is a professor for Informatics. Her research group on Gender Research in Informatics is situated at the Mathematics and Informatics Department and at the Center for Feminist Studies of Bremen University.
Her main work areas are requirements analysis, participatory software development, human-computer interaction, software-ergonomics in the context of service work, self-service concepts and e-commerce, the image and self image of informatics as a scientific discipline and a profession.
Currently her research is concerned with software support for what is supposed to be "women's work": service work in call centers (The project on "Computer Use and Job Design in Call Centers" (1999-2002) was financed by the Bremen program "Work and Technology" (with ESF-support).). Primarily women are recruited as call center agents because they seem predestinated for a job on the phone where eloquence, friendliness, empathy and cooperation is needed. However, as "natural female attributes" these crucial skills are taken somewhat for free in those low-pay call center jobs, that also show many other attributes of typical women's jobs. Who can expect to be paid well for the smile in her voice?
In order to understand call center agents' jobs, their task requirements and particular work stress, we carried out a detailed analysis of agents' interaction work with customers. We found that we lack work analysis methods that allow to characterize both, technical and social aspects of interactive service work. Yet, what is not clearly perceived cannot be technically supported! No wonder that call center software often interferes with the ongoing social process. Software developers did not see (or "abstracted away") the social aspects of service and reduced social interaction to data exchange over the phone. Call center software is exclusively oriented towards quick data access, transport and storage.
In our research we combine an expertise in Informatics, Work Psychology and Gender Studies. Our close and gender-sensitive look at computer-supported women's work enabled us to point out shortcomings in scientific methods and to formulate innovative software requirements. Our gender standpoint puts our results into perspective. Susanne Maass suspects that poor software support is highly correlated to the partial invisibility and the general disrespect of "female" work.
is a research assistant in the working group "Gender Studies and Technology", which is part of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bremen.
She holds a degree in both computer science and cultural studies. Her research interests focus on designanthropology and partizipatory design, especially concerning interactive service work and the introduction of self-service technologies.
is a research assistant in the working group "Gender Studies and Technology", which is part of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bremen.
She is a sociologist with a strong background in gender studies and computer science.
In the past she has worked as a software developer and teacher in adult education.
Her research interests focus on gendering processes in software development.
is mathematician and has been research assistant of the Computer Science Department and the Center for Feminist Studies at the University of Bremen during the last five years (1998-2003).
Her main working fields are gender studies in computer science, science and technology studies, theories of computer science, and transdisciplinarity.
She is finishing her doctoral thesis on the co-production of gender and technology in computer science.
Since April 2004 she is researcher in the bm:bwk project "Sociality with Machines. Anthropomorphizing & Gendering in Software Agents Research and Robotics" in Vienna.