How Creating a Target Sitemap Got Me Thinking About Gender Constructs

“Can I filter down by boy or girl?” No. No tester, you cannot filter by gender. And I’m glad you can’t.

For the last few weeks, everyone in my cohort has been working on a global nav assignment. We started by creating a sitemap for a behemoth url and thinking about user goals for the site. We also ran user tests, and then, based on our test results, had to come up with a few recommendations for how our site could improve upon its global nav.

My assignment was to work on target.com, and I was excited to try my hand at mapping out a giant site (I really was, you can read about it here). I was looking forward to learning more about information architecture. What I didn’t expect was to come away from this assignment thinking about gender as a social construct.

The Test

I used a free trial of trymyui.com to run my usability test (recommended by Emily McCammon, and I highly recommend it). This site sends your url and tasks to an anonymous tester*, and records the results for you. In addition to asking your tester to complete a few tasks, you are asked to provide them with a frame of mind.

When coming up with user tasks, I decided early on that I wanted to have my tester shop for someone else. I figured there was a pretty good chance my tester would already be familiar with Target’s website, and I wanted at least one task that wasn’t something they were likely to do on a regular basis.

When my cohort started this assignment, one of my nephews had just turned ten. Because this birthday was on my mind, I had my tester shop for a gift for a ten-year-old boy. Here are the exact instructions I gave:

Frame of mind: “You are looking for a birthday present for your ten-year-old nephew whose birthday is in two weeks. You have come here to look at gift options and to see if there are any sales or coupons.”

First task: “Where can you find possible gifts for a ten-year-old on this site? Learn about your different options.”

The Results

After first scrolling down the homepage to view category options and then checking the “categories” dropdown menu in the global nav, my tester decided to click on a homepage button called “kids gifting.” This took the tester to a new page called “kids gift ideas guide.” It was interesting to watch someone else’s web navigation habits, but so far, no big surprises, right?

Trymyui.com asks testers to narrate their thought process and records that narration along with the screen capture, so I was able to listen to this person’s reasoning behind navigation choices. The first thing my tester said upon opening the kids gift guide page was, “Let’s see, is there any way to filter it down by age range?” And lo and behold, that was the first option: the page was a card grid of different age ranges. Nice job, Target.

After selecting the 8–11 age range, the next thing my user said was, “Can I filter down by boy or girl?” And the answer is no. No tester, you cannot filter by gender. I had completely forgotten that, in 2015, Target made the decision to stop categorizing toys by gender — a decision I fully support.

To be clear, this wasn’t a huge deal to my tester. This person mainly seemed surprised that gender sort was not an option, but wasn’t frustrated or upset about it (judging by the tone of voice used).

Part of my assignment was to make some recommendations on how to change Target’s site based on my user test. It would have been fairly easy for me to recommend that Target add a gender filter back in, since my tester wanted one. Throughout my UX classes so far this semester, we’ve talked about how important it is to focus on the user’s needs. But sometimes you have to think beyond the user’s needs.

What People Want Vs. What People Need

You’re probably familiar with the Henry Ford quote that goes something like, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses.” That quote is usually referenced when someone talks about product innovation, but I think it makes sense in this situation too.

On the surface, filtering by gender seems like an easy solution for trying to find a gift for a ten-year-old boy. Since that wasn’t an option in this case, my user had to think about toys and games in terms of other categories, and had to actually think about what a child might enjoy. Would this kid like an activity set or a building set? What characters might this nephew be into?

I remember that there was some controversy when Target made the decision to remove gender filtering for certain categories, but I think the end result is worth it. It’s important to not only think about users when we design, but also how our designs shape the way people interact with the world.

*If you sign up for the paid version of trymyui.com, you can send your url to your own testers too.

**I’ve been pretty careful not to ascribe a gender pronoun to my user here. Was that annoying for you as a reader? Here’s why I did it: I don’t know anything about this person except that they live in the U.S. (that’s the only parameter I put on my tester pool). If you pressed me on it, I’d guess the voice I was listening to sounded younger than 30, but I honestly don’t know.

In a post about the importance of not making gender-based assumptions, it felt weird to make one.