My Robot Gets Me

 

1

Introduction

“Smart” Is Not Enough—Products Need to Be Social

You’re not crazy to thank Alexa when she checks the weather. It’s not nuts to name your car Keith (or Fred or Celeste). And it’s perfectly normal to want to repair your Roomba out of loyalty rather than replace it when it breaks.

FIGURE 1-1

The Roomba Robot Vacuum

An often-cited Georgia Tech study of people first using the Roomba Robot Vacuum—a device that looks like a twelve-inch round puck, with no deliberate features to make it seem like it has a face, body, or limbs—revealed that people saw it as a social entity, giving it names and talking to it directly.¹ I often thought ...