Experience Centred Design for a Robotic Eating Aid

We discuss how an experience centred approach to robotic design might lead to new design spaces and products that are more engaging and better meet users' needs and lifestyles. To support the statement, we present preliminary data from a long-term user study on an eating aid robot

Transfer Scenarios: Grounding Innovation with Marginal Practices

Transfer scenarios is a method developed to support the design of innovative interactive technology. Such a method should help the designer to come up with inventive ideas, and at the same time provide grounding in real human needs. In transfer scenarios, we use marginal practices to encourage a changed mindset throughout the design process. A marginal practice consists of individuals who share an activity that they find meaningful. We regard these individuals not as end-users, but as valuable input in the design process. We applied this method when designing novel applications for autonomous embodied agents, e.g. robots. Owners of unusual pets, such as snakes and spiders, were interviewed - not with the intention to design robot pets, but to determine underlying needs and interests of their practice. The results were then used to design a set of applications for more general users, including a dynamic living-room wall and a set of communicating hobby robots

Beyond Speculative Ethics in HRI? Ethical Considerations and the Relation to Empirical Data

We discuss the difference between understanding robot ethics as something that is grounded in philosophical ideas about a potential future design, and understanding robot ethics as something that is grounded in empirical data. We argue, that understanding “robots” as a relatively homogenous group of designs for which we can formulate general ethics may lead to a foresight of future robot designs that includes ideas and concerns that are not feasible or realistic. Our aim is to exemplify a complementing perspective, by shedding light on two different robotic designs. We discuss their relation to specific use practices and user experiences, and provide some early ethical reflections and design concerns

A complementing approach for identifying ethical issues in care robotics – grounding ethics in practical use

We use a long-term study of a robotic eating-aid for disabled users to illustrate how empirical use give rise to a set of ethical issues that might be overlooked in ethic discussions based on theoretical extrapolation of the current state-of-the-art in robotics. This approach provides an important complement to the existing robot ethics by revealing new issues as well as providing actionable guidance for current and future robot design. We discuss our material in relation to the literature on robot ethics, specifically the risk of robots performing care taking tasks and thus causing increased isolation for care recipients. Our data identifies a different set of ethical issues such as independence, privacy, and identity where robotics, if carefully designed and developed, can make positive contributions

How do you Play with a Robotic Toy Animal? A long-term study of Pleo

Pleo is one of the more advanced interactive toys currently available for the home market, taking the form of a robotic dinosaur. We present an exploratory study of how it was interacted with and reflected upon in the homes of six families during 2 to 10 months. Our analysis emphasizes a discrepancy between the participants’ initial desires to borrow a Pleo and what they reported later on about their actual experiences. Further, the data suggests an apparent tension between participants expecting the robot to work as a ‘toy’ while making consistent comparisons with real pet animals. We end by discussing a series of implications for design of this category of toys, in order to better maintain interest and engagement over time

Hospital robot at work: something alien or an intelligent colleague?

LIRE

GlowBots: Robots that Evolve Relationships

GlowBots are small wheeled robots that develop complex relationships between each other and with their owner. They develop attractive patterns which are affected both by user interaction and communication between the robots. The project shows how robots can interact with humans in subtle and sustainable ways for entertainment and enjoyment

4th Space as Smart Information Ecology with Design Requirements of Sustainability, Ethics and Inclusion

New social environments are emerging as spaces and places where work and life at home are no longer separate. Digital spaces and physical places have become intertwined: the 1st space is home, the 2nd is work, the 3rd is informal meeting places, while the 4th space represents different combinations of the previous ones. This paper describes the need for value-based designs of the 4th space through a transdisciplinary approach. We argue for a need to understand human interactions in physical and digital spaces from a user-centered perspective, meaning to understand user needs and preferences of digital content in physical and virtual spaces. Moreover, we point out the need to address identity, ethical, and legal requirements of these types of spaces. Finally, we address the need to connect emerging technologies such as AI, and design approaches such a gamification, with cognitive, structural, economic, social and technological challenges and opportunities of the 4th space

Agent archetypes for human-drone interaction: Social robots or objects with intent?

Departing from our earlier work on conceptualizing "social drones," we enrich the discussion using notions of "agent archetypes" and "objects with intent" from recent interaction design literature. We briefly unpack these notions, and argue that they are useful in characterizing both design intentions and human perceptions. Thus they have the potential to inform the creation and study of HDI artifacts. Upon these notions, we synthesize relevant implications and directions for design research, in the form of research questions and design challenges. These questions and challenges inform our current and future work. We submit our resources, arguments, aims, and hypotheses to the iHDI 2020 community as a reflective exercise, aiming to refine our work in synergy with other participants

What Negative Space has to do with Design Fixations in HCI Research

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is a design-oriented research field, articulating and contributing to design knowledge. This research field has its own perspective of what a relevant design solution is or which design methods that are suitable, which does not necessarily match how for example industrial designers would understand or describe design. We aim to extract the core of design as an activity, in order to clarify what design skills may involve. This paper describes design activities, and articulates how negative space as an artistic skill is a prerequisite to achieve re-framing a design situation and to facilitate successful co-creation of wicked design challenges. The notion of negative space is traditionally associated to art and perception, for example used in professional practices in music, art and design. We illustrate how making use of negative space supports avoiding design fixations, and increase the chance of successfully addressing wicked design problems, such as sustainable solutions for societal challenges. We argue that HCI research would benefit from understanding and applying negative space in design challenges and illustrate how this can be done