COMPUTER glitches would be a lot less annoying if the machines were programmed to acknowledge errors gracefully when something goes wrong, instead of merely flashing up a brusque 鈥測ou goofed鈥� message.
The trick, according to a researcher who has analysed users鈥� responses to their computers, is to make operating systems and software more 鈥渃ivilised鈥� by saying sorry more often. That way people won鈥檛 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 took inspiration for his research from the Chinese saying: 鈥淣o one would blame a polite person.鈥� He wondered if people would be equally forgiving of more courteous computers.
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To find out, Tzeng wrote two versions of a computer-based guessing game 鈥� one apologetic and the other brusque 鈥� 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.
In one version of the game, the computer apologised to users when they missed a turn because of these flaws, by flashing up the message: 鈥淲e are sorry that the clues were not very helpful for you. Please try the next game.鈥� The other version merely issued a terse, unfriendly message: 鈥淭his is not correct.鈥�
The students were given the impression that the study was aiming to assess the playability of the game, which they made challenging enough to disguise the study鈥檚 real purpose.
After half an hour鈥檚 play, users of both versions were equally disappointed with the game itself. But those who had played on the apologetic version were more likely to describe it as fun, and 60 per cent of them said the apologetic feedback made the game more enjoyable. However, apologies made no difference to 25 per cent of them, and 12 per cent said they felt they were being manipulated. Tzeng will report his findings in a forthcoming edition of the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
鈥淚t is what I expected,鈥� comments Eric Horvitz, manager of Microsoft鈥檚 Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group. 鈥淎rrogant software rubs people up the wrong way just like an arrogant person would.鈥�
Horvitz, whose development team created Microsoft鈥檚 infamous Office Assistant with its animated paper clip, sees this as a pressing issue. 鈥淎s computers have got more powerful, people have come to expect them to behave more like collaborators and less like tools or appliances,鈥� he says. Despite this, operating systems such as Microsoft鈥檚 Windows, Apple鈥檚 MacOS and the open source Linux continue to use accusatory and incomprehensible error messages, says Jakob Nielsen of human-computer interaction consultancy the Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, California. Messages such as 鈥淗TTP 404 鈥� File not found鈥�, which appears when a web page is unavailable, and 鈥渋nvalid credit card number鈥� on e-commerce sites, make people feel stupid when they have not done anything wrong. This scares them away from exploiting computers to their full potential, he says.
But Jonathan Klein, who builds robotic toys at iRobot in Sommerville, Massachusetts, warns that any apology will eventually cease to sound sincere if it is repeated too often. He believes the answer is software that will ask users to vent their frustration by typing a message, to which the computer provides empathetic feedback, using artificial intelligence to come up with the appropriate response.
Tzeng argues that until AI can accurately detect users鈥� emotions, Klein鈥檚 approach will fail. Apologies are much cheaper and easier to implement, Tzeng says. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to understand how people really feel. Software designers just have to develop the attitude that the user is always right.鈥�
