atw: Re: Writing IS Programming!!
- From: Stuart Burnfield <sburnf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 09:51:35 +0800
There was a book called The Media Equation that covered this
territory. There was a lot of discussion about it on usability and
TW lists at the time. I haven't read it but it sounds fascinating.
"According to popular wisdom, humans never relate to a computer
or a television program in the same way they relate to another
human being. Or do they? In an extraordinary revision of
received wisdom, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass demonstrate
convincingly in The Media Equation that interactions with
computers, television, and new communication technologies are
identical to real social relationships and to the navigation
of real physical spaces.
Authors Reeves and Nass present the results of numerous
psychological studies that led them to the conclusion that
people treat computers, television and new media as real
people and places. Their studies show that people are polite
to computers; that they treat computers with female voices
differently than male-voiced computers; that large faces on
a screen can invade a person's body space; and that motion
on a screen affects physical responses in the same way that
real-life motion does."
Christine B-K said:
> Catering for emotion doesn't mean writing emotionally.
> It means understanding the emotional responses of the
> reader to the way we write, the way we organise our
> materials, and the way we present them.
Yes! Error messages are a good example. They can have a
particular 'tone', such as "stern schoolmaster", "dull robot",
"snooty butler", "cringing flunky", and so on. People respond to
this tone, even if they're not aware that they're doing so. If we're
writing error messages or troubleshooting topics we need to be
aware that this is happening.
For a good article on this, see "'Polite, Personable' Error Messages"
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/9801-errormessages.html
> It is our job to make the reader feel good. Isn't it?
I'd say it's our job to make the reader successful.
---
Stuart Burnfield
Information Developer
Australian Programming Centre
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