Technology... with personality?

Anna's Transformation project on the acceptance of technology and the phenomenon of Robots has caused me to blog this article. It is written from the point of view of interaction/experience design and gives a few good examples (looking at visual anthropomorphism for example) as well as insights into how to convey emotion. Turns out Experience Designers Shedroff and Noessel back up my point about R2D2, even though a practical non-anthropomorphic robot, appeals to the human emotion through his sound.

http://johnnyholland.org/2009/12/09/does-technology-need-personality/

Using Ethnography for User Experience Research

Here is an article making the link more directly between Ethnography and User Experience Research, as a step before Usability Testing. This relates to recent discussion in the Research Methods unit which dealt with Ethnography (Michele-Anne's session) and then linked to User Experience Research.

http://www.cxpartners.co.uk/thoughts/using_ethnography_to_improve_user_experience.htm