Backstage

Designed for Women...

I just caught a short bit on an MSNBC video about a car (Volvo) designed for women, by women... Its just a concept car now, but there were a couple things that just seemed a bit wrong to me...

They had a floral pattern either silk screened, or embroidered in to the seats... Now that's pretty benign, but I don't know a single woman that wants everything in their life to be flowery... Naturally, that probably speaks to my taste in the women I spend time with, but it seems a bit too cliche...

The car also calls the mechanic automatically when it senses something wrong... Are we still living in an age when we feel that women can't deal with their car breaking down on their own?... I mean I don't expect them to crawl under the hood and fix everything, hell I can't fix most of what's under my relatively simple hood...

Now those were the two that jumped at me in the 30 second bit... There were some nice ideas too...

The gas cap is this cool rotating ball deal that opens with a button push. (keeping their dainty hands clean I suppose)

The seats were elevated more than normal cars as most women are somewhat shorter than guys...

The purse holder seemed a bit silly to me though... Conceptually, it's not terrible, but functionally it seemed like it would end up being a bit too small unless the woman in question was carrying a fairly small purse...

Now, I'm pretty sure not a single one of my female friends would go for this ride... Again that's probably a reflection of my personality determining who I spend time with... Most of the women I know tend to get disgusted by things like this... Not because the higher seat isn't a great idea, but its things like the floral prints, and mechanic phone call... This thing was supposedly designed by women... Don't they have enough respect for themselves to not let stereotypes creep in to the otherwise good design?...

Perhaps that's just me...

Posted by Backstage at September 26, 2005 11:12 PM | TrackBack