Exploring the Use of Humanizing Attributions in User Experience Design for Smart Environments

In everyday interaction with devices and technology, users tend to give human attributes to technology. They may react socially to technology as if it were a human or make guesses about its’ intentions, such as “the computer is plotting against me.” Smart environments, being highly ubiquitous and continuously evolving, incorporate characteristics and a new interaction paradigm that might actively trigger such humanizing attributions. Therefore, new approaches in design are required to accommodate the holistic user experience with smart environments, in ways which appreciate the human tendency to react to technology as it were human (i.e. anthropomorphism). The writers present an early research agenda for studying the phenomena related to anthropomorphism in smart environments. Based on a brief summary of background literature of anthropomorphism, smart environments and user experience, they propose few central research questions and problems how the phenomenon might affect the UX of smart environments.

The paper is written by Minna Kynsilehto and Thomas Olsson.