The NagBot 3000: when technology is annoying
tl;dr — can annoying, humorous technology help change our behavior?
[I eHeart You]
Asha: So I guess it’s probably time we tell you about the research lab we work in huh?
Joselyn: Yeah, that would probably be good.
Asha and I are proud members of the eHeart Lab at CMU (check out our other awesome lab members). The lab is run by Professor Geoff Kaufman (hi Geoff!). Geoff has worked a ton of really interesting stuff related to game design, bias and storytelling — you can read his bio here and here’s one of my favorite papers of his on how you can change behavior through this concept of “experience taking”. He also owns over 1000 board games. Seriously, he’s a super thoughtful person/academic.
Asha: One of the things that drew me to the lab was this concept of “playful” interventions. In my past experience I had worked on some trainings that felt really heavy-handed. The idea of creating something that could positively impact human behavior, but that also comes across as fun/generative/realistic/non-threatening/subtle was really appealing to me.
[All hail Clocky, our morning overlord]
Joselyn: As part of our quest to develop humorous prototypes this semester, one violation that Asha and I started thinking about was this idea of “disobedient” technology. Essentially, we expect that technology is always subservient to humans. But what if technology could be sassy? What if it had some kind of power over us?
Asha: To be clear, we’re not huge fans of a potential robot uprising. We’re thinking about a really small modicum of control. However, this control dynamic should be something we think about (and you’ll see reflected in our questions for more exploration).
One example of how humans may already be engaging with disobedient technology is Clocky, an alarm clock developed by Garui Nanda, former graduate student at MIT Media Lab (and now CEO/Founder and “main snooze offender” of Nanda Home).
Clocky is an alarm clock that essentially runs away from you if snooze it (here’s a video of Clocky in action). According to the Nanda Home site, 40% of people ‘abuse’ the snooze. Their solution is to change the power dynamic — in some ways, the clock now has power over the human being. This is a violation of our expectations, which may be one reason why Clocky appears humorous to us.
[What do you get when you cross a mouse and water bottle?]
Joselyn: We created two prototypes that we’d consider to be “disobedient”. The first one is a water bottle which spits water at you if you don’t drink enough water. We love this concept for three reasons:
- It plays on a new type of humor — physical humor.
- It also plays on scarcity. If you don’t drink the water, it will deplete itself by being spat at you.
- We are seeing so many design classes/agencies obsess over the idea of getting people to drink more water, we consider this to be a mini-critique of that!
This concept also reminds us of the water fountain at Xerox Parc, which Mark Weiser, father of ubiquitous computing, rigged to change stream height depending on Xerox’s current stock price.
Watch our rough concept video below:
Asha: We’ve named our other prototype the “mischievous mouse”. This is a computer mouse which literally runs away from you when you’re not supposed to be using it (#WorkLifeBalance). You’ll also notice that in the video for this prototype we actually tried to present the technology in a humorous way (e.g. musical background — credit to Dee Yan-Key’s for our use of Lucky Day): Meet “mischievous mouse”:
Joselyn: Similar to our process with other prototypes, we solicited feedback during our design process. Here were some of the main takeaways:
Laughter. Everyone who watched these videos laughed at the interaction. Witnessing this kind of physical humor play out between a human and technology appears to provoke laughter. There are some significant health benefits linked to laughter, which we may cover in a subsequent post.
Generative nature of the prototype. As we’ve observed with other prototypes, participants could think of other behaviors and mechanisms for enforcement when given these examples (one participant suggested that running shoes could make an embarrassing sound if the person stopped running before they are supposed to).
Enthusiasm for others, but not themselves. Some participants enjoyed the concept but didn’t actually want the technology for themselves (e.g. for the mouse “what if you actually really did need to do something?”). The idea of flexibility when it comes to control was important.
Asha: An interesting note on the last point. As the receiver of the water bottle spray, I found myself laughing and smiling. But weirdly I think this was triggered by hearing other people laugh (we had to do a few takes because Joselyn and our water squirter could barely hold it together).
Joselyn: I was literally that laugh-cry emoji the entire shoot.
[Hold up, wait a minute]
Asha: Another major takeaway for us was that all participants agreed with the concept that technology could help humans adopt “good” or desired behaviors. But further questions abound for us around the prototypes themselves, as well as the process of evaluating these prototypes.
For the concept:
Is this type of intervention more effective than others (e.g. drink more water posters)?
How much control do humans feel comfortable ceding to technology in these contexts?
Can these humorous technologies help us critique our relationship with technology? (in a way, does the mouse example demonstrate how we are a slave to our computer?)
Are there specific behaviors/contexts where technological enforcement fails? (If I was actually working in an office, I probably couldn’t go to a meeting soaking wet from my water bottle)
Would simply seeing others’ interactions with this tech encourage us to follow the same behaviors? (If I saw someone else get sprayed with water, would I suddenly realize I need to drink water also?)
For evaluation:
How we evaluate the impact of these technologies is an emergent process
Is it a success if people mention this idea to friends or share a story about it later?
What if these humor technologies and interactions only appeal to a small portion of the population? Is it time to start designing specifically for niche tastes?
How to we evaluate the humor-level of the video? If laughter literate indicates that people are far more likely to laugh in groups of two or more that have affinity, how should we weight individual vs. personable group feedback?
One participant stated that the interaction “seems like a prank”. How successful is a prototype if participants enjoy it happening to others but not themselves?
How can we better understand the impact of the demonstration of the humor technology (e.g. the video, a live demo) vs. the humor technology’s impact?
Bits and Giggles is a design research series featuring conversations between Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction researchers Asha Toulmin and Joselyn McDonald.
