The foundation of our knowledge about how recorded due diligence content came from our time working with a couple of brilliant Stanford professors:  Cliff Nass and Byron Reeves, authors of The Media Equation. These profs conduct research on how people interact with technology and how to make technology more human. Cliff and Byron were subject matter experts for a company called Finali (where Darren and I met), which developed an interesting form of customer service automation, involving characters that interacted with users on Websites such as Dell and Buy.com.

As I was driving to a meeting today I was listening to NPR’s Science Friday. There was a discussion in progress about multitasking (e.g., driving, texting, talking on the phone, etc.). The person speaking sounded so familiar and was talking about the relevance of the  gender of voices used in GPS systems. Sure sounded like Cliff Nass. And it was! This is an interesting segment on how multtasking really isn’t ultimately effective, but also some wonderful anecdotes from Cliff’s research that are worth contemplating.

I share this interview with Cliff Nass because he’s a brilliant guy and as we all continue to rely on technology more and more it’s important to understand how we prevent technology from getting in the way of online and/or media-based customer conversations. If you’ve got feedback to the NPR segment or to the use of technology in our space we’d love to hear from you.