2026-09-21T17:40:27Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/46617 2023-07-11 col_2142_5131 col_2142_8951 com_2142_5130 com_2142_8950 com_2142_150

Microsoft Human-computer interaction Feminist informatics Smith, Linda C. Smith, Linda C. Nakamura, Lisa M. Brock, André Renear, Allen H. Sweeney, Miriam 2014-01-16T17:56:19Z 2014-01-16T17:56:19Z 2013-12 2014-01-16T17:56:19Z 2013-12 "Increasingly anthropomorphism is used as a design strategy in computing interfaces to make them more accessible and intuitive to users. Technologies are never neutral, and always consist of a complex arrangement of technical, social, and cultural (ideological) aspects. Computing interfaces designed to have the characteristics of people raise ethical questions about what it means to explicitly gender and racialize technologies. This project explores these broader questions through a case study of Microsoft's former search engine interface, ""Ms. Dewey."" The titular character featured in the interface was anthropomorphized as a sexy librarian virtual agent who performs search results in response to user queries. I explore how the Ms. Dewey search engine is gendered and racialized and, ultimately, how Ms. Dewey reveals specific assumptions about gender, race, and technology in the search engine. I conduct an interface analysis that investigates the semiotic and material aspects of the interface in terms of technological and cultural affordances, finding that gender and race function as crucial infrastructural elements that frame the search process and results as more explicitly ideological rather than instrumental. This research contributes to understanding the broader implications of anthropomorphization as a design strategy, blending concerns of technology design and cultural beliefs about gender and race." Item withdrawn by Laura Spradlin (lspradl2@illinois.edu) on 2013-11-25T17:34:30Z Item was in collections: University of Illinois Theses & Dissertations (ID: 1) No. of bitstreams: 2 Sweeney_Miriam.docx: 777814 bytes, checksum: b8e98544dae338216bacfef0758148e3 (MD5) Sweeney_Miriam.pdf: 3744245 bytes, checksum: 3af9786ac903f6b0f9234479e1ad7c10 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-01-16T17:56:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 3 Miriam_Sweeney.pdf: 3744245 bytes, checksum: 3af9786ac903f6b0f9234479e1ad7c10 (MD5) Sweeney_Miriam.docx: 777814 bytes, checksum: b8e98544dae338216bacfef0758148e3 (MD5) license.txt: 4064 bytes, checksum: dd1a387ccf57e01c4259de8e7fff107e (MD5) http://hdl.handle.net/2142/46617 en Copyright 2013 Miriam E. Sweeney Anthropomorphized design Virtual agents Search engines Ms. Dewey Social informatics Race and technology Not just a pretty (inter)face: A critical analysis of Microsoft's 'Ms. Dewey' text Library & Information Science 1992 Library & Information Science 0370 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D. PHD:Library & Infor Sci -UIUC 10KS0370PHD