Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium fiona carty

A Think Piece for Females in Mobile Development

When I was thirteen, I received the iPhone 4 for Christmas. Before that, I had limited access to the internet & my only wifi-connected device that I owned was my Kindle. My parents were very strict about the sites that I visited, what I posted on Facebook, and even the email chains that my friends & I would send each other. My view of what was going on in the world was very limited.

Overlooked Exposure

I would like to note that my generation, especially the demographic of girls, didn’t have a lot of early access to the internet. Our first exposure to new technology & ideas was mobile-first whether that be iOS or Android.

“What is the potential of mobile development?”

A mobile phone primarily has one user, in contrast to a multi-user experience — similar to television or netflix. This allows the user to interact with the internet, apps, and the outside world from inside a bubble. There is a level of isolation to a mobile device, but that has it’s perks. One of those, is the percolation of thoughts & ideas a user has while consuming information, media, and art, alone.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, or how my life would change when I got my first iPhone. I was just excited to discover new music on platforms like Pandora & Spotify. After, I became quite interested in exploring & trying different types of apps. I discovered new art mediums & ideas through services like Stumbleupon, Reddit, Pinterest, and Tumblr, along with new ways to share my art through Instagram.

My sphere of influence of how I create art, the music I listen to, scientific articles I read, and even my sense of style can all trace back to media I consume. To have access to infinite amounts of human influence & information at my fingertips… that’s powerful.

Mobile-first social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram hit home for me and the rest of my generation. They allowed us to share our personal experiences from a distant, stylistic standpoint. You could argue that it brought building an aesthetic or brand for yourself to a whole new level.

This is what drew me to mobile development. There were so many new ideas to explore, it seemed like an awesome space to create art within. I was able to express all of my artistic & scientific influences in a new, constructive way. I was able to create tools to discover & explore information.

Build, from Lack Thereof

I think we forget the capabilities available to us — with a portable computer in our pocket or hands at all times. My personal interest lies with accessing geolocation, iBeacon, the accelerometer, and other built-in components to create new user experiences. Whereas a couple of my friends have found interest & success using image recognition and creating e-commerce for products they love on mobile.

But regardless of libraries & APIs, apps start with solving a problem that we come across in our daily lives.

Due to females owning majority of the market for fashion and beauty, and the lack of girls to build these products, there has been a lot of opportunity for mobile-first e-commerce.

My close friend Olivia, noticed this lack and built, Lippi, an app that allows you to buy different shades of lipstick in app. Soon after, my friend Miriam, built Brows — an app that finds shades of brow contour makeup based on your BrowIQ, using facial recognition. Their apps attracted thousands of users naturally, creating profit out the door, without investment.

Only 8 % of mobile developers are female. But, of majority of our generation’s female population are exposed to the world through iPhone and Android devices. There is a huge gender gap in who is creating these products, which makes a significant difference in the media and information we are influenced by.

If Miriam and Olivia’s success aren’t proof enough, I’d like to pull out a story that Scott Forstall, the former SVP of Apple, told me after my team’s win at a hackathon.

Forstall spoke of the first prototypes of the iPhone, when the engineers were testing out the usability of the touchscreen. It wasn’t until a female engineer joined the team and tested the device that they realized it didn’t take into account her manicured nails.

Luckily, this was caught in an early stage of the product development process. But, these types of oversights can happen at any stage. For example, Apple’s Health Kit & native Health app didn’t even account for menstrual health or birth-tracking data up until a couple months ago.

A Pragmatic Perspective

In both occasions, simply because there wasn’t a female at the drawing board to make product and engineering decisions, technology wasn’t meeting the needs of their users. There isn’t anyone I want to blame for these lacks, but there is definitely glaring solution to build more intuitive products.

Until a woman had pointed this out to me, it hadn’t even crossed my mind as something so vital as menstrual health was missing. And I think that’s part of the problem, we’ve normalized a certain method of problem solving used in a male-dominated field. Leadership has been historically harsh rather than empathetic, and where outlandish ideas are initially discouraged when coming from females, but encouraged in men.

With more female founders like Olivia, there are more products that are beginning to fill the needs of the female population. Sheryl Sandberg has influenced a shift in how we run organizations and will continue to influence how we treat one another. Along with that, I suggest to allow breathing room for feedback or input from other engineers, by facilitating conversation & openness. These discussions led with questions like:

“Have we considered [ this ]?”
“What would happen if [ scenario ] ?”

Driving conversations about inclusiveness can lead to user research and user interviews to further reveal blind spots in the app or product.

Closing Thoughts.

With that, I want to leave you with a single question — What problems & lack of accessibility do you see females still face?

This an easy question to answer off the bat, but try to not to come up with just one. Write a list. Draw some wireframes. Conduct user interviews. Prototype & iterate.

Find out what women actually need.

( Draft # 1 — Still editing…)

Mobile-First. Female-First. was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mobile-First. Female-First.

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