CHS: Small: Software to Support Diverse Problem Solvers

尽管女性使用计算机和互联网的比例与男性相似，但她们只占信息技术专业职位的26%。 十几岁的女孩考虑与技术相关的未来的可能性比男性低五倍，而在2000年至2012年期间，对计算机科学专业感兴趣的一年级本科女生人数下降了64%。 PI对这些统计数据感到震惊，并指出有证据表明，许多常见的软件功能都是无意中围绕男性倾向于工作的方式设计的，实际上会破坏许多女性解决问题的能力，因为女性和男性倾向于处理和解决问题的方式存在许多差异，包括例如他们使用软件的动机，他们的信息处理风格，他们的计算机自我效能，他们对风险的态度，以及他们修补的意愿。 在这个项目中，PI将利用性别研究的结果，在包括IBM、微软、摩托罗拉和国家妇女和信息技术中心其他行业成员在内的主要行业伙伴的帮助下，开发和测试一种新的软件开发方法，她希望这种方法能对未来系统的设计产生真实的影响，使从事技术问题解决专业的女性，如计算机科学和其他STEM领域，将获得软件，不再消耗他们的能力，而是支持和促进他们。 如果这项研究取得成功，将首次使软件生产商能够在其系统中找到并删除暗示“女孩不得入内”的微妙路标，并产生广泛的社会和劳动力影响。PI将创建一个基于理论和经验的“性别透镜”，称为GenderMaP（来自GenderHCI认知演练+放大角色），这将使软件设计师和生产商，即使没有性别研究的背景，也能识别他们的产品可能不具有性别包容性的方式。 由此产生的方法将利用理论和经验的性别差异的基础上的动机，计算机自我效能，信息处理风格，风险规避，并愿意修补。 PI将调查这种方法是否可以对软件的性别包容性产生真实的影响，方法是通过与其工业合作伙伴进行至少6次实地研究，反复告知和经验评估该方法，她将通过小规模访谈、日记式研究和实验室试点补充实地研究。 调查将以四个研究问题为指导，并为四个研究问题提供调查结果。 RQ1考虑了采用该方法的障碍和补救措施。 RQ2调查了该方法的性别化人物角色组件如何在行业的真实的使用中最有效，以及人物角色如何与组织需求甚至刻板印象偏见相互作用。 RQ3调查了工业合作伙伴从该方法中获得的整体价值回报的有效性和其他方面。 最后，RQ4研究了该方法的通用性。

Even though females are using computers and the Internet at rates similar to males, they hold only 26% of IT professional positions. Teenage girls are five times less likely than males to consider a technology-related future, and the number of first-year undergraduate women interested in majoring in computer science declined by 64% between 2000 and 2012. Alarmed by these statistics, the PI notes that evidence suggests many common software features were inadvertently designed around the way males tend to work, and actually undermine many females' problem-solving because of the many differences in the ways females and males tend to approach and solve problems, including for example their motivations for using software, their information processing styles, their computer self-efficacy, their attitudes toward risk, and their willingness to tinker. In this project the PI will exploit findings from gender research to develop and test, with the help of major industrial partners including IBM, Microsoft, Motorola and other industry members of the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), a new methodology for software development that she hopes can make a real difference to the design of future systems so that females in technical problem-solving professions, such as computer science and other STEM fields, will gain access to software that no longer drains their capabilities but rather supports and advances them. If successful this research will, for the first time, enable software producers to find and remove subtle signposts in their systems that suggest "no girls allowed" with all the broad societal and workforce impacts that implies.To these ends, and especially focusing on problem-solving software, the PI will create a theory-based and empirically informed "gender lens" called GenderMaP (from GenderHCI Cognitive Walkthrough + Magnifying Persona) that will enable software designers and producers, even without a background in gender research, to identify ways in which their products may not be gender-inclusive. The resulting method will leverage theoretical and empirical gender difference foundations on motivation, computer self-efficacy, information processing styles, risk aversion, and willingness to tinker. The PI will investigate whether such a method can make a real difference to software's gender inclusiveness, by iteratively informing and empirically evaluating the method through at least 6 field studies with her industrial partners, and she will supplement the field studies with small-scale interviews, diary-like studies, and lab pilots. The investigation will be guided by, and contribute findings for, four research questions. RQ1 considers obstacles and remedies to adopting the method. RQ2 investigates how the gendered personas component of the method can be most effective in real use in industry, and how the personas interact with organizational needs and even stereotype bias. RQ3 investigates validity and other aspects of the overall value pay-off that the industrial partners gain from the method. Finally, RQ4 investigates the method's generality.