SOCIALIZING CONSISTENCY - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 355

C HAPTER 17

SOCIALIZING CONSISTENCY

From Technical Homogeneity to Human Epitome

C LIFFORD N ASS , L EILA T AKAYAMA , AND S COTT B RAVE

Abstract: Consistency is a major issue in user interface design. Although graphical user inter-
faces have benefited tremendously from a focus on the cognitive aspects of consistency, advances
in computer technologies now allow for more socially demanding interfaces incorporating more
realistic artificial intelligence agents and new modes of interaction (e.g., voice). This chapter
demonstrates that as interfaces become more social, social consistency becomes as important as
the more traditional cognitive consistency. This chapter presents experimental studies of human-
computer interaction that are theoretically grounded in social psychology and the computers are
social actors (CASA) paradigm. Each study is used to inform design guidelines for social consis-
tency and to open new areas of research on social responses to computers in important areas such
as personality, gender, ethnicity, emotion, and the use of “I.”

Keywords: Consistency, Social Consistency, Computers Are Social Actors (CASA)

INTRODUCTION

User interface designers are notorious for answering every question with the answer, “It depends.”
The dependencies include characteristics of the users (e.g., novice vs. expert, frequent vs. infrequent,
heterogeneity, physical disabilities), the task (e.g., complexity, business vs. entertainment, length of
time required, production vs. distribution vs. consumption), and the input and output modalities
(e.g., text, pictures, voices, haptics, gestures, output only), among others. Furthermore, virtually every
issue elicits debates within the design community, with designers pointing to conflicting research,
judgments, anecdotes, and rules of thumb. Consumers of design can well ask the question, “Isn't
there anything that you can all agree on?”
Miraculously, there is one point of consensus among designers: Consistency is king. Open a topic
on interface design and you will almost certainly land on a page that either explicitly or implicitly
argues for consistency both within an application and across applications. Most producers of oper-
ating systems and platforms provide formal descriptions that describe standards for everything from
menu structure to sizes of icons to color schemes. Trust in standardization is so powerful that many
of the tools produced to build applications for PCs, the Web, and voice user interfaces automatically
ensure that their design guidelines are followed. Attempts to deviate from these guidelines in the
name of “creativity” are derided as “showing-off.”
Why is consistency such a laudable goal? While humor is based on incongruity (e.g., Morkes
et al., 2000; Raskin, 1985) and magicians are admired for violating the laws of physics, there is

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