A while ago Newsweek ran an article on a new breed of nerd: the nerdette. The nerdette is a girl nerd. These nerd girls are a growing group of young women who make the term nerd their own. They subvert the negative stereotype of the nerd either by not seeing it as derogative at all or by creating a new, more feminine version of the nerd. Instead of being social outsiders, they are social, enjoy networking and are often fashionable and stylish. And counter the stereotype of the nerd, they are not male. The male image of the geek, nerd or hacker seems to be outdated with this young generation of women who have grown up with new technologies. These young women take technology by storm whereas the few women who broke the glass ceiling in the tech industry - like Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina – are slowing exiting as a recent article lamented. However there seem to be many women in the starting blocks to take on leading positions in technology if we are to believe Business Week or USA Today.

From academic research we know that what I have called ‘reprogram stereotypes’ is one way of overcoming stereotypes. Reprogramming stereotypes means to give them a different meaning. This meaning should not be a radical departure from the original meaning but a playful reinterpretation. This is exactly what the term nerdette does. It uses the stereotype of the nerd giving it a new meaning which is that women can be nerds too. Instead of conforming to the masculine undertones of what it means to be a nerd, being a nerdette gives you license to be feminine. The article mentions things like having been a cheerleader or wearing pink pumps as examples of this femininity. These are traditional qualifiers for being feminine. It shows that women do not have to be masculine to be a nerd/ette and can endorse traditional feminine attributes. However these attributes are feminine stereotypes in themselves.

The problem with stereotypes is that it restricts who can count as a certain type of person. Traditional nerds were defined on the idea that they are not women and therefore this definition excluded women from being nerds. The nerdette definition now includes women but only those who fulfill traditional expectations about femininity like being a cheerleader or liking pink heels. Nothing wrong with this per se, but many women might not want to use these classifiers of femininity - and might prefer flat shoes.

I also see another problem with this over-feminisation. This over-feminisation goes hand in hand with certain expectations of being sexy and available to men (this piece seems to suggest that nerd girls are particularly appealing to certain men and their main characteristic it to be beautiful, to wear glasses and to attend Star Trek conventions –Seven of Nine is of course their role model). However we know that if a woman is too sexy in the workplace, she generally is not seen as competent. Sexualising being nerd might therefore not necessarily be a beneficial subversion of a stereotype.

However the Newsweek article suggests that most of these nerdettes do not rely on over-feminisation but rather combine being a nerd with being a woman as part of who they feel there are. Being a nerd is now chic. At least to be a female nerd.

There’s no name more feared by the makers and vendors of video games than the “R4″, the cheap, popular add-on to the Nintendo DS that allows gamers to load approximately 100 illegally downloaded games onto a single ‘cart’.

Naturally for some, the allure of this technology is the ability to get something for nothing. There are others who claim that they only use this technology for legitimate ‘homebrew’ software. I think there’s another really good reason that gamers like these things:

As you can see from the demonstration above, the DS is not quite as portable as it’s makers claim. Users of R4 cards have the advantage of combining many games into a single package, effectively allowing them to carry an entire collection in a tiny handbag.

The thing that Nintendo seem not to have noticed is that the pirate product really is delivering a better user-experience than the legit product sold in shops. The R4 cards and their many imitators have freed DS gamers from constantly needing to swap easily lost game-carts.

As a gamer whose happy to spend money on games but really appreciates not having to carry a load of crap with me, I’d like to see Nintendo respond to this threat not by the usual litigation and threats to ban products which hurt their business model. How about some innovation?

Nintendo needs to release it’s own R4 killer. Imagine an official game-download service like WiiWare for the DS that allows affordably priced games delivered directly to the hand-held, plus it should allow a large number of games to be stored on one cart.

That would kill my R4 envy and make room in my over-filled handbag, which would be a real bonus for many women, considering the average woman’s handbag is now 40% heavier than 5 years ago.

We’ve just completed some interesting work about people’s relationship with technology.

Classical research theory assumes that our decisions are based on conscious, rational thought or reflex ‘snap’ decisions. These days most psychotherapists have come to the conclusion that the truth is somewhat more complex: decisions are often post-rationalisations and snap decisions are backed up by a lifetime of knowledge.

Our client had previously spent thousands of pounds on ‘traditional’ research which failed to reveal anything substantially new. The planner, had been traveling around the country, night after night, suburb after suburb and was exhausted at the prospect of doing yet more research.

We decided to change our approach and run an ethnographic style study.  We assembled our ‘SWAT’ team of researchers, each was sent to ‘live’ with the subjects of our research: We spent time in their homes. We went shopping with couples buying technology and ‘hung out’ with families, observing their relationship with household technology.

The study revealed a great deal of new insights about how gender influences technology use, for example men often have their PC/Laptop in their ‘den’- its a retreat, its a hide out, a solace place where they can internalize ‘their’ time.  We saw how women use their PC/laptop in the heart of the home. Many women used their laptops to manage the household and ensure things run smoothly: Its used to make sure the shopping online is ordered, help the kids with their homework and keep them in touch with their friends via social networking sites.

We watched how couples shop for technology and the very different roles they take:  Women tend to be more concerned about how the device will ‘fit’ into their home.  Whether it will be a beautiful addition to the home, not just in terms of design but in functionality and ergonomics. This is a motive that so many tech-brands misinterpret as “women only care what the technology looks like“. Men tend to want to make sure that what they are buying is “right” piece of kit.  Not in terms of their home but more in terms of what it will purportedly do.

While the differences are obvious, what unifies men and women is that buying technology is an emotional decision: This does not mean that it is irrational. An emotional decision can be very rational as our feelings are informed by a lifetime of experience. As the neuroscientist, David Lewis states,

“Our conscious is a bit like a PR company.  It justifies our decisions on an intellectual level and seeks to explain behavior that feels right“

The ‘PR’ bit is what ‘respondents’ had been articulating in the focus group.  The planner told me,

“I realized that for 2 years people had been lying to us in focus groups.  Not because they deliberately set out to lie but because they either couldn’t articulate it or were too embarrassed to tell us what they really felt about buying technology”

There are 3 types of decision making.  The first type is the truly instant decision. The second type are those which appear instant but actually access our vast network of experiences, however we often refer to them as based on our ‘gut instinct.’ The last type is the mathematical way to approach them which is cost benefit analysis. Received wisdom has it that the vast majority of choices are of the first and third type, however the more I observe people in the act of making choices the more I realize that the way people shop is neither frivolous nor analytical but something in between.

As Sartre stated, we are our choices.  If only technology companies spent a little more time trying to understand why we do what we do on a deeper level, then maybe so many women wouldn’t feel so frustrated and bored when it comes to buying technology.