And while it’s bizarre to gender an anthropomorphic paperclip, it turns out that users overwhelmingly do see Clippy as a man (Clippy’s creator included).Ī quick poll of my colleagues revealed that the vast majority thought of Clippy as male. In other words, Clippy was the ultimate mansplainer. People have written entire academic theses about why Clippy was so powerfully annoying, but it seems to boil down to the fact that he was continually interrupting you without saying anything useful at all. Given that focus groups described Clippy as “trustful”, “engaging” and “endearing”, it’s pretty spectacular how quickly things fell apart. Oh, and Atteberry also said he designed Clippy on a Mac. “ came out to be the number one most trustful and engaging and endearing character of them all. “Through working with some social psychologists out of Stanford, we spent six months going through them all, whittling them down with focus groups and stuff like that,” Atteberry told Vice a few years ago. Out of that field of 250, Clippy wasn’t just randomly selected to become the default: he was chosen after a rigorous, months-long process involving expert feedback, focus groups and more. Clippy’s creator, Kevan Atteberry, was part of a team that designed close to 250 potential characters to guide users through Microsoft Office. The fact that Clippy outlived Microsoft Bob is far from an accident. And, after typographer Vincent Connare noticed that the program’s fun cartoon characters were speaking to users via the inappropriately formal Times New Roman, Microsoft Bob led to the invention of Comic Sans. The need for a little character to lead users around the house led to the invention of Clippy. Despite the program being geared towards new computer users, Melinda Gates has since acknowledged that Bob actually “needed a more powerful computer than most people had back then”.Īnd yet, Microsoft Bob’s legacy lives on. Microsoft Bob was panned by critics, hated by users, and retired after just one year. If all of this sounds wildly annoying, you’re spot on. It even came on a CD emblazoned with the Microsoft Bob logo, which looks a lot like today’s nerdy face emoji. A cartoon dog (a predecessor to Clippy) would guide you around the house to find programs instead of changing your desktop background, you could quite literally change the wallpaper (and/or style of your entire house, from “contemporary” to “postmodern” and more). Clicking on the pen and paper on the living room table would open Microsoft Word. Microsoft Bob was the result of an interesting brainwave: instead of showing users a desktop filled with icons, why not show them a room of a house, filled with familiar objects that symbolised the programs they might want to use?Ĭlicking on a calendar on the wall, for instance, would open the computer’s calendar. Back in 1995, Microsoft was brainstorming ways to help people learn to use a computer for the first time. There’s a good chance you’re too young to remember Bob. The story of Clippy’s birth requires a brief detour into one of Microsoft’s even greater failures: Microsoft Bob. Who Created Clippy? It’s Time You Met Microsoft Bob Here’s the story of how Clippy became (and remains) a literal icon. For instance, typing an address followed by "Dear" would cause Clippy to pop up with and a variety of pre-determined messages, including "Hey! It looks like you're writing a letter!" before offering to help walk you through the process.If you’re wondering how the hell we got here, you’re not alone. Atteberry to serve as a user-friendly troubleshooter for people using Office applications including Word and Excel. Due to its impractical and intrusive nature, Clippy quickly became a subject of mockery among Office users, inspiring a series of satirical images and parodies addressing its overall incompetence as a program.Ĭlippy, a paperclip with googly eyes and expressive eyebrows, was designed by Kevan J. Clippit, better known as Clippy, is the default animated character in the English Windows version of Microsoft Office Assistant, an interactive user's guide that came pre-installed with Microsoft Office bundles from 1997–2003.
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