14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Clippy was removed in Office 2007 and Office 2008 for Mac after waves of negative criticism, but also due to the fact that most users considered it useless and decided to turn it off completely, despite the fact that it was supposed to help you perform certain tasks faster.
While it’s pretty that the assistant was rarely considered useful by those who installed older Office versions, a former Microsoft executive who participated to several company meetings on Clippy say that that the software giant believed so much in this little tool that it ignored focus group feedback completely and pushed it to users just the way it was developed.
Roz Ho, former Microsoft executive and now vice president at Ericsson, revealed for The Atlantic that the company’s focus group discussed several ways to improve Clippy, but most of their opinions were ignored.
The only woman’s opinion didn’t count
Ho says she was the only woman in the whole group and her opinion that Clippy’s character was too masculine made no difference, despite the fact that she truly believed that a different approach was needed.
“Most of the women thought the characters were too male and that they were leering at them. So we’re sitting in a conference room. There’s me and, I think, like, 11 or 12 guys, and we’re going through the results, and they said, ‘I don’t see it. I just don’t know what they’re talking about.’ And I said, ‘Guys, guys, look, I’m a woman, and I’m going to tell you, these animated characters are male-looking,’” she was quoted as saying by The Atlantic.
Interestingly, Microsoft has completely changed its mind in the modern era and its personal assistant, now called Cortana, comes with the voice of a woman and bears the name of one. There were some reports that an improved version of Clippy could be somehow brought back to life, but until now, there’s still no evidence that Microsoft is pondering such a plan.