All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would never get played with.
GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
41–50 of 113 posts
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is girls themed lego and duplo these days.
And their sales numbers have been abysmal. I haven't heard how the new "Lego Friends" line has been doing, though.
They're selling like gangbusters: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/aug/31/lego-frie...
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#43Can't hate, I love it. Even the pink and cuddly bits. If this product instead had a blue ribbon and alien figurines with the title "Cyber Drivetrain Blast Kit" it wouldn't raise an eyebrow as a gendered or pandering toy. Legos are for boys when 95% of what's on the Lego shelf is boy pirates, boy laserbros, boy Batman, boy bio-alien-robots tearing the shit out of boy bio-dino-robots, etc.
So only 15% of girls liking engineering is a problem, but girls not liking pirates, batman and bio-alien-robots isn't? Where is the movement to get girls interested in bio-alien-robots?
Well, I know some girls like pirates at least, but when I think about the old pirate movies... well, maybe old movies in general.
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#44Good intentions yes, but is this even fun? She says she playtested it, but I can't imagine it holding anyone's attention for more than an hour. Maybe you can re-play it by reading the story again, though.
Tangent: I've had an idea for a while that the best way to teach girls programming would be to start not with math or games but with a chat server. You can handwave over how the networking works, with the right framework. And kids who are really interested can delve deeper. Maybe kids reared on that would learn TCP/IP before they ever had to slog through some dreary fibonacci exercise.
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#45All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
My knee-jerk response to that: Do they make pink girly legos? Maybe there are reasons why that's the wrong approach, but I tend to regard interaction and packaging as two very distinct design components. If the packaging is the problem, fix that first.
Changing the interaction should come second. Dumbing it down is almost never the solution, yet it's often the first solution people turn to when trying to deal with a gender gap. It's as if they think the issues will go away if they speak very slowly and loudly.
(I admire the objective, but I believe I would like the project better if it said "an engineering toy" instead of "the engineering toy." The implication differs.)
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#46All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
My knee-jerk response to that: Do they make pink girly legos? Maybe there are reasons why that's the wrong approach, but I tend to regard interaction and packaging as two very distinct design components. If the packaging is the problem, fix that first. Changing the interaction should come second. Dumbing it down is almost never the solution, yet it's often the first solution people turn to when trying to deal with a…
"Do they make pink girly legos?"
Why yes, yes they do: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx
They're controversial for the same reasons people are complaining on this thread, but they're selling. (See http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/09/lego-friends-tr...)
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#47All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
I almost wrote a comment about how it was basically just making erector sets pink, and what was the point of that. You've made me think twice.
However, I feel like parents who are inclined to buy this might not be likely to have princess-obsessed kids. But I am not a parent, so I don't know.
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#48All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
I almost wrote a comment about how it was basically just making erector sets pink, and what was the point of that. You've made me think twice.
However, I feel like parents who are inclined to buy this might not be likely to have princess-obsessed kids. But I am not a parent, so I don't know.
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#49All the naysayers out there are neglecting an important viewpoint best explained by a personal anecdote. I have a 4 year old niece that is so into princesses, pink, high heals, the whole 9 yards, that any present that isn't themed pink and girly will just get ignored, yet she's very smart and likes playing with puzzles. Something like this might actually work for her, where gender neutral legos or erector sets would…
To this point there seems to be strong and widespread anecdotal evidence that many boys don't want to seem to much like girls by playing with "girly" toys and many girls feel the same way towards "boys" toys. There is perhaps (or perhaps not) a problem with this phenomenon that, over time, needs to be addressed. In the meantime things like this seem to be a great way to spread interest in science and engineering among both genders.
Re: GoldieBlox: The Engineering Toy for Girls
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
My knee-jerk response to that: Do they make pink girly legos? Maybe there are reasons why that's the wrong approach, but I tend to regard interaction and packaging as two very distinct design components. If the packaging is the problem, fix that first. Changing the interaction should come second. Dumbing it down is almost never the solution, yet it's often the first solution people turn to when trying to deal with a…
"Do they make pink girly legos?" Why yes, yes they do: http://friends.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx They're controversial for the same reasons people are complaining on this thread, but they're selling. (See http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/09/lego-friends-tr... )
My experience is limited to sisters, but they played with the normal legos just as much as I did. I suspect these would have been a hit.
Users care about things like color far more than engineers often suspect. If changing the color makes a substantive improvement to outcomes you care about - change the color.