Gender Design: Feminine PC

The goal of this project was to investigate which styling features concerning a desktop PC are considered masculine and how to change the design of a desktop PC in such a way a desktop PC is more appealing to women: What are the styling features that determine if women like a desktop PC aesthetically? AS a starting point we chose the Slimline series from HP.

Styling features regular desktop PCs:

Form follows function

Rectangular shapes

Dark colours

Functional

Technical appearance (USB ports, buttons, etc.)

Mainly bought by men

Using the gender cross-over method we get:

More curved shapes

Light colours

Hide technical details

Both functional and appealing

Intuitive and simple connections

Women want to buy it

Additional preferences after an in-depth research among women:

Compact

Easy accessable/approachable

Hide connection points

in control of decoration

Sleek and modern styling

Simple

Good system performance

The result:

The design of the PC takes into account the list of requirements. The computer case is very small (25 cm high) and has a light colour but with no decorations and slightly curved corners. As an additional feature, we developed a small docking station. The docking station comprises the most essential button (on/off) and four connection points (audio and three USB ports). In this way can be decided where the computer case is placed (in or out of sight), and technical details are not shown on the computer case. The most used connection points do not disrupt the styling of the PC, but are placed in a functional and simple device. In addition we made a hardware design which has good performance for a good price.