On December 7, 2015, Prof. Margaret Burnett (Oregon State University) will give a talk about "GenderMag: A software process to find gender-inclusiveness issues in software" in the context of the SFB 901.
Abstract:
Gender inclusiveness in software companies is receiving a lot of attention these days, but it overlooks a potentially critical factor-software itself. Research into how individual differences cluster by gender shows that males and females tend to work differently with software that aims to help people solve problems (e.g., tools for debugging, for end-user programming, for game-based learning, and for visualizing information). However, many features of problem-solving software are (inadvertently) designed around the way males tend to problem-solve.
In this talk, I'll explain 5 facets of these gender differences and how they tie to a large body of foundational work on gender differences from computer science, psychology, education, communications, and women's studies. I'll also present emerging work on our "GenderMag method", an inspection method that encapsulates these 5 facets into practitioner-ready form. Early empirical results suggest that GenderMag is effective at enabling practitioners to pinpoint gender inclusiveness issues in software features.