The GenderMag Project

Customize "Abi (Abigail/Abishek)"

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Preferred Pronoun






    scanning all her emails first to get an overall picture before answering any of them.  

Background and Skills


Abi (Abigail/Abishek)

Abi
  • 28 Years Old
  • Employed as an Accountant
  • Lives in Cardiff, Wales

    Abi has always liked music. When she is on her way to work in the morning, she listens to music that spans a wide variety of styles. But when she arrives at work, she turns it off, and begins her day by

    scanning all her emails first to get an overall picture before answering any of them.

    (This extra pass takes time but seems worth it.) Some nights she exercises or stretches, and sometimes she likes to play computer puzzle games like Sudoku.

Background and Skills

    Abi works as an accountant. She is comfortable with the technologies she uses regularly, but she just moved to this employer 1 week ago, and

    the software systems are new to her.

     

    Abi has never taken any computer programming or IT systems classes.

    she likes Math and knows how to think with numbers.

    She writes and edits spreadsheet formulas in her work.


     

    In her free time,

    she also enjoys working with numbers and logic. 

    she especially likes working out puzzles and puzzle games, either on paper or on the computer.


Motivations and Attitudes

  • Motivations: Abi uses technologies to accomplish her tasks. she learns new technologies if and when she needs to, but prefers to use methods she is already familiar and comfortable with, to keep her focus on the tasks she cares about.
  • Computer Self-Efficacy: Abi has lower self confidence than her peers about doing unfamiliar computing tasks. If problems arise with her technology, she often blames herself for these problems. This affects whether and how she will persevere with a task if technology problems have arisen.
  • Attitude toward Risk: Abi's life is a little complicated and she rarely has spare time. So she is risk averse about using unfamiliar technologies that might need her to spend extra time on them, even if the new features might be relevant. she instead performs tasks using familiar features, because they're more predictable about what she will get from them and how much time they will take.

Attitude to Technology

  • Information Processing Style: Abi tends towards a comprehensive information processing style when she needs to gather more information. So, instead of acting upon the first option that seems promising, she gathers information comprehensively to try to form a complete understanding of the problem before trying to solve it. Thus, her style is "burst-y"; first she reads a lot, then she acts on it in a batch of activity.
  • Learning: by Process vs. by Tinkering : When learning new technology, Abi leans toward process-oriented learning, e.g., tutorials, step-by-step processes, wizards, online how-to videos, etc. she doesn't particularly like learning by tinkering with software (i.e., just trying out new features or commands to see what they do), but when she does tinker, it has positive effects on her understanding of the software.
1Abi represents users with motivations/attitudes and information/learning styles similar to hers. For data on people similar to and different from Abi, see
http://gendermag.org/Foundations.html


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