 30. I have always liked this quote and feel like it is very powerful. It is something that resonates with me, probably because of the fact that I have been told something similar, many times before. I decided to change this quote up a bit and scratch out the man and write woman instead. Scratching out man is like a response.
These are some reflections from people I have interviewed when data gathering
Not all these reflections are by students in my discipline of Industrial Design. I decided to explore gender bias in the design industry as a whole.
In the early stages of the project, the class was put into groups of 3 or more students. Some groups consisted of only females and others had a mixture of males and females. My group consisted of 2 males and 2 females. In these groups, we discussed gender bias and awareness. We also shared our personal experiences with gender discrimination and made some interesting discoveries. I discovered that I had not been openly discriminated against by people in terms of being a female in industrial design, however, I felt incompetent on my side which I realised was an internal discrimination. We also read posts on the unequal stories website which showed us the different experiences of gender bias people faced from different parts of the world.
In a Ted talk by Robyn-Clay Williams, she explains that if you ask people how to design for women, they will simply say "just pink it and shrink it." and this pattern of thinking can be seen in products such as tools designed for females. In the example shown above, the tool box with tools designed for women are simply smaller versions of the same tools and it is made in pink. But this does not solve the issue of female exclusion and gender inequality in design. In fact, it just reinforces stereotypes, does not address the issue at hand and ignores further underlying issues. Robyn-Clay Williams explains that designing for women is not as simple as changing the size and colour of products. There are more serious issues women face due to being excluded from the data used when designing, such as safety belts in cars. According to research, females are more likely to be seriously injured in car accidents because of safety belts and crash testing designed and conducted around male data.
These were my 3 ideas for the outcome. Each idea is explained in the photo above.
This is an example of an Instagram layout if I were to do my campaign on social media. However after presenting these ideas to my group, the feedback I received was that these ideas are too practical and not speculative enough. So I went back to brainstorming ideas until I got the idea presented below.
I relooked at my "how might we" question and "aims and objectives". I redefined it to fit the speculative design approach better. This is the new "how might we?" question and the updated "aims and objectives". The target audience and single message is still the same from phase 2.
After much thought, this is the new concept I came up with.
I wore the male silicone hand on one hand and took photos of me in the Industrial Design workshop at the University of Johannesburg, using tools with the silicone hand.
This is a close-up photo showing the extra piece of "skin" stitched onto the silicone hand. It also shows some blood and stitches, reinforcing the idea of what women have had to endure for years as a result of being excluded from the data when designing.
This photo shows me using a power tool, holding it with the male hand, reinforcing the idea of power tools being designed for male data.
This is a photo of me holding a hammer with the male hand on my hand. In real life, I actually could not hold this hammer for long. My hand was shaking while we were taking the photos and my wrist started to hurt because this specific hammer was actually really heavy.
This photo shows one of my hands as normal and the other with the male silicone hand "stitched" onto my hand. This photo shows an interesting contrast between the size of the two hands.
This video explains the insight which informed the final concept and the meaning and symbolism behind the final concept.
