Boundary work in value co-creation practices: the mediating role of cognitive assistants

PurposeHow to improve healthcare for the ageing population is attracting academia attention. Emerging technologies (i.e. robots and intelligent agents) look relevant. This paper aims to analyze the role of cognitive assistants as boundary objects in value co-creation practices. We include the perceptions of the main actors – patients, (in)formal caregivers, healthcare professionals – for a fuller network perspective to understand the potential overlap between boundary work and value co-creation practices.Design/methodology/approachWe adopted a grounded approach to gain a contextual understanding design to effectively interpret context and meanings related to human–robot interactions. The study context concerns 21 health solutions that had embedded the Watson cognitive platform and its adoption by the youngest cohort (50–64-year-olds) of the ageing population.FindingsThe cognitive assistant acts as a boundary object by bridging actors, resources and activities. It enacts the boundary work of actors (both ageing and professional, caregivers, families) consisting of four main actions (automated dialoguing, augmented sharing, connected learning and multilayered trusting) that elicit two ageing value co-creation practices: empowering ageing actors in medical care and engaging ageing actors in a healthy lifestyle.Originality/valueWe frame the role of cognitive assistants as boundary objects enabling the boundary work of ageing actors for value co-creation. A cognitive assistant is an "object of activity" that mediates in actors' boundary work by offering novel resource interfaces and widening resource access and resourceness. The boundary work of ageing actors lies in a smarter resource integration that yields broader applications for augmented agency

Applying the “human-dog interaction” metaphor in human-robot interaction: a co-design practice engaging healthy retired adults in China

This research adopts a Deweyan pragmatist approach and “research through design” methods to explore the use of human-dog interaction as a model for developing human-robot interaction. This research asks two questions: (1) In what way could the human-dog interaction model inform the design of social robots to meet the needs of older adults? (2) What role could aesthetic, functional and behavioural aspects of the human-dog interaction play in older adults’ interaction with social robots? Driven by the pragmatist approach, this thesis uses the dog-human interaction model as a metaphor in this thesis. The research carried out four studies in two parts. The first part of the practice includes two explorative studies to identify aspects of human-dog interaction that could inform the design of social robots for older adults. Study 1 explores aspects of human-dog interaction that could inform the design of human-robot interaction for retired adults. Study 2 explores a group of healthy retired adults’ attitudes and preferences toward social/assistive robots in China. The findings suggest that, first, the pairing and training process provides a framework for building personalised social robots in terms of form, function, interaction, and stakeholders involved. Second, the cooperative interaction between a human and a guide dog provides insights for building social robots that take on leading roles in interactions. The robot-as-dog metaphor offers a new perspective to rethink the design process of social robots based on the role dog trainer, owner, and the dog plays in human-dog interaction. In the second part of the practice, two more studies are conducted to articulate the usefulness of the designer-as-trainer-metaphor, and the personalisation-astraining-metaphor, using participatory co-designing methods. Engaging both retired adult participants and roboticists as co-designers to investigate further how aesthetic aspects, functional features, and interactive behaviours characterising dog-human interaction could inform how older adults can interact with social robots. Study 3 involved co-designing a robot probe with roboticists and later deploying it in a participant’s home using the Wizard of Oz method. The personalisation-as-training metaphor helps facilitate a critical discussion for the interdisciplinary co-design process. It broadens the design space when addressing the technical limitation of the probe’s camera through reflection-in-action. Study 4 engages the retired adults as co-designers to envision what characteristics they would like robots to have, with attention to the robot’s form, the functions that the robot can perform and how the robot interacts with users. The study applies techniques such as sketching and storyboarding to understand how retired adults make sense of these core elements that are key to developing social/assistive robots for positive ageing. This thesis makes two main contributions to knowledge in human-robot interaction and interaction design research. Firstly, it provides an applied example using the robot-as-dog metaphor as a tool to probe human-robot interactions in a domestic context. Secondly, to show dog-human interaction model is applicable to different levels of abstraction for the co-designing process that involves the roboticists and the end-users. The outcome shows a reflective practice that engages metaphors to facilitate communication across disciplines in the co-design process

Ageing and Technology: Perspectives from the Social Sciences

The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the "human factor" is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective - taking the human being and not technology first - may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens

Ageing and Technology

The booming increase of the senior population has become a social phenomenon and a challenge to our societies, and technological advances have undoubtedly contributed to improve the lives of elderly citizens in numerous aspects. In current debates on technology, however, the »human factor« is often largely ignored. The ageing individual is rather seen as a malfunctioning machine whose deficiencies must be diagnosed or as a set of limitations to be overcome by means of technological devices. This volume aims at focusing on the perspective of human beings deriving from the development and use of technology: this change of perspective – taking the human being and not technology first – may help us to become more sensitive to the ambivalences involved in the interaction between humans and technology, as well as to adapt technologies to the people that created the need for its existence, thus contributing to improve the quality of life of senior citizens

Expert-informed design and automation of persuasive, socially assistive robots

Socially assistive robots primarily provide useful functionality through their social interactions with user(s). An example application, used to ground work throughout this thesis, is using a social robot to guide users through exercise sessions. Initial works have demonstrated that interactions with a social robot can improve engagement with exercise, and that an embodied social robot is more effective for this than the equivalent virtual avatar. However, many questions remain regarding the design and automation of socially assistive robot behaviours for this purpose. This thesis identifies and practically works through a number of these questions in pursuit of one ultimate goal: the meaningful, real world deployment of a fully autonomous, socially assistive robot. The work takes an expert informed approach, looking to learn from human experts in socially assistive interactions and explore how their expert knowledge can be reflected in the design and automation of social robot behaviours. It is taking this approach that leads to the notion of socially assistive robots needing to be persuasive in order to be effective, but also identifies the difficulty in automating such complex, socially intelligent behaviour. The ethical implications of designing persuasive robot behaviours are also practically considered; with reference to a published standard on ethical robot design. The work culminates with use of a state of the art, interactive machine learning approach to have an expert fitness instructor train a robot ‘fitness coach’, deployed in a university gym, as it guides participants through an NHS exercise programme. After a total of 151 training sessions across 10 participants, the robot successfully ran 32 sessions autonomously. The results demonstrated that autonomous behaviour was generally comparable to that of the robot when controlled/supervised by the fitness instructor, and that overall, the robot played an important role in keeping participants motivated through the exercise programme

Trust in Robots

Robots are increasingly becoming prevalent in our daily lives within our living or working spaces. We hope that robots will take up tedious, mundane or dirty chores and make our lives more comfortable, easy and enjoyable by providing companionship and care. However, robots may pose a threat to human privacy, safety and autonomy; therefore, it is necessary to have constant control over the developing technology to ensure the benevolent intentions and safety of autonomous systems. Building trust in (autonomous) robotic systems is thus necessary. The title of this book highlights this challenge: “Trust in robots—Trusting robots”. Herein, various notions and research areas associated with robots are unified. The theme “Trust in robots” addresses the development of technology that is trustworthy for users; “Trusting robots” focuses on building a trusting relationship with robots, furthering previous research. These themes and topics are at the core of the PhD program “Trust Robots” at TU Wien, Austria