People Feel Loyalty To Computers

stoobthealien writes "According to BBC News researchers have discovered that people have loyalty to specific computers because of a tendancy to associate "human attributes to them" - and I thought it was just me that speaks to my PC...."

Comments

Loyalty to machines

[wkitchen]

If people can feel loyalty to something as unintelligent as an automobile, then it is not at all unexpected that they feel that way towards their computers.

People like sitting in the same place

[LostCluster]

In most college classrooms, professors don't particularly care to assign seats to anybody, yet students for the most part tend to seat themselves in more-or-less the same positions anyway. I wonder if this is related to want to have a favorite seat in the computer room.

More Information Is Required

[ZPO]

I don't think we have enough information to draw conclusions based on the article.

- Do the computers that folks were willing to wait for have additional applications loaded?

- Are they perhaps known to be the most stable ones out of a given set?

- Did different machines have different monitors, keyboards, and mice?

- Are they in a location that makes them more desireable (lighting, temperature, lack of people, etc)

There are plenty of factors that influence choices such as this. Unless they took steps to ensure that the computers were 100pct identical in every way, the conclusions they have reached are suspect. The extrapolations they make about people blindingly trusting computers even more so.

A computer is a tool. Just like an artisan may have a favorite tool for a task a user may have a favorite computer for a task. I don't see anything too earth-shattering here.

the world as they know it

[Alien54]

Prof Sundar said there computer manufacturers and advertisers could learn from the results of the study. In general, computers are marketed as things that can easily be phased out and replaced.

"A better advertising strategy might be to portray computers as something durable and reliable, something that grows with you," Prof Sundar told BBC News Online.

they can't do that. No, seriously.

This means that the industry would have to get off the treadmill of constant upgrades. It is no secret that MS is upset with the slow rate of people upgrading to XP. Most people now only upgrade when there is a definite need for it.

This would be the end of the world as they know it, and I feel fine.

Re:But they're all supposed to be equal...

[Amiga Lover]

I think there's a large amount of unconscious thought & actions going on with computer use, which may end up being a large part of what's happening here. Not the least of which is WHERE a machine is. I like corners, so I used to sit in the corner and use the 3 machines around there, but thats just me. Other people liked edges.

Add to that the subtle signals we pick up when using a machine. Usually there will be little idiosyncrasies in a group situation, where a dozen computers might all sound a little different. whine differently. have their volume set just a little different compared to others, and the ones people are used to, or perhaps even NOTICE this about will be the ones they're drawn to.

I think the unconscious thought thing applies a great deal to Macs, PCs, Linux boxes. The first time I touched a Linux machine which was supposed to be stable, I locked it up. Why? I don't know. I can only guess that its user (a cousin) had his definition of "stable" defined by the routine of uses he went through every time he booted it, and never came across the particular odd combo I did. I found my Windows machine at the time stable as well (Win 98) but it'd guarantee to lockup within a few hours of use by someone who isn't me. non consciously, I think I'd learned to avoid the things to do that would crash it.

Bet it's similar with OSX boxes. put a windows or linux user who's never touched one before in front of it and it'll bluescreen, kernel panic or beachball soon after use, until they also built up the internal map of what not to do.

Re:Unrequited love

[tunabomber]

Bad example. HAL seemed to like Dave until he decided to deactivate HAL. Just imagine how your human love would react if she heard you were going to "deactivate" her... somehow I suspect she'd be a little less polite than saying "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't allow you to do that."

Good Info for Techies perhaps

[djplurvert]

Techies should keep this in mind when dealing with their users. Good "computerside" manner really helps to ease users minds, make them feel comfortable with the CHANGES you are making, and getting them to (god I hate this term) "buy-in" to the ideas you are presenting. When you need support from these employees later it will be easier to come by if you have thought of their relationships with their workspaces.

I, and I suppose most techies, just think of a computer as a box of parts readied to be dumped as soon as any new piece of equipment comes along. The biggest pain to me is getting the configuration, not the data, moved from the old to the new. Users, on the other hand, don't have such an intimate knowledge of the inside of their machines and become attached to certain behaviours/modes of operation because they have attached those behaviours to ideas that they rely on.

They say things like, "After you boost the rams how will I get to word." One can either respond smugly, or, one can give the user words that make them comfortable. Of course upgrading ram will, at least in most cases, not affect things like access to applications. Instead of trying to educate the user with a technical diatribe simply say "This shouldn't affect your access to word, but we'll make absolutely sure before I leave, how's that?"

Of course this is slashdot, and I'm preaching to the choir. Given that I've seen SO MANY techs who don't recognize that a human touch would be beneficial to them, however, I felt a need to rant a bit.

plurvert

Re:Good Info for Techies perhaps

[AeroIllini]

One can either respond smugly, or, one can give the user words that make them comfortable.
**snip**
Of course this is slashdot, and I'm preaching to the choir.

I'm not so sure you are. In my experience, I've found that the majority of people who are exceptionally good with computers, such as the general population of Slashdot, simply do not understand the mentality of someone who is not technically inclined. To the novice computer users (and I'm speaking mostly about Windows and Macintosh users here -- the vast majority of Linux users are not novices) a computer is so complex and so powerful that it seems almost like magic. It is a completely new world to them, and it can be a little frightening and/or intimidating, but they plow ahead anyway because this thing is supposed to be easy to use. They really have no intuition regarding how things work. To use your example from above: RAM. Ask a novice computer user what RAM does, and they will likely tell you that it makes their computer faster, or that it gives their computer more memory (and when they say "memory" they are really referring to "disk space" -- many people cannot distinguish the two). Us techies have intuition regarding RAM. We know how it's used as temporary space for running processes and such, and we understand how most of that works on a fundamental level, even if we don't actually hard-code memory locations in our programs. So asking if adding RAM to their machine will affect other areas is a valid question -- they've been told by other people that RAM "makes their computer faster"... i.e., it affects the entire machine. Most techies I know, since the definition of RAM is so basic to them, will usually respond, at first, with astonishment at the supposedly stupid question (even if they don't express it out loud). Many will express astonishment verbally and say something smug, like, "No, of course not," as if they were reminding the user that 2+2 is indeed 4.

The vast majority of computer users think they know how computers work; so when they ask what we perceive as "stupid questions" they are merely trying to reconsile all the conflicting views of their computers they have gotten from various sources. What the technical community has to learn is how to explain computers to novices without slipping into techspeak, without overwhelming them with information they don't need to know, without condescending, and with the idea that these people are not as passionate about computers as the techie.

I see a lot of people on Slashdot getting frustruated with "supid users," usually because the users ask what the techie hears as "stupid questions." So I issue a challenge to the technically inclined: if you are unable to explain to a novice how a basic part of the computer works (like the video card) without diving into techincal details the user doesn't care about or talking down to them, then you are bogged down in details and need to step back to see the big picture. You don't know how something works unless you can explain it to a five-year-old.

It is in our nature to do this...

[uptownguy]

Humans have always felt a close relationship with the tools they use to get their work done. We have unearthed hunters from many thousands of years ago who were buried with their tools. You see people feel a kinship with their (book collection/music collection/car/favorite pair of jeans/lucky lighter/favorite pen) -- It appears to be in our nature to anthropomorphize things that we frequently interact with or associate with ourselves. We become accustomed to the particular quirks of these objects. The noises they make. The little things that need to be done to allow them to operate optimally. Why would computers be any different? I don't have a bow and arrow but I use my Sony Vaio every day to do my work. Human nature doesn't change just because the tools have...

Just my two cents...

Re:Names?

[/dev/trash]

Anyone with more than one PC names their computer. How else do you keep networked machines separated in your head?