Please join DC Web Women (DCWW) and Happy Cog Senior Experience Designer, Jessica Ivins, as she discusses designing products and digital media for women.

When it comes to designing for women, the immediate impulse is to “shrink it and pink it,” meaning products are splashed with the color pink, and content and messaging are dumbed down. But women want what’s relevant to them. They want products and online experiences that are intuitive, not insulting to their intelligence. They want function, not frills.

Women have now become part of the digital mainstream. In the US market, women make up just under half of the online population, but they spend 58 percent of e-commerce dollars. Women are online gamers, shoppers, bloggers, and social media consumers. And yet, we still don’t quite know how to design for them.

This session reviews the historical and contemporary landscape of designing for women. We’ll review misguided, yet well-intentioned designs based on assumptions and stereotypes that have flopped. Likewise, we’ll review success stories of well-designed products and experiences that truly meet women’s needs. We’ll also look at when gender should factor into your design and when it shouldn’t. Ultimately, when designing for women (or men, or both), you’ll want to get it right.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

While in college, Jessica took a class devoted to HTML and CSS, fell in love, and never looked back. She began her career as a front-end developer, and while working in the real world, she fell in love again with the principles of user-centered design. In March of 2010, she joined the team at Happy Cog as a senior experience designer.

A strong advocate for universal usability, Jessica is the first to admit that she’s befuddled by a lack of clarity in everything from road signage to food packaging. She's passionate about making things easy and enjoyable to use and regularly contributes her time and experience to the UX community. From 2008-2010, she served as an officer for PhillyCHI. She has also organized meetings for the Philadelphia UX Book Club.

In her spare time, Jessica busies herself with reading, cooking, and enjoying a fine glass of wine. She’s also mildly obsessed with the TV show Forensic Files.

Many thanks to our sponsor AQUENT for providing food for the event. 

Proceeds from this event will go to the DCWW initiative, Girls Rock On the Web (GROW).

GROW is a series of annual events where we provide opportunities for young girls and women ages 8 – 16 to learn more about internet technology through tech-focused activities and events.

DCWW hopes that by exposing these future leaders to technology in a supportive, encouraging environment at a younger age will inspire them to pursue an interest or career in STEM and web-based technologies.

To learn more about our outreach programs and how you can help, please contact us at info@dcwebwomen.org.