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Rating: 
Summary: Solid Social Science
Review: A previous review called this book "psuedo-scientific drivel." In fact, this book is far from it. Well, as far from it as social science can get. In fact, is the most "scientific" of the user interface books I have read. The main point I took away from the book is that people interact with objects, especially interactive and media devices, as if they were people. They demonstrate that when user interfaces are designed to be polite and interact in a positive social manner, the person has a much more enjoyable and profitable interaction. Other books on the topic of user interface design are far less scientific, relying on generalizations and suppositions rather than constructing a study. Some use data from a usability evaluation, but these are often far from scientific. The authors construct hypotheses, usually based on the results of studies of interaction between humans, and see if the results of the results hold true for human-machine interaction. Usually, it does.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Social Science
Review: A previous review called this book "psuedo-scientific drivel." In fact, this book is far from it. Well, as far from it as social science can get. In fact, is the most "scientific" of the user interface books I have read. The main point I took away from the book is that people interact with objects, especially interactive and media devices, as if they were people. They demonstrate that when user interfaces are designed to be polite and interact in a positive social manner, the person has a much more enjoyable and profitable interaction. Other books on the topic of user interface design are far less scientific, relying on generalizations and suppositions rather than constructing a study. Some use data from a usability evaluation, but these are often far from scientific. The authors construct hypotheses, usually based on the results of studies of interaction between humans, and see if the results of the results hold true for human-machine interaction. Usually, it does.
Rating: 
Summary: The whole world is a media equation????
Review: Reeves and Nass find that people use social conventions towards intelligent systems. Without further thinking they decide it is something new, something great. We are thinking of interactive systems as other social beings is their explanation. With some imagination you could come up with a number of other explanations, that equally well fit the data. I do not disagree with their findings, but I really disagree with their conclusions, especially the eagerness and determination with which they jump to them. However I notice their ideas seem pretty convincing, and here lies my real worry with this book. So if you decide to read it anyway keep asking yourself if the conclusions Reeves and Nass jump to are really as worthwhile as they make them appear.
Rating: 
Summary: A great interpretation of how people interact with media
Review: The authors explain their hypothesis that people tend to treat computers, television and new media like they would human beings, and that people react to media-based presentations as if they were real-life situations -- even when people consciously realize this is not the case. It's a really interesting premise and the authors do an excellent job explaining their ideas. The only reason I didn't give this work 5 stars is that the authors do not provide enough data on the results of their experiments. They frequently mention "significant" results, but they do not offer the results themselves for the reader to decide just how significant those results may be. This book is clearly written for a large audience, most of whom probably prefer to have the authors offer an interpretation without padding the work with lots of charts and tables. I would have liked a footnote or two with the actual experiment data, but regardless it's an excellent and intriguing read. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in interface design or media studies.
Rating:
Summary: Must read popularization
Review: The media equation, as introduced by Nass and Reeves, is that "media equals real life" and that our interactions with media are "fundamentally social and natural" (p. 5). This book is a popularization of established, replicated research on how people interact with television advertising, tutoring systems, error messages, loud noises, sudden movement, etc. For instance, one widely replicated result is that computer tutoring systems get better evaluations if the evaluation program is run on the same computer. Moving the reviewer to a new computer (with the same program), significantly lowers the score. The social science literature shows that teachers who collect their own evaluations score much more highly than those whose evaluations are collected by others. This is the kind of evidence Nass and Reeves bring to bear in support of the media equation. They don't claim that we are consciously thinking about the computer's feelings and don't want to hurt them. Rather, to the contrary, subjects claim they were doing no such thing. Yet the evidence of our behavior seems incontrovertible. The media equation is a good enough predictor of user behavior, at least for telephone-based spoken dialog systems of the form my company builds, that it has informed our designs from top to bottom. Our applications apologize if they make a mistake. Callers respond well to this. Sure, the callers know they're talking to a machine, but this doesn't stop them from saying "thank you" when it's done or "please" before a query or feeling bad (or angry) if the computer can't understand them. Another strategy recommended by Nass and Reeves that we follow is trying to draw the caller in to work as a team with the computer; again, Nass and Reeves support this with several clever experiments. There is also a useful section on flattery, looking at the result of the computer flattering itself and its users; it turns out that we rate computers that flatter themselves more highly than ones that are neutral. Among other interesting explanations you get in this book are why we're more tolerant of bad pictures than bad sound, why we focus on moving objects, speaking rate equilibrium, what we can do to make someone remember an event in a video, and the role of gender. This book is very quick and easy to read. I read it in two days while on vacation it was so fascinating. In contrast to the classical yet dry social science format of hypothesis, experimental methodology, results, and essentially a summary of the results as a conclusion, Nass and Reeves only vaguely summarize their experimental methodology and take a no-holds-barred approach to drawing conclusions. This may annoy social scientists, most of whom expect their own kind to be far more circumspect. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone designing mediated interfaces. For those who don't believe the results, I'd suggest running some experiments; our company did, and it made us believers.
Rating:
Summary: nothing new
Review: The media equation, as introduced by Nass and Reeves, is that "media equals real life" and that our interactions with media are "fundamentally social and natural" (p. 5). This book is a popularization of established, replicated research on how people interact with television advertising, tutoring systems, error messages, loud noises, sudden movement, etc. For instance, one widely replicated result is that computer tutoring systems get better evaluations if the evaluation program is run on the same computer. Moving the reviewer to a new computer (with the same program), significantly lowers the score. The social science literature shows that teachers who collect their own evaluations score much more highly than those whose evaluations are collected by others. This is the kind of evidence Nass and Reeves bring to bear in support of the media equation. They don't claim that we are consciously thinking about the computer's feelings and don't want to hurt them. Rather, to the contrary, subjects claim they were doing no such thing. Yet the evidence of our behavior seems incontrovertible. The media equation is a good enough predictor of user behavior, at least for telephone-based spoken dialog systems of the form my company builds, that it has informed our designs from top to bottom. Our applications apologize if they make a mistake. Callers respond well to this. Sure, the callers know they're talking to a machine, but this doesn't stop them from saying "thank you" when it's done or "please" before a query or feeling bad (or angry) if the computer can't understand them. Another strategy recommended by Nass and Reeves that we follow is trying to draw the caller in to work as a team with the computer; again, Nass and Reeves support this with several clever experiments. There is also a useful section on flattery, looking at the result of the computer flattering itself and its users; it turns out that we rate computers that flatter themselves more highly than ones that are neutral. Among other interesting explanations you get in this book are why we're more tolerant of bad pictures than bad sound, why we focus on moving objects, speaking rate equilibrium, what we can do to make someone remember an event in a video, and the role of gender. This book is very quick and easy to read. I read it in two days while on vacation it was so fascinating. In contrast to the classical yet dry social science format of hypothesis, experimental methodology, results, and essentially a summary of the results as a conclusion, Nass and Reeves only vaguely summarize their experimental methodology and take a no-holds-barred approach to drawing conclusions. This may annoy social scientists, most of whom expect their own kind to be far more circumspect. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone designing mediated interfaces. For those who don't believe the results, I'd suggest running some experiments; our company did, and it made us believers.
Rating:
Summary: nothing new
Review: This book can be summed up in two sentences: "People instinctivly react to artificial interactions (with computers and media) the same way they react to interactions in real life. This can be used to manipulate people." Except for the authors' pro-manipulation bias, this media=reality "equation" is nothing new - Steven Pinker talked about new media and old brains in several of his books. Ted Nelson said that users automatically interact with computers "naturally" in work he published in the 1970's. Even Arthur C. Clarke mentioned the phenomenon in "3010." The authors have replicated and repackaged previously done research with a popular, marketing spin. In the process, they have extended the theory to ludicrous levels - as evidenced by the (non) success of Microsoft's "Bob," which the authors consulted on, and which they still seem to think is a claim to fame. Academics working in the social or cognitive sciences will find nothing new here. Dot-commers, were there any left, might find it worthwhile to explore this esoteric branch of UI design, but would be better served by spending their attention on basics like Tognazini and Nielson. The authors' tunnel vision and extraordinarily self-important outlook detract from any further value the work might have.
Rating:
Summary: Back to Basics
Review: This book is one of there rare ones that really is based on scientific material. Reeves and Nass make their extremely interesting and useful observations on how users react to media available to the HCI professionals in an intelligent and intertaining fashion. Their findings are of great value to anyone engaged in computers and media. The book is not a how-to-do guide, but at the end of each chapter you will find useful recommendations on how to help your users/viewers feel more comfortable with your product. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Media representations are people too!
Review: This book presents a series of social psychology experiments which demonstrate that in almost all respects people treat media representations of people and places like the real thing. The rules and social cues which apply to interactions with other people subconsciously apply to interactions with a face on a screen, or a computer interface, or a disembodied voice. People interacting with a computer which praises them for their performance on a quiz will attribute the same characteristics to the computer as they would to a person who praises - the computer will be seen as more competent and its feedback will be more valued. Social attribution can even occur with an interface as technologically unsophisticated as text on a screen. Why we act this way can be explained by our brain's evolutionary past - during the evolution of the brain all entities which looked or behaved like people were exactly that, there were no artificial representations. Representations in media are therefore interpreted naturally, that is, as they would appear in the world. So while our conscious minds are sophisticated enough to tell the difference and may deny interacting in a social manner with media, our old subconscious does not make the distinction.
Rating:
Summary: Pseudoscientific Drivel
Review: This fatally-flawed book is boundless in it's overgeneralizations and poor research designs. The authors refer constantly to a "growing body of research" on the topic of social interaction with media, when in fact they are only quoting themselves in previous publications. They have presupposed the "equation" they purport to have discovered, and designed their experiments to try and uncover it. This book chronicles the worst example I have ever seen of what happens when you set up a scientific experiment to try and show what you want to find, rather than to collect unbiased data and then scour the results and draw your conclusions after the fact. Reeves and Nass expect to find the Media Equation beneath every stone, and consequently they do. The experiments themselves, to anyone with a background in legitimate science, are a casebook of poor design. They ignore intervening variables, intercoder reliability, and representative sampling. They lean heavily on self-selected and forced participants, subjectively worded and loaded questions, and performing statistical tests on non-numerical data (what is the mean of "rarely" and "often"...? Reeves and Nass will base their results on it). In many cases, they contradict their own results from earlier points in the book, when it suits the experiment at hand. Other times, it seems they will ascribe every reaction to the media equation, regardless of how preposterous it seems. Case in point: People remember a face on a t.v. screen better when it is a close up than when it is a long distance shot. No kidding -- but Reeves and Nass chalk this up to a "social reaction" to the face. I know quite a few information theorists *and regular people on the street* who will tell you they remember a close-up better simply because there is more detail to see. Reeves and Nass don't even recognize the possibility. But worst of all is the grandstanding, overhyped supergeneralization of the results. None of these so-called experiments has any external validity (many are not even internally consistent), yet the authors' claims extend into every field, in every walk of life. The Media Equation, they believe, is the root cause of just about everything. This is Bad Science. At It's Worst.
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