The gender factor performing visualization tasks on computer media

There has been a recent trend to develop new, complex, and often predominantly visual, user interfaces as media front ends' to computer applications. This trend assumes that varied user groups have equivalent propensities to perceive, interpret, and understand the multidimensional spatial properties and relationships of objects visually presented through the on-screen medium. However, it is well known that there exist gender differences in certain spatial abilities, suggesting that there may be gender biases to effectively utilize certain visual cues presented through computer-mediated interfaces. We test this notion with three experiments (object matching, positioning, and resizing) using 2D and 3D computer screen media. Whereas female subjects under-perform male subjects in the object matching and positioning tasks, they outperform male subjects in the resizing task. Implications for the design of gender-effective user interface media are discussed.