We’ve spent decades trying to create functional, usable interactive devices. Can we make them emotionally appealing, too, without sacrificing what we’ve already achieved? Alas, personality is easily confused with attitude. The attributes I’m looking for in any interactive device – from phones to DVD players – are helpful and knowledgable. This was R2D2′s strength. 3CP0 was less appealing because he was a worry-wart who needed constant protection. Yet 3CP0 had a much stronger personality than R2D2.

I think the next phase of our quest will be focused on bringing certain behavioural attributes forward so that our devices provide us with pleasant surprises along our voyage of discovery. I’m not convinced “personality” will play as large a part as many think.

But as usual, Cennydd, you’ve sparked an important conversation. Many thanks!

But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Data from Star Trek as an excellent example of technology displaying personality through behavior. He displays traits like curiosity, loyalty, striving… all without being capable of emotion. Granted, he’s as anthropomorphic as you can get, but his personality comes through via hia behaviors moreso than any other way. I think it would be an achievable task for designers to think of appropriate traits for a system and design functionality to express them.

To me, when you combinethis thought with some thing as personalized as a handset, then the idea of personality plug-ins becomes at least imaginable. Which is kind of terrifying if you’ve read The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy. No one wants a future in which Sirius Cybernetics exists.

The response was:

“ok if I order one for work can I get the face deleted , it really doesnt need a face does it , its an industrial machine , a pallet jack with a computer, come on , I dont work in a Toy Story cartoon or something.”

I disagree. The face is THE most natural and intuitive interface you can imagine. By harnessing you automatic and immediate reactions to the humanlooking face, we can design tech that is best suited for us. Make it more analoge and intuitive. For example, I’m glad that I’m not punching commandlines into DOS right now!

By adding personallity you can increase you anthropomorphic response (Kim & Hinds, 2006) and thereby possibly increase acceptance of the autonomous technology, by triggering our psychological models of humans.

We can of cause react negatively to this increased “humanlikeness” but these responses can be mediated by design and increased experience with robots.

My psychology-thesis was an investigation of the above mentioned negative reactions. A short presentation and abstract can be found on: http://www.robotspodcast.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=747

There is also a interesting discussion about our reactions to increased humanlikeness over on: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2009/12/face-detection.html which I can recommend.

Kind regards

Johan Eklund

Technology with personality, as you state, is polarizing. There are a few key things at work discouraging the majority of people from accepting this type of interaction. There’s the ‘this is creepy’ factor (see: my mom’s response to Facebook’s “intelligence”), there’s the ‘meh.. lame’ response (see: anyone who isn’t at least a wee bit impressed with the iPhone), and then there’s the varying levels of humanity that people already express toward animate objects (see: animal abuse). All these things come together and play an interesting part in this debate.

Personally, I would love to see a little more personality in the things I use. I also fully agree with your list of essential guidelines. I might add one more: the personality should be intrinsically positive and helpful. No need for a misbehaving, sassy little gadget; I already own several of those.

Thanks again.