“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We are just leaving JFK Airport and we will arrive at Hong Kong International Airport at 10.30 am HKT. The weather is clear and we are looking forward upon a decent flight. We hop that you will enjoy it!”

You lean yourself back in the nice chair but suddenly you get an idea. How fun it would be to have a peek into the cockpit and see the pilot in action? You walk forward, to the cockpit and look through the little window in the cockpit door.

What?! The chairs are empty. There are no pilots in the cockpit! One of the flight attendants tells you with a calm voice that the pilots are not there. They are working from home today, maneuvering the airplane with their smartphones.

This is not a real-world scenario (yet) but it could be. Modern technology makes it possible for an airplane to take-off, fly and land without a pilot in the cockpit.

But, would you trust the technology? Would you see the smartphone as credible enough? Most people answer no to this question. They would rather prefer that a pilot would fly the airplane than, literally speaking, give their lifes into the digital hands of a computer.

When it comes to credibility, computers are left behind.

Today, computers are not only seen in airplanes but in almost everything we interact with. We take up our smartphones to do banking. We keep in touch with our friends on social networks. We check the weather without waiting for the forecast on the evening news. And, we use it to change out behaviors.

What has been known fora long time in psychology is also true for Human-Computer Interaction. One of the most important persuasive factors of humans, as well as computers, is credibility. Like we have seen in the mentioned story, computers are not always seen as credible enough. So what makes a computer credible?

According to research by the emperor of captology, BJ Fogg, a credible computer needs to consist two equally important factors. Trustworthiness and expertise. If the techoogy lacks any of these two, we won’t trust it and therefore not use it. When we are doing banking on our smartphones, we trust the system and believe it to be created by experts in banking and technology. Or, when you use the smartphone app for Blended Treatment, you can trust the technology to be safe and the methods to be developed by experts.

Reference: Fogg, B., & Hsiang, T. (1999). The Elements of Computer Credibility. CHI ’99, 80–87.

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