Clippy might never have existed if Microsoft had listened to women

Remember Clippy? If Microsoft's design team had listened to focus groups, it may have never seen the light of day.

The documentary Code: Debugging the Gender Gap closely examines the male-dominated team that developed the anthropomorphic paperclip, which tortured Microsoft Office users from 1996 until they figured out how to turn it off. The documentary alleges the design team was unwilling to listen to the opinions of women in their focus group, who thought Clippy was creepy.

Roz Ho, currently a senior vice president at Ericsson and a former executive at Microsoft when Clippy was being developed, speaks in the film about the focus group testing that had negative feedback: Read more...