This Drunken Robotic Finger Is Ripping at the Fleshy Underbelly of the Internet

Interaction designers hate him.

In a world of analytics, A/B testing, and perfecting of user experiences, designing a website that guides the user to desired results is a growing academic field and institutional practice. Now, a tiny robot mouse and finger is seeking to subvert everything through random interaction.

Madrid-based design and development partnership Monobo placed wheels on a vintage Apple mouse and attached a motorized, disembodied finger to create The Random User. The Arduino-powered robot races around the surface it's placed on, clicking wildly and ignoring the most elegant user nurturing and the most persuasive calls to action.

The Random User is, of course, only one bot in a sea of users, and it will not make an impact on analytics individually. Despite this, it highlights the fact that most web traffic has been inhuman for some time now. The Random User is, perhaps, rare as a physical bot, but still a member of the majority on the internet. Whether they are making art, selling diet pills, or just clicking on and on into eternity like this little guy, the bots outnumber us.

And that highlights the original intent of its designers. How much faith can one place in systems that claim to measure and control the internet with so many bots out there, ignoring psychology and doing their own things?