Visualising Gender Norms in Design: Meet The Mega Hurricane Mixer and The Drill Dolphia

This research project aimed to make gender norms in design more visible by switching the product languages of two common household appliances - a drill, traditionally seen as masculine, and a hand blender, seen as feminine. The researcher created prototypes called the "Mega Hurricane Mixer" based on the drill and the "Dollphia" based on the hand blender. Showing these prototypes revealed how users' relationships with the tools changed and how certain functions were newly seen as lacking or adequate when the traditional designs were altered. The research argues that design embodies social norms but also has the power to renegotiate them by questioning existing forms and putting products in a broader social context.

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Visualising Gender Norms in Design: Meet The Mega Hurricane Mixer and The Drill Dolphia

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Visualising Gender Norms in Design

- Meet the Mega Hurricane Mixer and the Drill Dolphia

Everywhere, we are constantly confronted with information that between the user, the artefact, and society. This means that the Research project funded by: KTH Maskonkonstruktion
Karin Ehrnberger
reflects society’s perceptions of, and rules about, what is form of the artefacts around us is not determined once and for
acceptable and what is not. Everyday environments, and their all, but can be renegotiated according to time, place, and In collaboration with: (you may add logotypes in the top right corner)

forms and functions, are the result of someone’s conscious context. To follow Donna Haraway (Haraway, 1988), even the
Abstract
intention. These things reflect values and express desires. It is design process is situated in time, place and context.
therefore important that designers understand how the artefacts Research budget: (approx)
This project highlights how a gender
perspective can be visualised by a
they create affect the formation and maintenance of these We as designers must become more aware of our responsibility
(gender) critical design practice. Two ideas, which include gender. The design of a product can be
common household appliances – a drill and our power to make a change. It is therefore important to Project Period:
(traditionally considered as male hand considered to embody, reflect and reproduce gender roles and question and reassess the design process. Here, the notion of
tool) and a hand blender (feminine hand power structures in our society.
tool) – were used as a starting point. gender plays a significant role. Sep 2009- Sep 2013
Inspired by Derrida’s term
deconstruction, the product language of
the tools was analysed and then switched The design objective in this project was not to design new
in two new prototypes: the hand blender By placing the product in a larger context and questioning how The prototypes were created in the context of Karin Ehrnbergers Master thesis
Mega Hurricane Mixer and the drill handheld machines, or to make a ‘manly’ blender or a ‘feminine’ the product will affect the users’ relationship to others, we at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, in 2006
Dolphia. The prototypes were shown at
exhibitions and lectures. The comments drill. The purpose of the swapping of product language was to believe that designers can come up with alternative designs and
by the audience show that a switching of make the invisible visible, and to show how values are solutions that better fulfil individual needs.
product language means that their
relationship to the artefact itself also connected to each product language and each artefact.
changes. Overall, the elements, which
previously had been perceived as ‘lacking This research discusses and attempts to show that the
transparency’, were now visible. For
example, the drill was identified as a
interaction between humans and artefacts can be seen as a
“drill for women” and considered mutually transforming process. Design consists not only of a
inadequate for drilling, and the mixer
revealed needs and functions that the final product, but includes a social process that takes place
traditional mixer did not satisfy. This
implies that design should not only be
seen as ‘final products’ but as a part of a
social process that takes place between
the user, the artefact and the norms of
society. The switching of product
languages shows how values are
connected to each design and each
artefact. This means that the design of
the artefacts around us is not fixed, but
can be renegotiated and situated in time,
place, and context.