Clifford Nass - The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships

Table of Contents

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First published in 2010 by Current,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Clifford Nass, 2010

All rights reserved

Two graphs and two Eye Heart and Sheep drawings by Sebastian Yen

Bush and Kerry image by Nicholas Yee

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Nass, Clifford Ivar

The man who lied to his laptop : what machines teach us about human relationships / Clifford Nass with Corina Yen.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN: 9781101452356

1. Interpersonal relationsResearchData processing. 2. Human-computer interaction. I. Yen, Corina. II. Title.

HM1106.N38 2010

302.231dc22 2010015427

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To Florence Nass, Jules Nass, and Matthew Nass, and for all the family and friends who have passed away during my work on this book.

CLIFFORD NASS

For my loving parents, David and Julie, and my dear siblings, Jacqueline and Sebastian.

CORINA YEN

Introduction

WHY I STUDY COMPUTERS TO UNCOVER SOCIAL STRATEGIES

When you work with people, you can usually tell whether things are going smoothly or are falling apart. Its much harder to figure out why things are going wrong and how to improve them. People seem too complex for you to consistently make them happier or more cooperative, or to make them see you as more intelligent and persuasive.

Over the past twenty years, I have discovered that the social world is much less complicated than it appears. In fact, interactions between people are governed by simple rules and patterns. These truths arent vague generalities, such as advice from our grandparents (nothing ventured, nothing gained), pop psychologists (follow your dreams), or celebrities (dont take no for an answer). Instead, in this book I present scientifically grounded findings on how to praise and criticize, how to work with different types of people, how to form teams, how to manage emotions, and how to persuade others.

I didnt set out to discover ways to guide successful human relationships. As a professor in many departmentscommunication; computer science; education; science, technology, and society; sociology; and symbolic systemsand an industry consultant, I work at the intersection of social science and technology. My research at Stanford University and my collaborations with corporate teams had originally been focused on making computers and other technologies easier, more effective, and more pleasant for people to use. I didnt know that I would be thrust into the world of successful human relationships until I encountered three peculiar problems: an obnoxious paper clip, a suspicious auditor, and an untrustworthy navigator.

In 1998, Microsoft asked me to provide evidence that it was possible to improve one of the worst software designs in computer history: Clippy, the animated paper clip in Microsoft Office. While I have often been asked by companies to make their interfaces easier to use, I had a real challenge on my hands with Clippy. The mere mention of his name to computer users brought on levels of hatred usually reserved for jilted lovers and mortal enemies. There were I hate Clippy Web sites, videos, and T-shirts in numerous languages. One of the first viral videos on the Internetwell before YouTube made posting videos commondepicted a person mangling a live version of Clippy, screaming, I hate you, you lousy paper clip!

One might think that the hostility toward Clippy emerged because grown-ups dont like animated characters. But popular culture demonstrates that adults can indeed have rich relationships with cartoons. For many years, licensing for the animated California Raisins (originally developed as an advertising gimmick by the California Raisin Advisory Board) yielded higher revenues than the actual raisin industry. The campaigns success in fact helped motivate Microsoft to deploy Clippy in the first place. (Bill Gates envisioned a future of Clippy mugs, T-shirts, and other merchandise.) Similarly, Homer Simpson, Fred Flintstone, and Bugs Bunny all have name recognition and star power equivalent to the most famous human celebrities. What about Clippy, then, aroused such animosity in people?

Around this same time, my second mystery appeared. A market-analysis firm asked me to explain why employees at some companies had started reporting dramatic increases in the approval ratings of all the software applications they were using.

I started my investigation by comparing the newly satisfied users with those who had experienced no change in satisfaction. Strangely, I found that the people in the satisfied and dissatisfied companies were relatively uniform with regard to their industries (banking versus retail), the types of computers being used (PCs versus Macs), the categories of software they worked with (programming versus word processing), and the technical skill levels of their employees (novice versus expert).

I then looked at how the researchers surveyed the companies (how often, by whom, how many times). The only difference I found was that the companies that had started reporting higher approval ratings had changed their procedure for obtaining the evaluation. Formerly, all of the companies had people evaluate software on a separate evaluation computer. Later, some companies later changed that procedure and had their employees evaluate the software on the same computer they normally worked with. Those companies subsequently reported higher approval ratings. Why would people give software higher ratings on one computer as compared to another identical computer?

My third problem concerned the navigation system BMW used in its Five Series car in Germany. BMW represents the pinnacle of German engineering excellence, and at the time its navigation system was arguably well ahead of other companies in terms of accuracy and functionality. Despite that fact, BMW was forced to recall the product. What was the problem? It turns out that the system had a female voice, and male German drivers refused to take directions from a woman! The service desk received numerous calls from agitated German men that went something like this: