IT in Short Focus: ClippyFluency with Information Technology

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 1

Katherine Deibel

INFO100 and CSE100

Katherine Deibel

The Office Assistant

Animated help tool in Microsoft Office 97-2003

Despised by the public

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 2

Microsoft Word Feature Glut Word had many many features

Letter wizard

Cross-referencing

Etc. Difficult for users to discover and learn

the features that could best help them

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 3

Original Idea: Lumiere

Bayesian model (AI technique) Agent tracks user’s goals Offer advice when user appears stuck Taper off advice as user stops showing

interest in new features Prevent frustrating the user

Accepts that every user may not want to become a complete power user of Word

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 4

It worked but…

Lumiere’s software took up a large percentage of the Office memory and storage space requirements

Caused Office to run a bit slowly

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 5

Marketing’s Lobotomy

Lumiere’s intelligence was stripped They kept the task detection software

Removed the code for tracking the learner’s progress and avoiding annoyance

Result: Unhappy customers

Clippy removed from Office 2007

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 6

Impact on Intelligent Agents

Negative opinion of intelligent helper agents like Clippy Furthered by automated hotlines with

poor speech recognition Lumiere as it was would run fine on

computers today It won’t be implemented into future

Office versions

Consumer response would be negative

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 7

Perhaps the Tide is Turning

Clippy was over 4+ years ago New smart agents are around Apple iPhone’s Siri

Very popular

Not animated but is treated as a person Siri-type clones likely to become more

plentiful in the near future

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 8

Next time on IT in Short Focus

WednesdayA short history of famous HTML tags

FridaySiri and Google Search: AI gone political

2012-01-13 Katherine Deibel, Fluency in Information Technology 9