Avoiding The Uncanny Valley of User Interface

Coding Horror: Avoiding The Uncanny Valley of User Interface: "McCloud's book Understanding Comics was the first place I ran into a concept which is a sort of corollary to the Uncanny Valley. Call it Lake Empathy: If a character is very simple, more iconic than realistic, it's much easier for people to pour themselves into it -- to view it not as a third party, but instead as a personal avatar."