canary birds of the technological mineshaft

Today's BBC News Online has a great article entitled "Technology's gender balancing act."

Here's a good representative passage:

Genevieve Bell, anthropologist in residence for Intel, thinks it's high time technology companies thought more explicitly about those who do not fit the young, male, middle class stereotype.

And it's the growing buying power and desires of women that are changing how gadgets are being designed as well as marketed.

Women, she muses, are like the "canary birds of the technological mineshaft". If it doesn't work for them, it'll probably fail in the mass market.

The reporter, Jo Twist, has a great line about products like the women phone: "There is a fine line between making technologies appeal to wider audiences and patronising that audience with devices that look pretty but do not do much."

The article goes on to talk about blogs like Popgadget and Shiny Shiny. Mia Kim, the editor of Popgadget, is quoted as saying

Ask women what they want, design the products that appeal to women and then make the effort to get the word to women through channels that are friendly to women - most technology publications definitely are not.

It reminded me of the great line from Tom Melcher at There.com: "If you can build a place that women love, the guys will show up. The reverse is not true."

All in all, it's a great article. Kudos to Jo Twist and the BBC News Online team.