Author Archive for belindaparmar

Women control the living room

Published on March 10, 2010 in Articles, Electronics and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

My first ever PC was a noisy clunky beige-coloured box which sounded something like a hair-dryer and produced twice as as much heat. It was a useful workhorse, but profoundly unpleasent up-close. Such a device would have no hope in my living room: In most households women control which devices are allowed into that most precious of space – the typical grey PC is not getting in.

Fortunately the PC has evolved: The boxes got smaller, quieter and more beautiful- they gradually adapted to fill every possible niche in the household.

The Dell Zino HD is the most extreme example of this evolution: It’s a tiny box that’s built for the bedroom or the living room. Dell understood that you probably want to connect it to a TV, that’s why it has an HDMI port and comes as standard with a wireless keyboard and mouse. Who wants wires trailing across their living room?

Unfortunately, the living room is a fiercly competitive ecosystem: At best there’s room for no more than three devices beneath the TV. That means if you are going to introduce a new device you probably need to boot something else out: The Zino is likely to displace a games console or a DVD player since it can do the job of both.

Dell have clearly studied the aesthetics of Nintendo’s Wii, however unlike the wii, the Zino HD is no toy: It packs a 64bit AMD Athlon X2 chip and runs a full edition Microsoft’s Windows 7. That means it can play just about any game or media you throw at it. Imagine your favourite games on your wide-screen TV? This is going to appeal to all but the most obsessed Wii-sportsmen.

With most women being the gatekeepers of the home – Dell have a smart strategy with designing beautifully made PC’s that are as much architectural fittings as they are useful pieces of technology.  The worst thing Dell could do now is patronise women like Samsung are doing with their Genio and come out with fluffy marketing statements asking women ‘What colour is your life?’


Whilst the Zino has earned it’s space in my living room, the marketing has yet to earn my respect.  Only time will tell.

ASUS at CES 2010

Published on January 25, 2010 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

pinkasus (Medium)

At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2006, only 1% of women surveyed felt consumer electronics manufacturers have them in mind during the design process.

This was the ASUS stand at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2010- unfortunately very little has changed and manufacturers like ASUS are reverting to cliches stereotypes rather than understanding what women really want.

ASUS and other tech manufacturers must realise that women are the future drivers of growth.

Don’t patronise us. Understand us.

The N900 is a star

Published on January 4, 2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments Tags: , , , .

n900After the disappointing N97 it was all to easy to dismiss Nokia as a fading star of mobile phone design. The flagship which failed to float was the perfect excuse for a whole horde of doomsayers to predict the end of the once-greatest mobile company. A common quip was that unless Nokia were to pull off something entirely miraculous it would be “the end”. Fortunately the N900 is the miracle we had all hoped for, a truly remarkable combination of new software and hardware.

It’s hard to disentangle all the novelty in this new phone: Not only is it the first of a brand new form-factor (the sliding landscape keyboard-phone), but it’s also the first phone in Nokia’s huge portfolio to feature Maemo, an operating system entirely new to the world of phones. That’s not to say that Maemo is new: It’s been on the market since 2006 but only on Nokia’s ultra-niche tablet computers.

First of all, lets deal with the easy stuff- the hardware: Nokia vastly simplified the slider mechanism compared to the N97. Instead of the elaborate slide and tilt, this keyboard simply slides out from behind the screen. While it doesn’t look so impressive it makes for a device which is both more comfortable and rugged. The new keyboard is slightly wider than the N97s since they ditched the somewhat useless D-pad. I guess they figured out that users don’t actually need a d-pad and a touch-screen if the touch screen is good enough.

Ony of my big criticisms of the N97 was its’ insensitive touch screen (I called it a “punch screen“). At the time I put this down to the fact that Nokia had chosen the older “resistive” technology rather than the more trendy “capacitive” screens used by the iPhone and most android devices. The N900 has not switched to capacitative, and yet the screen seems a great deal more responsive. I’ve not yet encountered the frequent false-clicks of the older model. Nokia claim that the advantage of a resistive screen is that you can be more precise. This is why the N900 has a concealed stylus which slides out of the front. It’s not actually possible to use a stylus on a capacitative screen, so Nokia clearly see this as giving their customers wider choices.

The other major criticism of the N97 was that it seemed sluggish compared to the high-end phones: Once again this has seems to have been fixed. Even while multitasking the N900 seems to have the processing power to stay lively and responsive. This is no doubt a consequence of the shift to Nokia’s next generation operating system. Maemo is the phone’s biggest new feature: It’s an operating system unlike anything I’ve seen before on a mobile, but oddly similar to almost everything I’ve used on my desktop.

I dont want to give the impression that it was entirely perfect:

The biggest problem with Maemo today is a complete lack of commercial apps. None of the official Google Apps (e.g. Mail, Maps) have been ported to Maemo. It also lacks some of my favourites such as Spotify, BBC iPlayer and Last.fm. There’s no technical reason to doubt that these applications will eventually be ported to Maemo, however early adopters might need to beware that they might have to do without their favourite apps.

As compensation for the lack of apps, the web-browser is really good: Good enough (for example) to use the web-versions of Twitter, and BBC iPlayer. The built in multimedia conceals some pleasant surprises, such as the fact that that the it can handle high-definition DivX movie files and Ogg audio files. No other device I can think of can play all of these non-commerical formats despite the fact that they are hugely popular in the free-software world.

So is the N900 the “iPhone Killer” that everybody’s been pining for? No, and thankfully not. I think this product represents an entirely new territory for the mobile phone industry. Rather than replicate Apple’s model of a tightly controlled environment, Nokia are emphasizing openness by borrowing a strategy which has worked so well for the open-source movement. This is the most open mobile platform on the market today, and I feel that proposition alone will draw in the “core” of developers who will in turn deliver the novel applications which will usher in a wider audience.

In summary, the N900 is intuitive, responsive and a joy to use.  A true star in the Nokia family.

My Top 10 gadgets this Christmas (as featured in The Times)

Published on December 13, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

No doubt this Christmas, technology companies will target men with tech babble (ram, gigs, specs etc), and then try to woo women by dressing up their products in glitzy, pinked up marketing bows. This is a guide for men and women, those who are less in love with technology and more interested by what technology can do for them. Here are my Top 10 gadget buys for Yuletide.

My newest and must have gadget this Christmas is the PURE Sensia Internet radio. This elegant device looks like something from a sci-fi writer’s dream. It’s the first and last thing I touch each day.  I can listen to all the programs I have missed during the day from anywhere around the world (a bit like Sky+ but for the radio). It comes with “Apps” or “Widgets” (the new currency of the tech world) meaning I can get Facebook and Twitter on the same screen which controls my audio. PURE Digital have promised that by early next year it will be able to display web-video such as YouTube.

My second choice is the incredibly practical Nokia BH-214 Bluetooth Stereo headset. Like all Bluetooth headsets, this device means I am able to do multiple things at once such as doing the dreaded Christmas shop whilst calling the relatives at the same time and making all the necessary arrangements for the Big Day.  The great thing about this gadget is that Nokia have finally realized that people want all the flexibility of Bluetooth but with their own choice of headphones.

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The iBores will hate me for saying this, but the iPhone’s reign might be drawing to a swift end with the rise of cheap Android based (alternative to Microsoft and Apple’s mobile operating system) handsets. This year’s must-have mobiles provide the Google experience in the palm of your hand but without a nasty contract to tie you in for two years. T-Mobile released their “Pulse” as the UK’s first ever PAYG Android phone without any great fanfare which is great if you decide it is not for you and you want to upgrade within a few months.

Make no mistake, the Flip Mino HD is not your dad’s camcorder. Unlike traditional camcorders which are strapped to your hand, the Mino looks and works like a “candybar” style camera-phone. The Mino’s spec-sheet makes for short reading since it aims to do very few things, but it does them very well. This emphasis on simplicity is not just for people who have difficulty with conventional video cameras – it’s for people who want a device which is instantly ready for capturing anything this Christmas from your nan snoring like a boar on the sofa to mum starting on the wine at 10am and getting slowly but surely drunk by lunchtime.  Although personally, I am not sure I want to re-live Christmas day more than once.

Dell’s new Adamo XPS is my most extravagant recommendation.  It is apparently the thinnest laptop in the world at 9.9mm and weighs only 1.4 kilos. It’s loaded with enough bling to make your Mac Pro-owning friends give it a second glance: I particularly love the sexy keyboard lock: You simply swipe your finger across a touch sensor and the mechanism opens for you. It is a joy to touch.

Even though I lust after the Adamo’s style, my preference is for something handbag-size, and this is where the ASUS EEE Seashell Netbook comes into its own. You might dismiss this as yet another Macbook Air clone, if it weren’t for the price-tag, which means you can get one for under £300. While it might not have its rival’s power or sophistication, at this price it only has to last a year for me to have obtained value for money.   This laptop is light, tough and mine has survived regular bashings from my small children.

Nokia won no friends with the flawed release of their N97. After a disappointing experience I vowed to stay well away from Nokia. That was until I experienced the new N900, the first of a new generation of Linux-based handsets. It’s got a qwerty keyboard, a great LED touchscreen and appears to be an intuitive device.

nook_front

Many people will be looking forwards to receiving eBook readers from Santa.  However the most popular Kindle from Amazon is not exactly the most glamorous addition to your winter holiday suitcase. If you can wait until January you can get the oddly-named Nook by Barnes and Noble. This sleek looking device has a dual touch-screen, and, unlike Amazon’s miserly book-reader B&N will allow you to lend up to 12 of your eBooks to other Nook readers.  Great for kids too.

The iPod has dominated the music-player market for so long that it’s easy to forget that other products exist. However, the French company Archos’s Internet Media Tablet 5 claims the prize for being able to play every kind of video and audio file ever invented and makes for an easy distraction as more and more unwanted guests arrive on at your door on Christmas day.

Not every gadget lover’s gift needs to involve hardware: This year the Swedish company Spotify  launched a music service which anybody can use for free on their PCs as long as you don’t mind the occasional ad. If you pay a modest monthly subscription you can get the “premium” service which allows you to listen ad-free on any device including PC, Mac, iPhone and Android.  A welcome and surprising gift making a change from the usual socks, books and in my case, big knickers.

You can follow Belinda on Twitter:  www.twitter.com/belindaparmar

Vive la difference

Published on November 17, 2009 in Articles and Interesting. 0 Comments

I am often asked if there is any real need to market technology to women as surely they just want the same things as men: quality, well-designed and simple products. Surely all we need to do is cut out the pink stuff and quit dumbing-down the technology.  End of story?  The short answer is no: There are some things that both men and women want, however it is far more complex and there are important differences. My latest research The Lady Geek Times Brand Survey 09 confirmed why.

Firstly, men see technology as something to be conquered whilst women see technology as something that can enhance their life.   Men are quite happy to tinker and conquer with a product for hours. Women just want things to work.   They want a clean interface, fewer frills and more substance than men.  An out of the box experience.

A few manufacturers understand this: Flip’s Mino and PURE’s Sensia are great demonstrations of perfect female design:  These products provide a clean, beautiful interface. They only do a few things but they do them very well.

pure_sensia

Secondly, women buy technology completely different to men:

Most men research products extensively before buying. The male sales experience serves one of two purchases: Either a transactional purchase ( an exchange of money with little wanted interaction ). The other is that it is an opportunity to for bragging ( to ensure that they know more than the sales assistant ).

Women on the other hand, are often ‘reassurance addicts.’   62% of women said being reassured that they have bought the right product was really important to them.  And 40% of women do not have a brand or model in mind when shopping for tech compared to 20% of men. Women actually solicit advice from retailers (who are mostly unable to provide it).

Finally, when it comes to advertising, this is where tech companies make the worst mistakes. They only have three maladroit ways of positioning their products. The first is ‘tech porn‘ or ‘nerd jargon’ (spec, ram, gigabytes).  The second is ‘does not know what a phone is‘ (dumb technology down or disguise it) or lastly just ‘make it girly and pink” (bows, butterflies, princesses).

Women are different. Not better.  Not more intelligent.  Just different.

Vive la difference.

Why Jeremy Clarkson may just be the answer.

Published on November 17, 2009 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

dspink

I am frustrated. I am bored. I feel patronised. PC World is telling me My World is Pink (it has not been pink since I was 7) and I need a new laptop to match my outfit (it would never even occur to me to match my outfit with my technology). Samsung is asking me “What Colour is my Life?” (hello?) and Dell is telling me that technology is like candy (do me a favour).

I am a 35 year-old professional woman with my own home. I am educated, fairly tech literate and, most importantly, I have cash to spend. Plenty of cash to spend, on technology that will make my life easier, more creative and fun.

Out of every ten gadgets bought in the UK, four are now bought by women. And, before you ask, we are not talking about fridges and washing machines. No, these are high-end items such as HD TV’s, games consoles and smart phones. And there are more games being played by women than men between the ages of 25-34.

I am not alone in feeling patronised or alienated by technology and consumer electronic brands.

I recently conducted some research for Forrester. This highlighted that one third of all British women do not feel connected to a single technology brand. Over half of all women walk out of shops because they cannot find what they are looking for.

This missed opportunity is calculated at £0.6 billion. The technology industry is where the automotive industry was 20 years ago- nervous boys at the school dance who do not quite know what to do or say to women. They end up leading with two left feet.

So why do technology companies think that pinking up and dumbing down their marketing is the way to get professional, well educated women to part with their cash? Why do they treat young girls and women alike – as an afterthought? Why are companies not researching “what women really want” and getting advice from expert consultants?

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How can we help technology companies understand what women want?

Many technology brands believe that the way to a woman’s purse is to make her feel “special”, and have aimed to achieve this by giving women their “own” space, site or product. Dell’s disastrous Della website, which handed out technological advice alongside recipe tips and fashion articles, was shut down within weeks. Carphone Warehouse, Dixons and Comet (Comet Angels) have all had their share of “initiatives” and women’s only days, all with the aim of helping women turn the telly on. All, one assumes, with a glass of Prosecco held in their manicured, nail-varnished hands.

No woman wants to be a target with an overt “female friendly” message. Being singled out as different is as off-putting today as it was when you were singled out at school. Nor do women want to be stereotyped or bamboozled by obscure jargon.

It is ironic, given its widespread reputation for untarnished machismo, but the BBC’s Top Gear has democratised cars. It might be a legacy to make Jeremy Clarkson flinch, but he has helped to make cars accessible to women.

Once purely the domain of men, the programme now has nearly as many female viewers as male, thanks largely to being both playful and light-hearted. It stands for unadulterated honesty and entertainment looking at how people in the real world think and relate to their cars.

In September this year, the Harvard Business Review stated that women now represent a bigger market opportunity than India and China combined. Technology brands must put an end to these clumsy marketing strategies and put money and time behind understanding how real women in the real world engage with technology.

Women are no longer the second sex. We are the more profitable sex.

Technology & Fashion: A match made in Heaven or Hell?

Published on November 2, 2009 in Articles and Interesting. 3 Comments

samsung

Last week Dell hosted an event intended to unite the worlds of fashion and technology bloggers. Their goal was to discuss how technology could be re-positioned as fashion in order to sell it to women.

With Microsoft’s research highlighting that technology is as important to women as fashion, should tech brands be positioning their wares as fashion accessories? Does it correlate that women love fashion and therefore if you position technology as fashion, women will want to buy it? Is a netbook the latest fashion accessory? Would women rather have the new Dell Adamo XPS rather than a pair of Jimmy Choos?

It’s not an original idea to try to sell technology as if it were a fashion accessory. LG’s Prada phone was the first time a major fashion brand put it’s label on a phone. Despite it’s modest capabilities it sold well, proving the allure and reach of the Prada brand.

Few woman have a strong attachment to technology brands – in such a vacuum a strong brand like Prada can help shift products, even if it does seem out of place on the shelves of the Carphone Warehouse. I suspect that the Prada label puts off as many women as it attracts, since there is something frivolous about being seen to flaunt a label, especially on a something as conspicuous as a phone.

There’s a big problem with the technology as fashion proposition:

Firstly, fashion is by nature short term. After a single season your old fashion is out of fashion. That’s perfectly fine for a £20 top from Top-Shop, however it’s not so fine when you are locked into a two year contract on a fashion-phone which is no longer a-la-mode.

If the networks are going to sell a phone on a 2 year contract they need to continue to offer value over this period or risk alienating the customer.

Secondly, the reasons I buy technology are very different to why I buy clothes. Technology enhances my life, builds real and intimate connections with people. It gives me a voice. And amplifies my voice to those closest to me. Fashion is transitory. I get immediate gratification but its fleeting. Its fun but not meaningful. Brands risk trivializing themselves by positioning themselves as fashion.

Lastly, every tech brand seems to take this approach to women. Samsung’s Genio talks about it’s exciting colours but does not mention what value it can add. Dell’s “my colour is pink” tv-spot looks like a mid-90s’ shoe advert. This is clearly not a way to generate sustainable difference.

As one Lady Geek said,

“What my phone and shoes do for me are very different. One connects me with the world and is about relationships. The other is solely just for me”

To truly understand women, tech brands must research and understand how women engage with technology in the real world.  They would understand that Fashion is about ‘me,’ technology is about ‘we.’  Two very different propositions in my world.


Lady Geek in the Times

Published on October 16, 2009 in Press Coverage. 0 Comments

I have been a bit slow getting all the press coverage of Lady Geek up onto the site.  So here’s the latest piece in the Times featuring Lady Geek.

The Management Today pieces to follow soon…

Connections

Published on October 8, 2009 in Women in Business. 0 Comments

connection

I have tended not to go to conferences or events in the last year unless  I am speaking at them.   I used to go with high expectations- hoping to be provoked, dislocated in some way.   The reality is that all too often, I was hearing the same old stuff (albeit with a new flickr image) said by the same old people (mostly 40 something men), done in the same old way (one way broadcast).  And if I am going to sacrifice putting my children to bed, I want to feel a connection.

Last night was a real exception.  It was The Next Women Funding and Pitching event.  The first part of the night was inspiring female entrepreneurs such as Sarah McVittie (founder of Texperts) and Karin Loeffen (founder of Libersy) who told their story from the heart.  The mistakes they made.  The challenges they faced.  The lessons they learnt. The hard way.   And the sacrifices and trade offs they had to endure.

It was real.  It was from the heart as well as the head.  No ‘commandments’.  No ‘5 principles’.  No ‘long lists.’  Real stories.  From real women.

And just when I started to feel guilty about the bedtime story I should have told my children, things hotted up where ‘Pitch-Preneurs’ who did a 3 min pitch for funding in front of angel investors.  I watched in awe at some of the great ideas presented.  I felt empowered.

I felt part of something.  I felt a connection.

Innovation is thriving.  Its an exciting time to be in business.

Honest advice

Published on October 7, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I was chatting to a smart single twenty-something about dating. She wants a boyfriend but is too shy to go onto a dating site and feels uncomfortable touting her wares and telling everyone how beautiful she is (interestingly even the most unattractive men do not seem to suffer from this fear).

She told me that she’d been using a site called datemyfriend.net: The idea is that your friends write your profile. Instead of having to blow your own trumpet, your friends showcase your talents and acts as your honest-broker. This is a much more comfortable way of approaching the dating scene because your friends can take care of the most frightening bits leaving you to focus on the pleasure.

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This aligns to how many women I meet have a fear of technology: There is an embarrassment and guilt that surrounds not knowing the difference between a megabyte and megabit. Between not knowing if you are connecting via a network, Wi Fi or 3G. The tech companies have been confusing and bamboozling us for decades. There is an opportunity to take the fear out of technology for those women who are not technology-literate and dread buying technology.

What if you could go to a neutral broker and give her your requirements online? She could come back with a series of recommendations as to what most suits you. What if you could have a planning meeting once a year with someone who would come to your home and assess your current network and requirements, and make you a “technology roadmap”? This person would be like a “personal shopper” for technology. An ITA, sort of like an IFA but for technology.

Whilst technology companies are realising the advantages of post-sales support such as the Apple Genius-bar and Carphone Warehouse’s Geek Squad, no-one is taking the fear out of the pre-sales process, certainly nobody who can offer independent strategic advice.

With women spending more on technology than ever before, it might be a good place to start.