By K.A. Laity
Yeah, everyone was excited about the unveiling of the new Apple tablet computer. They braced themselves for the inevitable Twitter crash (which didn't seem to happen after all).
Geeks everywhere were poised to trumpet or decry the new product depending upon where they positioned themselves along the Steve-Jobs-Messiah-or-Huckster continuum. But the one thing that seemed to be overlooked was the impact of the name.
I'm sure they did a lot of testing, but I just can't believe there was a woman on the team or at least one in an important enough position to say, "No, no, hell no!" when it came to naming it the iPad.
WTF?!
It took next to no time for iTampon to become a trending topic on Twitter, rivaling "Apple iPad" itself in the top three. Just about every woman I know on Twitter (and eventually on Facebook, too) began making up jokes or forwarding someone else's (except for those following #dbw). An old bit from Mad TV was resurrected and replayed across YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
I may be wrong to suspect that there wasn't a single woman on the design team; after all, one of my pals suggested that there were women on the team but they just thought, "Fine, assholes, go ahead...." (thanks, Dan). However, I can't help thinking that here's a common sense and very visible example of how including the input of women can make your life better, tech guys.
Instead of the focus being on how cool the new toy is, half your audience at least is giggling about the name. Way to go!
The larger and far more important point is you should be wondering how many less visible and less risible ways the same neglect is affecting your product. It's just insanely negligent to think that women aren't essential to the development of truly useful tech. Yeah, I still want an iPad, if you're wondering. But I only plan to use it about three days every month…
Image via SuperBleeder