Some nasty tongues claimed that Karl Klammer and the other assistants introduced with Office 97 had become an intern can let off steam. This is true of the Solitaire game, but behind the little digital helpers who really wanted to write letters was an ambitious research project called PERSONA.

The team was led by Eric Horvitz, who still works at Microsoft today as Chief Scientific Officer. So if there were so many bright minds and well-meaning intentions behind it, why did the project fail so brilliantly?

Proactive Agents The help of a Roughly speaking, computer programs can be designed in two ways: With the passive one, the agent – as digital assistants are called in technical jargon – waits for questions from the user; With the proactive agent, the agent tries to recognize situations and to offer specific and context-related help.

The simplest form of a proactive agent is the automatic spell correction, which underlines unrecognized words in red. PERSONA designed the office assistant as such a proactive agent. In the mid-nineties, word processing had not yet arrived in every office and Karl and his mates were supposed to introduce new users to the overwhelming variety of functions of the office suite.

The infamous question about the letter caused a lot of frustration.

(Image: Microsoft)

But it didn’t stop with the proactive tips like the infamous question of whether you want to write a letter. So that the inhibition threshold for using the help was not too high, the office assistant offered to query the office help with natural sentences. With the help of a model based on Bayesian statistics, both actions and queries were assigned to a context and suggestions were offered. Bayesian models later became known as spam filters.

The interaction between user and agent, i.e. Karl Klammer, should be similar to a conversation between two people: through question and answer. Even if as a person, apart from the questions, you were usually only allowed to express yourself using multiple choice.

c’t RETRO This article comes from c’t-RETRO. In the special edition of the c’t we take a look back at the first IBM PCs and shed light on the triumphant advance of Windows. You will find practice, tests and stories about classic technology. We remember Karl Klammer, present a modern IBM XT replica for vintage computing and explain how you can rescue data from scratched CDs and ancient hard drives. c’t RETRO is now available in the Heise Shop and at the well-stocked magazine kiosk.

Metaphors and rule breaks The second approach to lowering inhibitions was in the design. The assumption was that people are unsure how to use a computer. But they know how to interact with other people. With a human-like appearance, they would automatically have a scheme ready to which the users could orient their behavior. Even with the failed Microsoft Bob user interface, in which the computer was operated using a digital living room, there was an attempt to simplify entry with metaphors from the real world.

Good ideas in themselves. It’s just stupid if Karl Klammer doesn’t stick to well-known social rules. Regardless of whether you are a butler or an office colleague: If you keep asking the same question after just a few words, you are not behaving in accordance with general interpersonal practices and are not sympathetic. Some people even wonder whether the poor paper clip would not have received less malice if the question about the letter assistant had simply been deleted from the repertoire of the office assistant without replacement.

The Another question is how big the problem of writing letters that Mr. Klammer identified was and how helpful the help was. Even if you get a B