By the early 90s, home and office computing was in full swing, but new users still struggled. Software companies made every attempt to provide their customers with easier to use software.
One attempt was Microsoft's creation of Clippy, the now infamous digital assistant designed to navigate users through simple tasks in Microsoft Office. During Clippy's creation, Microsoft's male-dominated engineering team held several focus groups to evaluate customer's reactions and the usefulness of the tool.
In short, they hated it. Not everyone hated it however - only women. Female focus group participants indicated that Clippy was too male-looking, and they felt he was leering at them. Rather than take this feedback, the engineering team discounted it and went on to release one of the most hated features in Office history (which is really saying something).
This incident is now known as one of the earliest examples of the inevitable failures that uniform teams face. When teams are not diverse, they cater only to who they know. It becomes easier to ignore perspectives that do not fall within their own personal knowledges, creating products that exclude. For a longer essay on this topic, see this New Yorker article.
By the early 90s, home and office computing was in full swing, but new users still struggled. Software companies made every attempt to provide their customers with easier to use software.
One attempt was Microsoft's creation of Clippy, the now infamous digital assistant designed to navigate users through simple tasks in Microsoft Office. During Clippy's creation, Microsoft's male-dominated engineering team held several focus groups to evaluate customer's reactions and the usefulness of the tool.
In short, they hated it. Not everyone hated it however - only women. Female focus group participants indicated that Clippy was too male-looking, and they felt he was leering at them. Rather than take this feedback, the engineering team discounted it and went on to release one of the most hated features in Office history (which is really saying something).
This incident is now known as one of the earliest examples of the inevitable failures that uniform teams face. When teams are not diverse, they cater only to who they know. It becomes easier to ignore perspectives that do not fall within their own personal knowledges, creating products that exclude. For a longer essay on this topic, see this New Yorker article.