Not just a pretty (inter)face: A critical analysis of Microsoft's 'Ms. Dewey'

Anthropomorphized design;Virtual agents;Search engines;Human-computer interaction;Feminist informatics;Microsoft;Ms. Dewey;Social informatics;Race and technology

Sweeney, Miriam

关键词: Anthropomorphized design;    Virtual agents;    Search engines;    Human-computer interaction;    Feminist informatics;    Microsoft;    Ms. Dewey;    Social informatics;    Race and technology;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/46617/Miriam_Sweeney.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Increasingly anthropomorphism is used as a design strategy in computing interfaces tomake them more accessible and intuitive to users. Technologies are never neutral, and alwaysconsist of a complex arrangement of technical, social, and cultural (ideological) aspects.Computing interfaces designed to have the characteristics of people raise ethical questions aboutwhat it means to explicitly gender and racialize technologies. This project explores thesebroader questions through a case study of Microsoft's former search engine interface, "Ms.Dewey." The titular character featured in the interface was anthropomorphized as a sexylibrarian virtual agent who performs search results in response to user queries. I explore how theMs. Dewey search engine is gendered and racialized and, ultimately, how Ms. Dewey revealsspecific assumptions about gender, race, and technology in the search engine. I conduct aninterface analysis that investigates the semiotic and material aspects of the interface in terms oftechnological and cultural affordances, finding that gender and race function as crucialinfrastructural elements that frame the search process and results as more explicitly ideologicalrather than instrumental. This research contributes to understanding the broader implications ofanthropomorphization as a design strategy, blending concerns of technology design and culturalbeliefs about gender and race.