I want to be cynical because I hate the idea that a gadget has to have "jewel" in the name and be a fancy "friendship bracelet" to appeal to girls. But it's a neat little trinket that somebody worked hard on, and if it really was a young woman who designed it to enjoy with their friends, I can't really hold that against them. I don't think scaring away guys from it by saying it's "for girls" is doing them any favors though.
Thinking back though, one gadget I remember being very appealing to kids of both sexes was Tamagotchi. It would be cool if someone made a more customizeable/programmable/less annoying version those in a wearable format.
Hi! We talked to over 200 girls when making this product, rest assured that every design decision was made with their feedback in mind.
Boys also love playing with Jewelbots, but there are already a lot of coding toys aimed at boys!!! Our market primarily identifies as female, but we'll broaden down the road.
I think this is where we disagree a little. I don't think most coding toys actually are mostly aimed at boys. How would that even work? Do they require a Y chromosome to operate or something? They're just marketed to boys (and parents of boys), and parents and children alike buy in. The toy market today is highly segregated in marketing to boys vs girls, and toys that were not specifically "gendered" in the past are in the "Boys" section today (or sometimes vice versa).
For example, I know that when I was a kid I hated that any trip to McD's included me awkwardly going up to the front counter to exchange for the "boy" toys because I thought windup toys were more fun than dolls or pink bracelets or whatever. My favorite toys were things like beyblades, zoids, k'nex you know, things that I could build with and would move.
I was never not a girl for finding toys marketed to boys as more fun. I just knew that the toys that were in the "boys" section were more stimulating to me (and my sister felt the same too). I was lucky enough to have parents who didn't care, but some do and it just creates a cycle where girls say they prefer things that are targeted to girls (as opposed to the large number of toys that are only marketed to boys), and market researchers see that success and double-down, just making more stereotypically "girly" toys that sell to that defined market segment instead of making more gender-neutral toys with more inclusive ads (because they're afraid that advertising to girls will scare off boys).
So that's my concern here. I'm glad that girls and boys alike love jewelbots already, but do fear that explicitly saying that they are "for girls" will implicitly give credence to the idea that other toys are "for boys". As engineers we should not promote the idea that science toys without sparkles or pink on them are for boys, it should just be for kids. It limits the range of creative exploration available to girls who are trying to learn both science, and who they are and what conforming to social pressure allows if you tell them that they need to like girl oriented toys b/c everything else is for boys.
Far be it for me to be prescriptive about what girls and boys should like. Truly, we think of ourselves as more "feminine" in design. Some boys like things that are feminine, there are many people that identify as feminine.
We are here to change the number of coders that identify as female. In order to do that, we talked to a lot (over 200!) of kids that identify as female and built what they asked us to build.
Thanks for sharing your reasoning. I can't say I'm on the same page when it comes to femininity, though there's no reason to get into that here. I do see where you're coming from and appreciate the time and effort you're putting towards making it a reality. It is a pretty cool product to boot. If you ever do a programmable digital pet, I'll be all over that.
Thank you! I respect your opinion as well, it's great to hear it. We all have our own version of feminism, and everyone is working towards similar goals. Man, making the next Tamagotchi would be amazing, I wonder if anyone has started?
FWIW a number of years ago I created a concept for a virtual pet toy that was aimed at exploring alternate approaches which might encourage girls--who may not have been previously interested--to learn to code and other computer science related concepts (such as state machines).
One interesting aspect that GoldieBlox's research mentioned was that they found girls became more engaged when there was a story with a purpose (e.g. help this puppy) or opportunity for story-telling.
This made me wonder if there would be potential for combining an already popular electronic toy concept (virtual pets) with a programming environment that was also a story-telling environment. The behavior of the pet would be determined by a state machine generated from the story.
For example:
Hello my name is [Oinky].
When I am [tired] I [sometimes] want to [play].
When I am [hungry] I [always] want to [eat].
Then the state machine for the virtual pet could be generated from that. (And associated graphical appearance, sounds etc.) Another appealing aspect of the virtual pet form factor was that low-resolution pixel art was accessible (in terms of skill required) and wouldn't look out of place. (I also believe there's a lot of value in a tangible physical "thing" that people can carry & show-off.)
I ended up getting a bit distracted by the more generic question of how to produce a platform of enclosures & electronics that would enable people to prototype hand-held Arduino-based devices. (And then other things.) But I still think the idea is worth exploring.
If only Jewelbots and Arduboy[0] had a baby device together...
Maybe they should start by putting a ring on it, arduboy already made a (precious) bluetooth one [1]
You might like to check out my other reply re:virtual pets... :)
Also, if you haven't already, you might be interested in researching Dr. Janese Swanson the founder of the "GirlTech" toy company (from mid-90s to early 2000s, I think) and maybe even trying to get in contact with her as she might have some valuable insight/opinions/contacts from her own experience for you.
I always appreciated the perspective that Pam Fox shared in her "I’m A Barbie Girl In A CS World" presentation:
How's your experience of the Nordic nRF51822 been? My impression has been that they have some great technology but their tooling/SDK support doesn't seem to put much weight on easing transition from one SDK/IC version to another.
I don't think the problem is that girls don't want to code, we males are just crap at encouraging girls and even mentally abusing women trying to work in tech-jobs. This shows up on the news pretty often still.
Just look at the early days of computers, it was a womans job :-)
I think you're both actually agreeing. The other coding toys are marketed towards boys ("aimed at boys").
That means that it's less likely for girls to get exposed to them overall, because media aimed at them is different, teacher's behavior towards them is different, even their own parents' behavior towards them is different.
I get that marketing "for girls" might give credence to the "for boys" marketing... but if you look at the jewelbots page, the only point that is explicitly "girls" is the fact that the kids in the pictures are girls.
Everything else has been brought in by us. The "jewel = girls" aspect, the "friendship bracelet = girls" aspect... though some other media is even more pointed at that. Bit mixed feelings about it. I feel like it's trying to operate within the weird gender divide that exists in our society
Oh, I definitely think we're more in agreement than disagreement and am happy this product exists.
But you're right that the crux of my argument hangs on explicit "for girls" implying other toys as "for boys"
The reason I interpreted the "for girls" thing as explicit because:
1. When I first clicked the link, the HN title did say "for girls" in the title. It was edited by the time I had submitted my comment.
2. The GMA quote featured on the page advertises it as "One of the Smartest Gadgets for Girls"
3. The quote saying " Jewelbots serves girls. The future scientists, lawyers, mothers, doctors, and engineers of the world." at the bottom of the page.
4. The creator saying that other code toys were aimed at boys (which I agree could be a comment on the adverstising, but I took as a comment on the design of the toys).
Because I took "for girls" as an explicit design consideration for the reasons above, I also assumed that the "jewel" and "friendship bracelet" aspects were design choices to explicitly appeal to girls, rather than just parts of the toy that girls happen to like more than boys on average.
I would be happy to be wrong on this though. I just struggle to see how this changes the narrative of science/engineering toys for girls needing to be overtly feminine-themed while most functionally equivalent toys without those aspects are assumed to be for boys. Perhaps I'm not in tune with the market well enough, but I struggle to identify equivalently overtly-masculine themed coding toys from companies who say their mission is to help boys.
I don't understand why you would expect anyone to say "this is for boys" when producing a toy that is generally considered to skew male. Try looking at Meccano, for instance - I've never seen them say "boys" but I'd bet money that most Americans see a racecar/truck/etc kit and think boy.
I was at a conference this weekend. A female grade school teacher, at a private school, tried to explain to me how "girls brains are wired differently from boys" and therefore "we need to teach girls to be more like boys."
I am open minded. I've met and worked with women who are just as strong or stronger than men.
I don't understand how we can simultaneously argue that men and women are fundamentally different but should also be made to be the same.
Back to the thread, why wouldn't a boy want to play with this new toy? Or wear pink?
Hi! That grade school teacher needs a few more science lessons.
We have lots of users that identify as male. Boys love Jewelbots, two weeks ago at an event a boy came up to me after to tell me "this was more fun than coding Minecraft". Best compliment in a while.
How do you know the teacher is wrong based on science? Do you have citations?
"Boys and girls are wired differently" seems like an eminently plausible statement -- it applies to the rest of our bodies, so why not to our brains? I don't think it can be rejected out of hand without a solid argument (or reputable studies) to the contrary.
It's so vague as to be unfalsifiable, and therefore an unscientific claim. By the same reasoning, it's plausible that our brains are powered by yet undiscovered magic.
The teacher made a nonsense, and unscientific claim. Do you have citations to back up your "argument", or are you just trolling?
I'm not claiming that my argument is correct and hence I don't need citations. I'm merely claiming that it's intuitively plausible enough that it doesn't make sense to dismiss out of hand as obviously wrong.
I'm responding that lots of things are intuitively plausible, because that's an incredibly low bar. When you're trying to make decisions about how to educate people for example, leaning on presuppositions that are just "intuitively plausible" is lazy thinking and I would argue that for any serious matter you should dismiss out of hand such lazy thinking.
Well, I agree :). I don't want it to appear that I'm claiming there are differences in brain structure on average between men and women -- I'm just curious what science has been done.
> "Boys and girls are wired differently" seems like an eminently plausible statement
That premise, while perhaps controversial in some corners, seems essential problematic than the conclusion it was offered to support (which it doesn't.)
> Boys love Jewelbots, two weeks ago at an event a boy came up to me after to tell me "this was more fun than coding Minecraft". Best compliment in a while.
Yeah because its the coding part which makes it interesting to most boys.
It's like if you created a GI Barbie character (which is basically a Barbie doll with a gun) then boys would love it too, that doesn't necessarily mean that they love Barbie, they just love a different aspect of it.
Although I do agree that Jewelbot (by integrating elements girls would like with coding) can get them excited into coding.
Also see Adafruit's products, they are electronics and DIY supply company run by mostly women and they do super cool things things which are interesting to girls. My favorite one was when they embedded a NFC token on their nail using nail polish, and then program it to unlock their phone by just holding it.
It would seem rude for a toy maker to be asking children for their gender as assigned at birth (which is what I assume you mean) so they probably don't know.
You don't have to ask about their genitals but given you claim boys like jewelbots (which they very well might do) I think it's pretty relevent to understand whether those are biological boys or simply biological girls identifying as boys.
One would be less interesting than the other. Here is why.
Did they say they asked? I thought that comment just indicated that they had noticed. And since you are the person who brought up the concept of identifying as a boy in this context, I don't think anyone else can tell you why it might have seemed relevant.
I am not sure exactly what gender identity rule I have broken for asking my original question but I find it pretty interesting whether those who identify as a girl also are girls biologically but identify as boys or whether they are biologically born boys.
The reasons I asked was because it was claimed that many of those who use it identify as boys.
Maybe I am alone in thinking this is an important distinction but none the less I find it pretty relevant to what to make out of it in the grander scheme of this discussion.
> A female grade school teacher, at a private school, tried to explain to me how "girls brains are wired differently from boys"
While an oversimplification, this seems to be generally true; females are biologically different than males and those differences seems to have psychological/behavioral manifestations.
Its still difficult to isolate socialization effects from biological ones, but the indications seem to be that there are real, biologically grounded differences.
> and therefore "we need to teach girls to be more like boys."
Wait, what? Wouldn't that be a reason to stop trying to do that, at least where those biological grounded differences have strong effects?
I personally agree that women are biologically different than men. But, I don't know what the correct next conclusion is. (Not to mention when you extend it to gender self-identification.)
One of her specific examples was "because of that different wiring, boys will typically try to win a game, but many times girls will not try to win, because, for example, winning might hurt the other player's feelings."
All I could say in response was, "well, I'm a guy, and to me it sounds like those girls are thinking at a higher level -- who cares about winning some artificial game, if it's going to hurt another person." And that's where the bulk of the conversation ended.
I struggle to find the right path when discussing gender -- especially about kids.
I hear you. If you think of it as a way to appeal to feminine girls instead of all girls, it makes more sense. I know gender neutral coding toys already exist, but I think there's room (and a place) for super feminine ones too!
Whenever I have to buy a kid a present, I try to aim for the fun yet educational toys, regardless of which gender its marketed to, but not everyone does that.
I know people who will buy a random pink toy from the girls' toy aisle if they need a present for a girl, regardless what it is. Its pink, so it must be appropriate for a girl. The present giver feels like they did their job.
I think the mere existence of feminine coding toys will increase the chances of girls ending up with any sort of coding toy, which is the goal, right?
Yeah, with a different 'face', I think boys would think this was cool too. I know 9 year old me though 'secret codes' were very cool, so I'd have probably been into it.
What do girls want? (after being socialized for their entire young lives to only express and develop interests in traditionally "feminine" pursuits) might turn out to be a quite different question from What's the best way to encourage girls to see themselves as being equally capable as boys in technical areas?"
There seems to be a popular notion that "feminine" traits are innate and universal to people with a "feminine identity", rather than the product of culture with socialization that treats female people consistently differently than male people from birth. However if you think about things that prepare someone for technical success, so-called "feminine" traits like caring about your appearance more than is actually necessary (makeup and jewelry serve no real purpose and take time and money) or being uncomfortable with conflict (bias for cooperation vs competition, people seeing assertive women as aggressive) are not good things that will help you be equal to or surpass your male peers in technical pursuits.
I can understand why it's uncomfortable to imply that the concept of "femininity" is not a positive one when it comes to tech (the creator of this probably disagrees with my assesment). But I hope we can continue to question the validity of "feminine" social constructs while also creating products like this, which bridge the gap after socialization has taken its toll.
I actually read it right before writing that comment above! It was the primary motivating factor for me providing some examples of how I've noticed that femininity can be negative in regards to tech.
That all being said, I don't knock anyone as an individual for liking what they like. I also recognize that there are reasons for the disparity of women in tech other than gender role conformity due to socialization. It's just one I think deserves more credit than it gets.
> But I hope we can continue to question the validity of "feminine" social constructs while also creating products like this, which bridge the gap after socialization has taken its toll.
Yep, just because this product doesn't fix all society's problems related to pushing gender norms on children doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
Maybe by giving girls what they want in order to get the damn thing into their hands, this product is exposing them to technical challenges that will improve their confidence, causing them to see themselves as being equally capable as boys in technical areas?
> You have to assume they did some research and that's what girls want.
Or they did some research and that's what potential members of the target audience who aren't already buying into existing products of the same type aside from consideration of the gender-orientation of marketing want.
That those people are largely girls is, well, kind of beside the point: why compete in a crowded market when by marketing in a particular way you can compete in a more open niche.
I actually like the idea that the gadget is positioned for "women in tech" without being about "women in tech". Last thing we need is another one of those panels, in lieu of what the individuals actually built or did.
Thinking back though, one gadget I remember being very appealing to kids of both sexes was Tamagotchi. It would be cool if someone made a more customizeable/programmable/less annoying version those in a wearable format.