Far from revolutionising human-computer interaction as hoped, Microsoft Bob (Microsoft, 1995), and its infamous descendants^{[1] 1.} Microsoft’s Utopia project envisaged a revolution in human-computer interaction as profound as the GUI or Desktop metaphor (McCracken, 2010), by a ‘natural’ relation to computers via anthropomorphic character interfaces and “real world” settings/objects (Fries et. al, 1997). Despite Bob’s (Microsoft, 1995) poor reception, Bob’s Guides were transposed directly into Microsoft Office 97 (1997) as the Office Assistant, requiring substantial technical prowess to make the same Bob code appear within Office (McCracken, 2009). The 2nd generation of the project, Microsoft Agent, was released to 3rd party developers to create Agent-based application interfaces, and was used in Windows XP (2001) and Office 2003 (2003).But Agent support was removed from Windows 7 (Microsoft, 2009), and the platform discontinued ('Microsoft Support', 2012). , Office Assistants (Microsoft, 1997; 2003), are continually rated among the 'worst tech products of all time' (PCWorld, 2006; Time Magazine, 2010). Consumers rejected these software interfaces depicting 'familiar' settings like home-office rooms and interactions mediated via semi-autonomous cartoon characters (embodied software agents)^{[2] 2.}Software agents have a level of autonomy to carry out processing and decisionmaking which is adaptive to the current environment. They carry out goal-directed behaviour, as assigned by a user or program to perform on their behalf, and make their own decisions about when and how to carry out the assigned tasks. Embodied agents, also called Interface Agents, are depicted as an anthropomorphic (‘embodied’) character. , that Microsoft had assumed would 'naturalise' – make familiar, intuitive and accepted – using their software to perform instrumental tasks like wordprocessing or searching.

Bob and Office Assistants' failure can partially be blamed on having "patronising" (Van Ittersum, 2008) interfaces, unlikeable characters and problematic interactions. But more problematically, instead of naturalising interfaces and mediation, such embodied-agent and spatial-workroom metaphors became liabilities as taken further, early on continuums toward 'realistic' simulation. Such interface paradigms of virtual spatial workplaces also became obsolete generally, and users' expectations in certain task domains perhaps do not correspond with embodied software agents anyway.

Bob occurs in Home Shell: a virtual room with furniture, and objects representing the applications, and more rooms accessible by 'doors'. Bob's applications are visual replications of paper-based objects as wordprocessors, lists, spreadsheets etc. All applications are 'guided' by an embodied 'Assistant' cartoon-character who 'talks' in a speech-balloon constantly. Users' inputs occur via selecting options presented within these speech-balloons.

[Fig. 1]. Microsoft Bob's (1995) spatial room/location interface and embodied software Agent cartoon character.

Microsoft envisaged such "real world" (Fries et. al, 1997)^{[3] 3.}Fries et al. (1997) is the patent filed for Microsoft Bob. The developers themselves termed Bob and Assistants a "real world" and "natural"(McCracken, 2010) interface. Possibly the cartoon interface of Bob was implemented because that was the only feasible level of realism with current technical limitations, and the developers still assumed a trajectory toward even greater literal VR-simulation of a spatial office-room would always result in increasingly ‘better’ HCI (as was a common rhetoric of the time). interfaces providing a "natural"(McCracken, 2010) relation to computers. Despite probable assumptions that moving toward more accurate simulation of 'real' offices made interfaces increasingly more intuitive, their cartoon-like graphics suggest the 'real' here being sought^{[3] 3.}Fries et al. (1997) is the patent filed for Microsoft Bob. The developers themselves termed Bob and Assistants a "real world" and "natural"(McCracken, 2010) interface. Possibly the cartoon interface of Bob was implemented because that was the only feasible level of realism with current technical limitations, and the developers still assumed a trajectory toward even greater literal VR-simulation of a spatial office-room would always result in increasingly ‘better’ HCI (as was a common rhetoric of the time). was not accurate simulation, but increased immediacy (Bolter, 2001), where user-attention to interfaces declines. Replicating – or remediating (Bolter, 2001)–already-familiar metaphors like spatial workrooms, paper objects and cartoon-characters was assumed to naturalise attention away from the interface's mediation, and status as ('unfamiliar') computer-specific software (Fries et. al, 1997).

Presenting computer applications through spatial room/locations interfaces resembling 'real' offices was a common UI metaphor of the time – but one largely rejected. Consumers not only disliked Bob's inferior graphics and questionable virtual 'reality'^{[4] 4.}Bob’s objects could be moved anywhere, including floating in mid-‘air’. , but also the graphically-superior Packard Bell Navigator (Lineback, 2013)^{[5] 5.}Swartz (2003) notes Bob's interface was itself inspired by Packard Bell Navigator, but the remediation metaphor of the 'virtual spatial workroom containing office and paper objects' originated in the 1980s with interfaces like MagicDesk I (1983), whose primitive graphics could never be mistaken for attempted 'realism' and are clearly illustrations to help cue usage. .

[Fig. 2]. Packard Bell Navigator 3.5's (1995) spatial workroom had more 'realism' in its graphics.

Why were virtual work-rooms rejected? Bolter (2001) understood digital media interfaces through the logics of remediation, which may verify (hypermediacy) or efface (immediacy) the interface and mediation, and replicates older mediums inside it, often portrayed as analogous to older mediums, but better. Greater immediacy is frequently offered as 'improvement' over older mediums (Bolter, 2001, pp. 59-62). For example, Bob's 'natural' HCI was claimed more familiar and superior to traditional GUIs (Trower, 2010).

But unlike, say, wordprocessors remediating typewriters but better, 'Home' shells are unambiguously inferior to reality houses –and arguably traditional GUIs. Although remediating 'familiar' objects does help cue usage (Kuhn, 1996), virtual-building-based work interfaces generally were hampered by redundancies and limitations imposed by simulating pre-computer 'reality'. Since people are experts about real homes and offices, which computer logics cannot effectively remediate, when office/room analogies move toward simulation they seem extremely lacking, and are constrained by expectations of working like working like 'reality'^{[6] 6.}Of course virtual spatial-world interfaces survived for videogames and social environments, but Chao (2001), claims this is because their abstractions are already reductive and alien to users. For example, Chao (2001) designed a modification of the Doom game engine for sysadmins to perform the instrumental task of administrating operating system processes, but this was feasible because both operating system processes and the Doom game world are already abstract, and game worlds are not 'supposed' to be representations of our mundane reality. Game objects/interfaces may remediate other known media or objects, to cue their uses/interpretation, but the transposition is understood not to be literal. (Chao, 2001), rather than exploiting specificities of computer technologies. MagicCap's PDA^{[7] 7.}Portable Digital Assistant. A device somewhat analogous to a modern smartphone used for portable work and communication i.e. productive, work-related activities not tied to specific locations. GUI (General Magic, 1994) illustrated these redundancies and limitations. Users must redundantly travel through fixed-plan 'buildings' connected by 'doors' just to get something or do different tasks/applications in other rooms or buildings, even carrying an inventory. Tasks were still direct remediations of paper objects. Computer/database specific functions (e.g. search), unable to be integrated into main interfaces, were accessed under a literal 'magic lamp'. Further taxing spatial workrooms' viability, databases – that Manovich (2002, p. 94; pp. 194-195) credits as the cultural and symbolic form privileged by digital media and the digital age – lacked direct analogues from paper-based offices to remediate. Convoluted patents (Merrick, 1998) resorted to embodied 'Data Machine' objects appearing in these virtual work-rooms, analogous to media player appliances – including in "predicted" (Merrick, 1998) true-VR virtual offices.

[Fig. 3]. MagicCap's (1994) PDA spatial room/location interface remediated objects and concepts from the physical world. For example, storage on the hard disk/memory card is here depicted as a literal storeroom.

Instead, interfaces to/from databases were ultimately returned via webpages and apps (Helmond, 2013)^{[8] 8.}The Web and subsequent web apps exacerbated the use and impact of databases on ordinary computer users. Helmond (2013) describes how from Web 2.0 onward, hyperlinks themselves are increasingly a call to a database, not a static webpage. . Spatial-workroom interfaces were further challenged by the Web, which instead became a frequent interface for users, and subverted intuitive mappings to fixed-spatial geography metaphors. Two way hyperlinks are not trackable, there is no sense of spatial travel between between nodes^{[9] 9.}The Web, and its underlying network model, makes physical space between nodes (such as webpages or files) conceptually and functionally irrelevant. The physical ‘length’ of connections between directly linked nodes is effectively zero, regardless of where the objects might be geographically located – Castells’ (2001) ‘space of flows’. “There is no space in Cyberspace” (Manovich, 2002, p. 219). Documents are visited directly, not used ‘inside a virtual world’ and web technology logics support embedding media objects in containers within webpages. , and every website is linked, not separate 'places' like pre-Web BBSs. And since former dichotomies between specific times and places for home/leisure/work further broke down (Levinson, 1999, pp. 132-139), siting specific tasks inside metaphoric 'homes' or 'offices' was further obsoleted.

Computers themselves became a platform for all activities, including work, where instrumental use of computers is desired. Shneiderman (2005) claims interface functions should feel 'invisible' as naturalised tools while used (the opposite of these Assistant Agents). Victor (2006) even advocates limiting agency and interactivity so users better understand all more-limited functions available.

But with a diverse range of desired uses and users of the computer-platform, crippling applications is often inappropriate. Bob and Assistants similarly did not assume diverse ranges of users and uses: the patronising Assistants were on by default and did not adapt to individual users. Although critics of tool-like 'software appliances' claim users instead desire experiences(Bolter, 2003, pp. 104-112), users also disliked the experience of Assistants (Serenko et. al., 2007)^{[10] 10.}Serenko’s (2007) study found averages of ‘perceived enjoyment’, ‘perceived usefulness’ and ‘intention to use’ toward Assistants among users were all “very low”. .

Coleman (2011, pp. 28-31) claimed character-interfaces failed generally because their behaviours were not adequately humanlike. But Microsoft remediated non-human cartoon-characters^{[11] 11.}Serenko’s (2007) research found users did associate Assistants’ cartoon-characters with animated movies, thus suggesting this remediation of cartoons was ‘successful’ in the sense people drew such association of ‘familiarity’. (He did not study comics.) He further found also enjoying animated films correlated with being more accepting of Assistants, although noted that overall perceived enjoyment and usefulness of Assistants was still "very low". deliberately (Seaward, 1998), since people accept greater deviations by those characters. People respond favourably to cartoon and simplistic characters in other contexts, e.g. nurturing subordinates (Turkle, 2008, pp. 132-134).

Non-humanlikeness alone cannot explain Assistants' rejection. Do most people want 'assistance' from agent-characters in such situations at all? A software agent is not user-agency. And unlike human secretaries doing unwanted tasks delegated to them, many agents are there because users do not know how to accomplish desired tasks themselves, or are not permitted to.

Swartz (2003) identified two main problems with Assistants. They were status-lowering, by reminding beginners how much they did not know and insinuating advanced users needed assistance. And they were distracting – even users who liked them did because the animations amused them when they were bored working.

Assistants did not behave like instrumental 'tools', or subordinates, but exerted their own agency, subordinating users. The cartoons being remediated (Pugh, 2012)^{[12] 12.}Pugh (2012) decides comics and cartoons are already hypermediated forms. Pugh (2012) also observes Disney animated films remediated other artistic traditions depicting ‘nature’, not actual ‘nature’. This supports the notion an interface featuring anthropomorphic cartoon characters cannot be considered a “real world” interface as Microsoft’s patents claimed, and the ‘real’ being sought was thus an more immediate relation to the interface, with less attention to its mediation, and status as computer software. do not have such repercussions to viewers of characters' actions. Bolter (2001, p.27) observes software usually effaces its own programming decisions from users. Instead, this interface's removal of user-control was believed to be 'justified' and made acceptable to users – naturalised – by personifying it as 'autonomous' actors. Users never have complete control of applications/interfaces, but ironically, this personification exacerbated attention toward such non-control, and the interface itself – rupturing attempted immediacy into unintended hypermediacy (Bolter, 2001). Remediating embodied characters merely naturalised obvious targets for users' attention and negativity.

This may partially explain why recently favoured 'invisible'^{[13] 13.}'Invisible' in the sense of not having a visible body, or even a persona at all. Voice-only Siri (Apple, 2011) may remediate the better-naturalised 'absent body' like a remote assistant (Dinnen, 2012), other software agents are not personified. agents (e.g. Siri (Apple, 2011), Googlebot (Google, 1998)) are better accepted by users, but these are criticised as not presenting accurate or enough information for users to make their own decisions (Bolter, 2003, pp. 52-55)– users may take non-embodied agents' 'decisions' for granted, even when not understanding, predicting, controlling, or even noticing agents' actions (Shneiderman, 1997). Despite visible failures of cartoon Agents, influences of better-naturalised 'invisible' agents receive less direct attention. When not anthropomorphised they are not perceived 'Agents' but just 'information'.

Interface metaphors influence users' conceptualisations of technologies (Manovich, 2001). Software agents' processing does not really bear analogy to anthropomorphic characters/actors. This metaphor is also remediation to naturalise and justify embodying software agents' actions/'decisions' outside users' direct control, and when poorly executed it was not accepted. Bolter (2003, pp. 88-89) observes that as 'new' media/technologies become normalised, direct remediations decline. Both character-agent and spatial office-room metaphors broke down as taken further, so have since been abstracted away from physical embodiment^{[14] 14.}As well as Apple's voice-only Siri (2011), Microsoft's Cortana (2014) assistant's only visuals are a very-abstracted circle animation (Warren, 2014). . But 'invisible' agents have not resolved the question of when it is appropriate – or inappropriate – to delegate user-control to agents, or other metaphors, at all.

 

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 FOOTNOTES

^[1] Microsoft’s Utopia project envisaged a revolution in human-computer interaction as profound as the GUI or Desktop metaphor (McCracken, 2010), by a ‘natural’ relation to computers via anthropomorphic character interfaces and “real world” settings/objects (Fries et. al, 1997). Despite Bob’s (Microsoft, 1995) poor reception, Bob’s Guides were transposed directly into Microsoft Office 97 (1997) as the Office Assistant, requiring substantial technical prowess to make the same Bob code appear within Office (McCracken, 2009). The 2nd generation of the project, Microsoft Agent, was released to 3rd party developers to create Agent-based application interfaces, and was used in Windows XP (2001) and Office 2003 (2003).But Agent support was removed from Windows 7 (Microsoft, 2009), and the platform discontinued ('Microsoft Support', 2012).

^[2]Software agents have a level of autonomy to carry out processing and decisionmaking which is adaptive to the current environment. They carry out goal-directed behaviour, as assigned by a user or program to perform on their behalf, and make their own decisions about when and how to carry out the assigned tasks. Embodied agents, also called Interface Agents, are depicted as an anthropomorphic (‘embodied’) character.

^[3]Fries et al. (1997) is the patent filed for Microsoft Bob. The developers themselves termed Bob and Assistants a "real world" and "natural"(McCracken, 2010) interface. Possibly the cartoon interface of Bob was implemented because that was the only feasible level of realism with current technical limitations, and the developers still assumed a trajectory toward even greater literal VR-simulation of a spatial office-room would always result in increasingly ‘better’ HCI (as was a common rhetoric of the time).

^[4]Bob’s objects could be moved anywhere, including floating in mid-‘air’.

^[5]Swartz (2003) notes Bob's interface was itself inspired by Packard Bell Navigator, but the remediation metaphor of the 'virtual spatial workroom containing office and paper objects' originated in the 1980s with interfaces like MagicDesk I (1983), whose primitive graphics could never be mistaken for attempted 'realism' and are clearly illustrations to help cue usage.

^[6]Of course virtual spatial-world interfaces survived for videogames and social environments, but Chao (2001), claims this is because their abstractions are already reductive and alien to users. For example, Chao (2001) designed a modification of the Doom game engine for sysadmins to perform the instrumental task of administrating operating system processes, but this was feasible because both operating system processes and the Doom game world are already abstract, and game worlds are not 'supposed' to be representations of our mundane reality. Game objects/interfaces may remediate other known media or objects, to cue their uses/interpretation, but the transposition is understood not to be literal.

^[7]Portable Digital Assistant. A device somewhat analogous to a modern smartphone used for portable work and communication i.e. productive, work-related activities not tied to specific locations.

^[8]The Web and subsequent web apps exacerbated the use and impact of databases on ordinary computer users. Helmond (2013) describes how from Web 2.0 onward, hyperlinks themselves are increasingly a call to a database, not a static webpage.

^[9]The Web, and its underlying network model, makes physical space between nodes (such as webpages or files) conceptually and functionally irrelevant. The physical ‘length’ of connections between directly linked nodes is effectively zero, regardless of where the objects might be geographically located – Castells’ (2001) ‘space of flows’. “There is no space in Cyberspace” (Manovich, 2002, p. 219). Documents are visited directly, not used ‘inside a virtual world’ and web technology logics support embedding media objects in containers within webpages.

^[10]Serenko’s (2007) study found averages of ‘perceived enjoyment’, ‘perceived usefulness’ and ‘intention to use’ toward Assistants among users were all “very low”.

^[11]Serenko’s (2007) research found users did associate Assistants’ cartoon-characters with animated movies, thus suggesting this remediation of cartoons was ‘successful’ in the sense people drew such association of ‘familiarity’. (He did not study comics.) He further found also enjoying animated films correlated with being more accepting of Assistants, although noted that overall perceived enjoyment and usefulness of Assistants was still "very low".

^[12]Pugh (2012) decides comics and cartoons are already hypermediated forms. Pugh (2012) also observes Disney animated films remediated other artistic traditions depicting ‘nature’, not actual ‘nature’. This supports the notion an interface featuring anthropomorphic cartoon characters cannot be considered a “real world” interface as Microsoft’s patents claimed, and the ‘real’ being sought was thus an more immediate relation to the interface, with less attention to its mediation, and status as computer software.

^[13]'Invisible' in the sense of not having a visible body, or even a persona at all. Voice-only Siri (Apple, 2011) may remediate the better-naturalised 'absent body' like a remote assistant (Dinnen, 2012), other software agents are not personified.

^[14]As well as Apple's voice-only Siri (2011), Microsoft's Cortana (2014) assistant's only visuals are a very-abstracted circle animation (Warren, 2014).