Week 4 Response (late!)

With the excitement of the review and redesign project, I forgot to post about my impressions of the readings.

One thing that really stuck out to me about the Rebecca Black research was her use of data to support her thesis. While I commend her for the thorough analysis on Mattel’s Barbie Girls and Xtractaurs online sites, I was a little confused by what data she used to support her idea. She lost me when I saw her present the misspelled words table:

 

To me, this data does not necessarily support her notion that the designers of boys-oriented virtual network were intentionally emphasizing certain gender roles and life opportunities. Rather, it simply highlights that there are good and bad designers out there. And unfortunately, Barbie Girls had a worse team working on the project. I’m aware this oversimplifies and may provoke some people, but I do think this article raised for me the question of how researchers present and use data in their research.