Microsoft program manager Karen Fries, one of the project’s strongest proponents, had already observed the enthusiasm these digital guides could inspire. Ostensibly, these would more concretely embody the the humanity users were already instinctively assigning to their computers. To capitalize on these findings, Microsoft Bob’s developers decided to add anthropomorphic “assistants” to guide users through the program. Users who delivered their review on a different computer were more truthful (and therefore more critical)-essentially replicating the level of “politeness” used when evaluating a person to their face, rather than to a peer. As further tests would reveal, evaluations of a computer’s performance were significantly more positive when people completed them on the machine that was actually running the program.
In the early 1990s, the pair developed a theory: People unconsciously respond to computers as if they are human. To navigate between different applications, users clicked on familiar household objects: a pencil and paper for word processing, an envelope for email, or a checkbook for electronic payments.ĭespite its down-home name, Microsoft Bob had been designed to reflect cutting-edge social science research conducted by Stanford professors Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves (who were eventually hired as consultants for the nascent program). Instead of the menu- and text-heavy interfaces that had come before, the program transformed the desktop into the virtual interior of a home.
#The adventures of clipy software#
Personally launched by Bill Gates in 1995, Microsoft Bob was supposed to revolutionize home computing by making software friendlier for first-time users. Before there was Clippy, there was Microsoft Bob.
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