Developers added in several new characters as well: Scribble the cat, William Shakespeare, and-of course-the now-iconic Clippy the paper clip.Ĭlippy (given name: Clippit) was designed by illustrator Kevan Atteberry, who contributed more than 15 of about 250 potential characters for the new Office Assistants. Their code was translated to the Windows 97 version of Microsoft Office in an attempt to make the increasingly feature-heavy program easier to use. It was quickly eclipsed by Windows 95, released just seven months later, and discontinued by 1996.īut the assistants-or “Friends of Bob,” as they’d been called-lived on. Tech journalists tore it apart, deriding it for infantilizing new computer users. But despite the hype, the program tanked. Tries to be your best friend”) other options included a rat named Scuzz (“Couldn’t care less about you. The default character was a cheerful yellow dog named Rover (“Easy to work with, friendly, helpful. There was no manual provided all learning happened within the program. Microsoft Bob and its suite of animated assistants was released in 1995. He said, ‘Save all the money on the manuals, and just give me this duck to always be there and tell me what to do.’”Īnd the man got his wish. “'This guy was very emotional about it,” Fries recalled in a 1995 interview. During a test session with new PC users, she introduced a prototype cartoon duck that walked participants through the software. Microsoft program manager Karen Fries, one of the project’s strongest proponents, had already observed the enthusiasm these digital guides could inspire. Ostensibly, these would more concretely embody the the humanity users were already instinctively assigning to their computers. To capitalize on these findings, Microsoft Bob’s developers decided to add anthropomorphic “assistants” to guide users through the program. Users who delivered their review on a different computer were more truthful (and therefore more critical)-essentially replicating the level of “politeness” used when evaluating a person to their face, rather than to a peer. As further tests would reveal, evaluations of a computer’s performance were significantly more positive when people completed them on the machine that was actually running the program. In the early 1990s, the pair developed a theory: People unconsciously respond to computers as if they are human. To navigate between different applications, users clicked on familiar household objects: a pencil and paper for word processing, an envelope for email, or a checkbook for electronic payments.ĭespite its down-home name, Microsoft Bob had been designed to reflect cutting-edge social science research conducted by Stanford professors Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves (who were eventually hired as consultants for the nascent program). Instead of the menu- and text-heavy interfaces that had come before, the program transformed the desktop into the virtual interior of a home. Personally launched by Bill Gates in 1995, Microsoft Bob was supposed to revolutionize home computing by making software friendlier for first-time users. Before there was Clippy, there was Microsoft Bob.
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