Personality of Your Gadget

In the January edition of Scientific America, David Pogue wrote an interesting article detailing why we prefer a personality in our gadget. Limiting much of the psycho-babble analysis, he made a rather simple yet not so obvious observation about the idea behind having a personality to your gadget. In his article he mentions that

Siri is a breakthrough in voice control, sure, but she’s also a breakthrough in computerized personality. The question is: Do we want our gadgets to have personality?

Until Siri came along, Apple’s software has always avoided personal pronouns such as “I” and “you.” The result: some awkward passive-voice snarls like “The document could not be opened because it could not be found.”

He is right when he says, deep down— most people know that our computers are not really engaging us – mere response of the code written by a programmer.

However, he then explains the point as to why we should care if the gadgets we use are personable. This is where he makes his brilliant deduction. Most technical writings I have read till date, describe experience as supposed to observations.

The genius of Siri’s “personality,” is that she doesn’t care if you say, Will it rain? or Will I need an umbrella? or What’s the forecast? She is programmed to understand any wording. This time the payoff is more than user-friendliness; its happiness. When Siri does what you want, the first time, when you haven’t read any instructions or followed any rules, you feel a surge of pride at your instantaneous mastery.

He concludes the article by saying that human psychology is a funny thing – citing an example of watching a magic show, “we’re delighted even when we know it’s all a trick.”