I keep reading that the evidence says we relate emotionally to robots and computers about the same way we relate to each other. Basically, any finding in social psychology seems applicable to human-computer interaction. (A book by Clifford Nass, “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop,” explores this in detail.)
I guess it has to be true. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving our social behaviors—were we supposed to re-wire our brains just to deal with computers?
But maybe this is a useful way to think about web and application interfaces. Who are your applications? For me, Google Calendar is someone with no time for style or frills, but who’s very intutive about what I need. Microsoft Word is someone who knows a million things, but who has OCD so I have to allow a little extra time, and oh, yeah…has teensy psychotic breaks now and then.
But more to the point…who do we want our applications to be?