Media: New Scientist reports on Apologising Computers

"Polite computers win users' hearts and minds" by Celeste Biever looks at work in Taiwan that partly challenges the research at MIT on how computers gracefully acknowledging errors affect users.

The work is based on a Chinese saying: "No one would blame a polite person." and seeks to make operating systems and software more "civilised" by saying sorry more often. 'That way people won't feel they are stupid or at fault, so they become less apprehensive about using computers, and perhaps more productive and creative.'

Jeng-Yi Tzeng at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan wrote two versions of a computer-based guessing game - one apologetic and the other brusque - and asked 269 high-school students to play one or the other. The aim of the game was to guess a Chinese saying, but irritatingly the program frequently made them guess the very same saying in successive rounds. It also provided ineffective or irrelevant clues, or came up with a confusing user interface.

Most interesting of all is the comment section at the end where other key researchers in this field respond to this latest salvo in the anthropomorphisation of computers.

Associated Link: New Scientist: Polite computers win users' hearts and minds

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