 A Computer in Every Purse — Technology By and For Women(Page 2 of 2) She noted that she and the other cofounders of Limelife were familiar through their software careers with research showing differences in female and male play patterns. Men liked games that featured shooting at moving targets in a 3D environment while women preferred puzzles and word games that did not have set time limits. They developed Word Heaven, which allows Verizon customers to create words from blocks of scrambled letters. Limelife also has partnerships with Sprint and Cingular. "The secret to Limelife is that it's designed by women for women," said McDonnell. "Our design team is absolutely magical. It takes living your life as a woman to design your game for a women's target market. It's easy to hire a woman artist and say, 'Make it blue and calm.' "It's rare to have a development team made up of women, she continued. "Our design staff is 90 percent female." "Today the technological head of the household is still the man, but women now influence emerging technology more," noted Christina Seelye, President and CEO of Avanquest USA, a software publisher. "Women are the historians of the family." She added that everything surrounding digital technology such as cameras, iPods, Tivo, and phones, is shaped increasingly by women's preferences. "When the home movie of the baby's first steps is lost and there's no backup, you're going to see women get involved in backup software," she said, noting that although there are a lot of good back-up and storage devices out there now, "you have to be proactive." Seelye envisions a future camera that will automatically back up photos while being used. When queried about the influence of women on the development of cell technology, Seelye saw the field as currently being driven more by men. However, she ageed with McDonnell and Brown Elliott that "The convergence of the personal computer and phone is in process today. Phones are becoming your mobile computer." She noted that women are more concerned with results than men, whose interest in gadgetry is because it's new, even if an older, more stable technology could do it in one half to one third the time. "Women entrepreneurs don't care about the bleeding edge of technology," she said. "They need to get things done." With that in mind, Avanquest has designed software that is fast — because it is very task-specific. The company software packages bear the picture of a clock, indicating that it can be installed in five minutes or less. Seelye's perception that women are oriented toward efficiency while men are more inclined to tinker with gadgetry was the one opinion that was unanimous among the four technology leaders interviewed for this article, including Sally Crawford, CEO of Crawford International and President of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Alliance of Technology and Women. She polled employees of Crawford International and discovered that "men liked features, gadgets, and cool stuff like buttons while women focused on 'How can this help me in my life?' In general, women benefit when women develop products for a women's audience." She noted statistics from the National Science Foundation showing that although women are pursuing technology-related education, they are not pursuing technology careers. In the government and private sectors, women occupy just 23 percent of science and engineering jobs. "That's kind of terrifying," she said. "We want them to be in those careers." Crawford commented that the ATW offers the Great Minds Program, which encourages students from middle school through college to develop critical-thinking skills and leadership traits such as risk taking. "Girls are raised to play nice and get along," she said. "The geek who's into math and science often becomes an outcast." She added that leaders "use the whole brain. They think outside the box, take risks, and think in future tense." Janet Rhodes is a freelance writer and editor whose mission is to capture the spark that sets your business apart. Reach her at janet@bratcat.com. | ||
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