In 2003, Jesse James Garrett wrote:

“Demographics aren’t the only way you can look at your users. (…) Psychographics often correlate strongly with demographics: people in the same age group, location, and income level often have similar attitudes. But in many cases demographically identical people have very different ways of seeing and interacting with the world. (Just think of everybody you went to high school with.) That’s why uncovering the psychographics of your users can give you insights you can’t get from demographics.” – The Elements of User Experience

It’s 2018 now.

Fifteen years later, changes in society have only made that statement more truthful.

It’s natural to try to break down your audience by demographics (gender, age, education), since that data is quite commonly easier to find and filter. It is also the data that powers a lot of Marketing teams out there.

But does that approach really apply for User Experience Research?

Let’s look at the counterargument first.

Does gender affect the results of a usability test?

A quick online search brings up comments like these:

• “Women are more talkative than men when voicing out their thoughts”
• “Men are more bipolar; they either like or dislike a solution”
• “It’s easier to approach users of the same sex when doing guerrilla tests in public; it helps alleviate the tension of being approached by a stranger”
• “Women care more about UI aesthetics”
• “Men look, women read”

Those comments often come accompanied by the classic eye tracking image of a baseball game:

Honestly, that has not been my experience.

Whether someone is more talkative or not depends more on their personality than on preconceived gender stereotypes.

Whether someone cares more about aesthetics or function depends on how pragmatic they are. Not on whether they wore pink or blue as a baby (another stereotype that is thankfully dying soon).

Isn’t it time for us to start dissociating gender stereotypes from particular user behaviors?

User research is — more often than not — a qualitative exercise

If you are running usability studies, for example, you are not trying to understand attitudes of a target market stratified by any kind of representative metric. You’re not even recruiting enough participants to make your study scientifically significant. You are just trying to gather insights that will help you refine the experience, mitigate common concerns and ensure users know what to do to complete certain tasks.

Read also: a collection of articles on User Research and User Testing

Humans are complex beings

There is a big difference between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Gender is not a binary distinction that will define how people behave when engaging with the product you are designing — there are certainly more than two ways of grouping people in terms of how they think and act.

Read also: The (frustrating) User Experience of defining your own ethnicity

What people do is way more relevant than gender norms

User testing is, by nature, an observation exercise. Behavioral research (observing what people do) tends to be much more insightful than attitudinal research (asking people what they would do). That’s just human nature. The things you do, more than the things you say, are the ones that define you. And the things that society expects you to do matter even less.

Read also: Designing forms for gender diversity and inclusion

Screening by gender: so what do you say when asked?

In case you are asked — because you will be asked — how to deal with gender distribution when screening participants for user testing, don’t panic. My response to that question is usually that “gender is not particularly relevant in this case”, so “we should recruit a diverse mix of gender to whatever extent possible”, and that “we should prioritize the other screening criteria over this one”. There are really, really rare instances where gender will make any difference in your study.

Remember:

Psychographic over demographic.

Behaviors over gender norms.

Empathy over stereotypes.

Next up: don’t use “race” to mean “culture”.