Participatory Design | Tampere University

Co-designing with youngsters

The project explored the foundations of human-robot interaction from the human-centered design perspective. It was carried out in collaboration with Tampere University’s Robo Studio and the special theme this year was co-designing with youngsters. The aim was to improve the interaction between social robots and their users through participatory design.

Timeline

Oct 2023 - Dec 2023

Team

UX Designers

Sociology major

Human- Tech Interaction major

Tools

Mural

Canva

Visual Studio

Whiteboard

Tasks

Co-design workshop

User research, study

Data Analysis

Design implications

Concept design & Implementation

Highlights

Robot Selection: Our team kicked off the project by selecting Spot from Boston Dynamics as the social robot to work with. Spot is not a conventional social robot and we thought it would be interesting to see how users would interact with it in a social setting.

Co-design Workshop: Next step was to meet the users as part of a co-design workshop and get a taste of participatory design on the ground. Three groups of teenagers from a local high school were greeted by our team, including Spot! It was a chance for them to interact with a world-class robot and for us to observe their interaction first hand. This was followed by a discussion, murals on the whiteboard and a lot of brainstorming. It was incredible to have a representation of our user group sitting right with us. There were no assumptions, no guesses, every thought was welcome.

Data Analysis & Design Implications: Myriads of thoughts and suggestions on Post-its were converted into an Affinity Diagram and three main reactions of the users towards Spot were identified: Anxiety (unknowns), Utility (Spot is very useful!) and Empathy (dog-like features). These reactions led our team to the idea of incorporating sounds associated with various actions into Spot. We wanted to give Spot a voice! Inclusion of sound would make Spot less unpredictable and reduce user anxiety around it. Presence of a variety of sounds would also increase the empathy element towards Spot.

Following these insights, the design implications were formulated:

  • Spot must interact with users in a way that makes them aware of its intentions

  • Any design additions to Spot should be as natural as possible and blend in with the existing form

  • Visibility & clarity in operation will be treated as crucial

Concept Implementation

To put our ideas into action for the hackathon and Robo Carnival, we prepared a ‘Spot in the factory’ scenario. This involved, Spot getting ready for work, starting its inspection of the factory floor, reacting to passers by, providing indication of turning left or right in its path and signaling issues or events such as ‘low battery’, mission accomplished, greetings etc. All these tasks were complimented by a particular sound or music from our group’s sound board. Sounds chosen were self-explanatory at best and gave the factory workers a little insight into Spot’s mind. It may not be able to talk to people around it, but our team made sure Spot communicated in other ways.

The group of teenagers from the co-design workshop visited us again at the Robo Carnival event where the concept implementation took place. A concept they helped brainstorm and curate from scratch! They were delighted to see Spot communicating with the users through sound and music and imagined all kinds of other scenarios where this could be useful for example, at school!

Final Thoughts

This project explored the participatory design strategy, involving high school students in the design process. Students’ initial interaction with Spot during a co-design workshop, raised concerns of unpredictability and anxiety due to the absence of sounds on it. Based on these revelations, the team together with the students set out to make Spot audible and predictable. The project objective of improving the interaction between Spot and its users was successfully achieved through the design of a sound board corresponding to Spot’s actions. Finally, the students were able to witness the manifestation of their ideas on Spot at the Robo Carnival.

Future Work

Adding auditory feedback to Spot greatly improved its social interactions with users and was considered a meaningful design improvement. However, auditory feedback is not a perfect solution and has its own limitations, such as its redundance for users with hearing difficulties and in noisy environments. Therefore, the next step in this project will be exploring alternate feedback methods. This stage will also be co-designed but with a different set of users, possibly the elderly!