Computers are social actors

Abstract

This paper presents a new experimental paradigm for the study of human-computer interaction.Five experiments provide evidence that individuals' interactions with computem are fundamentally social. The studies show that social responses to computers are not the result of conscious beliefs that computers are human or human-like. Moreover, such behaviors do not result from users' ignorance or from psychological or social dysfunctions, nor from a belief that subjects are interacting with programmers.Rather, social responses to computers are commonplace and easy to generate. The results reported here present numerous and unprecedented hypotheses, unexpected implications for design, new approaches to usability testing, and direct methods for verifkation.The design of richly informative interfaces would benefit from an account of how visual forms convey information.In this paper we suggest that the study of form-giving in Industrial Engineering might provide a foundation for such an account. We present three studies of designed synesthesia, in which objects' forms indicate non-visible attributes such as taste or smell. These studies illustrate the rich possibilities for conveying information with form, possibilities which are routinely exploited in industrial design. We believe that similax opportunities exist for interface design, and that further studies of form-giving may help in taking advantage of them. Results of a student exercise expressing computer metaphors in 3D forms will be discussed.204

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