Visit the Femme Den at the 2009 International CES
December 31, 2008 |
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By Guest Bloggers: The Femme Den Team from Smart Design
The Femme Den’s session will be part of the “Issues and Attitudes” track at CES and will take place on January 9, 2009 at 3:00pm in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The Femme Den’s fundamental premise is that technology needs to serve people, not the other way around – especially for women. Overwhelmingly, a woman wants technology to solve both her and her family’s real problems with easy, flexible, and well-designed products. Research has shown that women tend to be turned off by products that are feature-rich but don’t accommodate their real needs and fit into their lives in a holistic way.
Based on extensive research with both women and men, the Femme Den have concluded that the consumer electronics industry needs to get in touch with its feminine side if it wants to reach the untapped, under-served female audience. For years, the latest, greatest technologies have driven product design, but that approach routinely overlooks real-life needs and forces users to adapt to solutions that may be new, but are not truly “innovative”. These devices reflect a male-oriented history of engineering and are overloaded with features and machine-like styling.
Erica Eden, one of the founders of the Femme Den, explains,
Women represent the world’s third largest economy, and buy or influence 80 percent of all purchases of goods and services. The women’s market is a huge business opportunity, but CE companies aren’t connecting with their real needs. We hope to change that.”
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January 8th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
I agree completely that in recent years, Engineering Product Design has largely failed to take into account the female perspective. And that’s a fact – 80% of the goods and services are directly or indirectly purchased by women. Unfortunately technology and product design has neglected to take this important factor into account.
This gap is something that we sought to address when we started our company Shop N Chill. Shop N Chill (www.shopnchill.com) is a platform that incorporates technologies for online shopping taking into consideration the woman’s perspective also. How do women make decisions? How do they shop? What are the dynamics that influence their decision making? What attracts them to make purchases online? These are the kinds of questions whose answers we set out to make use of in the design our platform (www.shopnchill.com).
Women like to shop with friends; they like to get fashion and shopping advice, information on trends, in order to assist their shopping decisions. These and other factors were taken into account during the design and implementation of technologies on our site (for instance, the Shopping Trip(TM) feature).
We are looking forward to further improving our site (www.shopnchill.com) based on ‘what women want’ and from feedback from conscious designers such as those who are a part of the Femme Den Team. Good luck in all your ventures.