Hi folks,
I can't speak to the gender issues per se, but I'd like to suggest the question of web navigation (specifically) is a bit of a red herring. Rather the issue is multifold, and is a function of a learned behavior - specifically learning to read a screen, and items (windows, icons and controls) on a screen. This is by in large and unconscious thing, but IMHO it is a learned behavior nevertheless. Within that context, the factors governing the learned behavior are a function (greatly) of age. Perhaps there is a gender component - but I doubt it.
Let me start with an example. I work with a number of people that will not read on the screen (web or otherwise). After a number of years of just considering them curmudgeons I wised up and realized that it is not so much that they WON'T read their email (or a document) on the screen, but they CAN'T. They have not learned how - perhaps as deeply as their minds not actually being able to easily gestalt the shape of the letters and words as formed by dots on the screens. (To some extent, clearer screens, anti-aliasing, etc, are making screens easier to read).
Our minds are strangely incredible things. They do things for us that we fail to notice consciously. One of those things is "fill in" or recognize shapes from very limited amounts of data. The best example I ever saw of this was many years ago, in a film. The film would show what appeared to be a picture of a series of geometric shapes on the screen, displaying each for just a few seconds. You were then asked to write down what the shapes were. It was easy (I figured it was one test I would ace). There were just simple circles, triangles and squares.
Then, the film was shown again, at a slower speed. Lo and behold, every shape that I had seen as a complete "square" or "triangle" was actually incomplete, missing a leg of the triangle, or a side of the square. Trying to be useful, my brain had filled in the missing pieces.
Reading a screen, noticing where things are, and actually perceiving the structure of the words, controls, and other items is learned. For those whose brains are not accustom to this, those that have not deeply learned it, the process is not easy, confusing and irritating.
Working with people - doing support remotely via telephone and sometimes with a remote "view" of their desktop - the ability to "see" items (or lack thereof) on the screen becomes crystal clear. Back in the command line days, it was clear that the novice user never knew where, give a block of text on the screen, they should start. Everything they had learned in their lives up until then said "start at the of a block of text and read down."; However, when you're doing command line, it's not the top of a block of text that's important, it's usually the text at the bottom, or perhaps in the middle. Even today, when diagnosing connectivity issues, and asking people to enter "IPCONFIG" at the command prompt, the inclination is to read the entire result, top to bottom, despite the fact that I tell them to look at the middle. They want to start at the top, and usually insist on reading me the gobbledygook despite me saying I only want
the line with their IP address.
In a GUI, the problem has been exacerbated. Now, not only are
"relevant" items scattered around on the page, they are scattered
between multiple windows. It's a learned behavior of knowing where to look, knowing what's important, and knowing what to look for. It's clear to me that some people actually don't perceive the page or window in the same way I have learned to. To most of you, this is so ingrained as to be unconscious. Hence, we can't see that they can't see.
In working with my mother, age 39 (really 82), I was pleasantly reminded of just how much is a learned behavior. The first time we hit a screen with a "go" button and I said press it. She asked how I know that it was something that should be pressed? To her it looked like a box on the screen that said "go" - and "go" doesn't mean "press" and (as she said), you really don't press it anyway, you move this little arrow over it, and press the mouse. Of course she was right.
When she said, "besides, it's in the wrong place." I asked what she meant. She said, "well, the human eye follows an arc that runs from the upper left to the lower right side of a picture. If you want it to be the next thing I do, it should be down here", pointing at the lower right hand corner of the window. She went on to explain that all the great works of visual art (painting and drawing) are drawn with that bias to the "southeast."; (My mother is an artist.)
So, as a learned behavior, much of the learned skill is a function of age - simply because, on average, the younger you are the more likely you have spent hours learning the unconscious skills of "seeing" a page of text, a window, or a web site. The younger you are the more likely you are to "intuitively" know where the buttons are, to intuitively "see" the entire gestalt of the page, and perceive and differentiate the various controls from the content.
Finally, back to the question, I think that if you took, let's say, a group of so-called "internet natives" - folks that have grown up with GUI navigation - and tested them on navigation issues, you'd find little if any gender differences.
Regards
Gavin
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-----original message-----
>>I've noticed that men will click and poke, click and poke, click and poke. Women wait patently wait, then figure it all out using logic. It's all a big mystery to us (AKA guys) . We like exploring. This is a bit of a generalization, however something I have observed over the years. Very few men will ask for directions, women will bring a map and read the fine print. They're much smarter then us!>>;
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