A Missing Link

Traditional software has been accidentally designed to cater to a specific type of user; for those people software is easy and intuitive, but for everyone else it is a major pain. This poor design is a gender bug (also known as a personality bug) of the system. People have a threshold of tolerance for issues in software and personality bugs can cause such a hassle for some users that they often aren’t able to do what they need. They no longer have any curiosity of how software works because they are so frustrated at using it in the first place. If we can begin to solve the gender bugs in our software we will be able to see more women being interested in contributing. It is up to us current developers to improve our software for those that don’t think the way that we do in order to be able to have the benefit of their input in the future. Our software is missing a big chunk of opportunity because we shut other people out with our design.