> [instead of referring to "Mom" as an example of a non technical user] ideal nouns will refer to non-human or purely technical categories, such as cat, non-technical user, Ubuntu user, or “newbie.”
The persona for which you are designing your software is a cat? Are they going to chase the cursor? Are they illiterate? Do they lack color vision?
Similarly, "newbie" means something completely different from "my mom". A newbie is new to your software, or perhaps this class of software, but may be quite technical otherwise.
An Ubuntu user is far more technical than average.
This is an absurd level of political correctness that gets in the way of design by forcing designers to use language that's inconsistent with their thoughts. If this is really such a big issue, you can create a male persona and use his name to refer to this class of users.
> Describing software or algorithms as “sexy”, “hot”, etc.
Describing someone or something as sexy is by no means male-specific language.
The persona for which you are designing your software is a cat? Are they going to chase the cursor? Are they illiterate? Do they lack color vision?
Similarly, "newbie" means something completely different from "my mom". A newbie is new to your software, or perhaps this class of software, but may be quite technical otherwise.
An Ubuntu user is far more technical than average.
This is an absurd level of political correctness that gets in the way of design by forcing designers to use language that's inconsistent with their thoughts. If this is really such a big issue, you can create a male persona and use his name to refer to this class of users.
> Describing software or algorithms as “sexy”, “hot”, etc.
Describing someone or something as sexy is by no means male-specific language.