I hated Clippy, not because it looked like it was leering at me, but because it was so intrusive.

[T]he engineers in the room were willing to throw out the focus-group-provided data—data which they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for—because it didn’t cohere to their expectations. The software shipped with 10 male assistants and two female assistants, she adds.It turned out to be one of the most unpopular features ever introduced—especially among female users.This isn’t the only case of how design that assumes the prototypical user is male could go awry. —The Atlantic