Gendered design

I hate the main control knob on my washing machine. Its operation is fairly typical: you turn it in order to select the programme, and pull it out to start it. It is the latter part that is problematic, and is the cause of my ire. The knob is fairly smooth, so it is very difficult to pull out if your hands are soapy and wet, such as just after you have loaded the machine with laundry that has been soaking. There is also a massive accessibility issue for anyone who has arthritis in their hands.

I will hazard a guess that the entire design team that made my washing machine was devoid of anyone who has ever done laundry, or ever had a major accessibility issue. The fix is too easy for that to be the case. (A hole should be punched through the knob so you can stick a wet hand in and pull it out.) This saddens me: it shows a massive disrespect for the person who uses their product.

This leads me to a darker thought: is there a gendered-design bias here? Such biases do exist. For example, men rarely make an appearance in the kitchen of the future, as Rose Eveleth explains. The same big question about the kitchen of the future could be raised about software: how does the gender imbalance in IT affect our designs? Do we show similar disrespect for the people who use our software? (Note that the user is probably not the customer.) Without improving the culture in our industry we will never even know that the problems exist, just like the designers of my washing machine who have never done their own laundry.