SOCIALIZING CONSISTENCY - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 356

significant evidence that the human brain is built to expect consistency and process it more readily
than inconsistency (Abelson et al., 1968; Gong, 2000). In a classic study (Stroop, 1935), people
were shown a word on a screen and asked to say the color of the ink in which the word was written.
People took much longer identifying red ink and saying “red” when the word on the screen was
“blue” as opposed to an arbitrary word, such as “ball” or “chair.” The inconsistent color word
seemed to interfere with the processing of the ink color, an effect known as the “Stroop effect”
(Stroop, 1935).
In addition to making information easier to process, another benefit of consistency is transfer-
ability of learning. If computer applications A and B both use the leftmost menu item for saving and
printing, a user can leverage the learning of application A and immediately apply it to application B.
This is a key reason why tools associated with most operating systems or platforms enforce a set of
interface guidelines: They ensure transferability of knowledge across applications. All standard-
ization strategies reflect pre processing, the structuring of information to facilitate subsequent pro-
cessing (Beniger, 1986). Even within applications, transferability is important: One of the primary
reasons that interfaces moved away from modal behavior (the same command meaning different
things at different times) to modeless behavior (a given command had the same meaning at all times)
was to ensure consistency from one context to another.
Basic consistency is well understood in the domain of traditional graphical user interfaces
(GUIs), and any number of topics can help designers achieve consistency within and across their
applications. In recent years, however, many interfaces have started evolving in a new direction. The
ubiquitous presence of cell phones and the ever-growing desire for access to information anywhere,
anytime (including while driving) has led many to consider voice interaction as an effective and flex-
ible interface technique (Cohen et al., 2004; Kotelly, 2003; Nass and Brave, 2005). Whether getting
directions, checking e-mail, or browsing the Web, interacting with a computer might start looking
a lot more like talking and listening than pointing and clicking.
A related new trend is toward lifelike characters as the interface to information and services.
Many companies and researchers have recognized, for example, that customers and users would
often rather interact with a person than a machine: Virtual people may represent a reasonable sub-
stitute (Cassell et al., 2000; Isbister and Doyle, 2002; Ruttkay and Pelachaud, 2004). Lifelike char-
acters have been employed in e-learning applications (Massaro, 1998), on customer service Web
sites (www.finali.com), and as online news anchors (www.ananova.com). Both voice interfaces and
lifelike characters (and robots, as well) fall under a category called embodied agents (Cassell et al.,
2000) and bring with them a new design landscape.
Given the recognized importance of design consistency for users, how does consistency play out
in this new design space? The answer is social consistency . As soon as computers start sounding or
looking like people—and often even before then (Reeves and Nass, 1996)—social attributes and
norms come to the forefront. In many ways, consistency in the social arena is even more critical for
users than consistency in the more visual/mechanical arena of traditional interfaces (Nass et al.,
2004). Social consistency is fundamental not only for ease of processing and transferability of learn-
ing, but also because it has strong affective impacts on users, deriving from the importance of social
life for humans (Nass and Brave, 2005; Nass et al., 2004). To appreciate the power of the social
aspects of embodied interfaces, one need only consider the raw frustration and anger that emerges
when a lifelike paper-clip character—breaking a host of social norms—incessantly interrupts your
work with completely useless information.
This chapter presents a number of research studies that focus on issues of social consistency in
embodied interfaces. It considers consistency of personality, gender, emotion, ethnicity, and ontology