Thinking Beyond the Default User: The Impact of Gender, Stereotypes, and Modality on Interpretation of User Needs

Throughout the mechanical design process, designers, the majority of whom are men, often fail to consider the needs of women, resulting in consequences ranging from inconvenience to increased risk of serious injury or death. Although these biases are well-studied in other fields of research, the mechanical design field lacks formal investigation into this phenomenon. In this study, engineering students (n = 300) took a survey in which they read a Persona describing a student makerspace employee and a Walkthrough describing their interaction with the makerspace while completing a project. During the Walkthrough, the user encountered various obstacles, or Pain Points. Participants were asked to recall and evaluate the Pain Points that the user encountered, then evaluated their perceptions of the makerspace and user. The independent variables under investigation were the gender of the user Persona (woman, gender-neutral, or man), Walkthrough room case (crafting or woodworking makerspace), and modality of the Persona and Walkthrough (text- /audio-based). Results showed that participants from the Text-based modality were better able to recall Pain Points compared to participants from the Audio-based modality, although the Pain Points were assessed as more severe when they impacted women users. In addition to finding that the gender of a user impacted the way a task environment was perceived, results confirmed the presence of androcentrism, or “default man” assumptions, in the way designers view end users of unknown gender. Promisingly, providing user Persona information in an audio modality eliminated this bias compared to text-based modalities.