The alleged breakthrough in Bob is “social computing,” a term coined by two Stanford communications professors. Its goal is getting people to “use the same social rules for interactions with a computer as for interactions with another person.” But Microsoft says it didn’t want humanoid figures in Bob-it feared users would somehow assume these were as smart as people, and ask them questions they couldn’t answer. So instead, users of Bob submit to the wisdom of talking dogs, dinosaurs, worms and turtles. Thus will technophobia vanish from the earth. No manuals will accompany Bob – just cartoon figures. We will cling to them like Linus’s security blanket. They will call us by our names, and remember our birthdays. And by beeping congratulations with every successful click of our mouse. they will raise our technological self-esteem .
Finally, a program for Forrest Gump.
Microsoft has some things right here. Computers are indeed too hard to use, and current interfaces are antisocial. Bob lets you avoid the complicated Windows program manager by presenting a series of customizable household rooms im which you can launch not only Bob’s eight applications (including an address book. calendar, list manager and financial adviser) but all your Windows and DOS programs, too. As you get to know Bob, your chosen guide, or “Friend of Bob,” informs vou of options and slips you relevant tips. Each of the 13 guides is given a few traits that constitute a “personality” : some, like Scuzz the rat, have what its designers consider an attitude laced with MTV edginess. He’s armed with a can of spray paint.
The approach is hardly unique. Much livelier animated characters guide the user in the preschool software that my 4-year-old son is fond of. But 4-year-olds aren’t the intended audience for Bob. It’s those who write checks, balance the household budget and build retirement portfolios: adult-type people, more attuned to C-Span than the Cartoon Network. Microsoft’s spokespeople insist that even office spreadsheet gurus want to have fun with home computers, and they’ll bond with these characters. But fun-seekers can choose from thousands of games, none of which relate to adults on the puerile level of Bob’s little bunnies and bugs. (The single game included in Bob is a joyless geography quiz.) Besides, the program involves serious tasks like getting advice on mortgages and insurance. Do people really want the equivalent of Winnie the Pooh’s Guide to Annuities?
Bob’s ethos seems to suffer from the Dan Quayle Fallacy, an inability to distinguish between fictional constructs and real life. One Microsoft rep explained to me that people wouldn’t accept Bart Simpson, for instance, as a cyberspace helpmate. “They’d be afraid,” she said, adding that people would trust a more upstanding figure like Yogi Bear. That’s why the only guide authorized to work with Bob’s check-writing component is Lexi a bespectacled ledger book. Heaven forfend if Scuzz the rat gained access to the family till! So goes the weird, condescending logic of Bob.
Is it possible to make computers so easy to use that novices can painlessly gain mastery? Ease of use hit a high point a decade ago with the introduction of the Macintosh, with its sleek desktop and applications that exploited its consistent interface. Windows semi-successfully adopted those techniques. But from that point, things didn’t get easier. Each year computers became more powerful. Applications keep adding features. In contrast, Bob’s components are stripped down for simplicity.) Whether you get a friend to train you, find a user group or spend hours squinting at a manual, you can’t master these things without time and effort. By and large, people accept the trade-off.
What drives users crazy is the needless difficulty of certain software constructed with blithe disregard for the humans who use it. The most notorious culprit is the combination of DOS and Windows. This is why Bob is going to really disapoint new computer users. Despite the program’s attempts to shield the user from the intricacies of the underlying operating system, problems keep popping up, disturbing the calm in Bob’s virtual sun rooms and attics. I discovered this when I tried to launch a CD-ROM game from within Bob. I received not Rover’s usual friendly dialogue box, but a Windows error message: “HOME caused a Page Fault on module WING.DLL at OOOB:6OA4.”
I wanted my good old guide Rover to explain this. But he just sat there, wagging his pixels, oblivious to the total breakdown of the social computing contract. Bad dog, bad!
What will computer virgins do when they have to handle similar messages? Probably, they’ll call up Microsoft and wait 20 minutes for a customer-support person to do what the Friends of Bob refuse to do: talk to them like a grown-up.
