Gender-Designed OS

Now that we know there are some generalized gender differences between male and female brains, what does that mean for design? We know, for example, that women tend to see color better, and to appreciate its use more. But we also know there are functional differences. For example, women seem to keep more browser windows open, and switch between them more frequently, than men. I haven't considered this in my designs, I have to admit. Yet a high capable female consultant of my acquaintance confirms it from her experience.

My curiosity about this phenomenon went all the way into operating system design. Men are well-known for being more spatially-oriented than women, which often gives them an advantage in fields like mechanical engineering. It occurs to me that operating systems are by and large spatial metaphors. We don't just use folders, but folder locations, relative to other locations. We refer to files as being "in folders" in the OS, when in reality they are nothing of the kind. There are just pointers to sectors on hard drives. Even in this age of objects, the objects are thought of as spatial entities, like appliances with plumbing outlets. But then, the vast majority of workers in this field are male. Is it possible that the metaphors we've all come to accept are just male representations, and that there's another way?

What would an OS look like designed completely by women? I put this question to one of my students, who derisively responded "I guess you'd just make everything pink". But after some discussion she came to see my point. If females are more relationship-oriented, as many researchers now maintain, would a truly female-centric OS dispense with most of the location-heavy metaphor and emphasize file relationships? How might such an OS work? What would it look like? I'm too male to guess. Maybe it would look more like the Web. I don't know, but I'd like to find out.