Getting attached
According to a report in the Seattle Times yesterday, 21 out of 30 serious users of the Roomba vacuum-cleaning robot give their machine a name. More than half assign it a gender (male) and others have been known to dress it up.
What kind of human-machine relationship is going on here? The researchers behind the report believe "emotional design" is fundamental. But there has to be much more to it than that. I know a lot of people who have developed strong emotional attachments to probably the most popular recent icon of emotional design - Apple's iPod - but none of them has assigned their machine a name or a gender. (And let's face it, the Roomba, while not unattractive in a squashed espresso-maker sort of way, is no Galatea.)
So is it functional - is the machine simply so useful that it becomes an indispensable part of the family? I'd put the fridge at the top of the utility list, closely followed by the stove, et cetera, et cetera, and I've never been tempted to anthropomorphize over my kitchen machines. Even the computer - which can be on the receiving end of the other side of emotional attachment - only gets a name because the OS needs one.
Perhaps a simpler thing going on here is that the Roomba has become a virtual pet. Users project the same kind of feelings onto it as they do pets. It scoots around the floor, doing its business, content and unburdening in its own little world of floor navigation. You can put your feet up and watch it at play - and take comfort or solace from its unquestioning devotion as it cleans for you. (Imagine if it just sat in the middle of the room and sucked up a maelstrom of dust from the floor without moving. Impressive, but not emotional.)
This is a very different kind of response than to gadget-love. Mp3 players and cell phones tend to serve as fashion objects, showcases of their owners' pride in their tastes. The vacuum robot is a more homely, introverted object of affection, and the attachment seems to run much deeper. There's a lesson here for software design - especially those of us in artificial intelligence technologies - anthropomorphism isn't just for humans.
