Started by Arjun Pillai (@latentspace) ·
Clippy was built on serious research and everyone still hated it
6 sources · 44 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- Why did Clippy fail?
- Ended at
- “lumiere project microsoft research bayesian user modeling”
The Trail
- “why did everyone hate clippy” (google.com)
- Office Assistant (en.wikipedia.org)
- Microsoft Bob (en.wikipedia.org)
- Clifford Nass (en.wikipedia.org)
the 'computers are social actors' researcher. people are polite to computers, apparently
- The Media Equation (en.wikipedia.org)
- “lumiere project microsoft research bayesian user modeling” (google.com)
part of the idea came from this: bayesian models guessing when you need help. what shipped was much cruder
What I came away with
Nass's research said people treat computers socially, so a friendly character should help. That cuts both ways: a social character that interrupts and never learns comes across as rude. Microsoft turned it off by default in Office XP and removed it in Office 2007.
Keep going
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