Hey Tech Guys: Women Don't Want Massive Phones

Zeynep Tufekci was covering a protest in Istanbul when Turkish soldiers began firing tear gas into the peaceful crowd. She whipped out her phone—a Google Nexus 4—hoping to document the outrage, and clutching her bag with one hand, tried to snap a picture with the other. It was no use. Her pictures kept coming out blurry and useless, "for one simple reason: Good smartphones are designed for male hands," she writes at Medium. "As my lungs, eyes, and nose burned … I cursed the gendered nature of tech design."

"I'm 5 foot 2 inches on a good day, and my hands are simply not big enough" to use modern smartphones one-handed, she writes. Every generation the screen gets slightly larger. "For most men, it’s just one small, added benefit. For many women, though, it’s a reminder that the tech industry doesn’t always remember or count your existence." Nor does it consider those developing countries where people are smaller on average. The tech industry desperately needs more diversity, to help it design "for people other than average sized men in rich countries." Click for Tufekci's full piece. (More smartphones stories.)