Developing a Prototyping Method for Involving Children in the Design of Classroom Robots
International Journal of Social Robotics
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369
Developing a Prototyping Method for Involving Children in the Design of Classroom Robots
Mohammad Obaid 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Gökçe Elif Baykal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Asım Evren Yantaç 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Wolmet Barendregt 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
0 Wolmet Barendregt
1 Asım Evren Yantaç
2 Gökçe Elif Baykal
3 Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg , Gothenburg , Sweden
4 KUAR, Media and Visual Arts Department, Koç University , Istanbul , Turkey
5 Design, Technology and Society Program, Koç University , Istanbul , Turkey
6 Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University , Uppsala , Sweden
Including children in the design of technologies that will have an impact on their daily lives is one of the pillars of user-centered design. Educational robots are an example of such a technology where children's involvement is important. However, the form in which this involvement should take place is still unclear. Children do not have a lot of experience with educational robots yet, while they do have some ideas of what robot could be like from popular media, such as BayMax from the Big Hero 6 movie. In this paper we describe two pilot studies to inform the development of an elicitation method focusing on form factors; a first study in which we have asked children between 8 and 15 years old to design their own classroom robot using a toolkit, the Robo2Box, and a second study where we have compared the use of the Robo2Box toolkit and clay as elicitation methods. We present the results of the two studies, and discuss the implications of the outcomes to inform further development of the Robo2Box for prototyping classroom robots by children.
Classroom robots; Prototyping; Design; Toolkit; Children
1 Introduction
One of the early, and important, steps to the interaction design
iterative process is to collect the user requirements of an
envisioned solution/product. The importance of this lays in the
fact that it enables designers to envision their ideas towards
the users’ needs, thus eliminating usability or UX obstacles
later in the process. Similarly, when designing technologies
for children, their input can be of high value throughout
the process [
7,18
]. More recently, robotic technologies are
increasingly entering children’s daily environments, and they
may also enter classrooms environments in the near future
as several studies have shown that they have several learning
benefits [
1,3,13
]. Indeed, children themselves also tend to
portray robots in a familiar context, such as the school [4].
However, there are also some hurdles when involving
children, or adults for that matter, in the design of future
technologies, such as classroom robots. People find it hard
to imagine the use of future technologies since they haven’t
experienced them yet and they are not always aware of
the state-of-the-art developments in areas such as robotics.
Therefore their design ideas may either be very basic, or
heavily influenced by pictures in the media, such as films [
2
]. An
additional problem is with imagining the form factors and
affordances or the physical attributes of their designs. In this
paper we describe two pilot studies to inform the
development of an elicitation method focusing on form factors; a first
study in which we have asked children to design their own
classroom robot using a toolkit, the Robo2Box, and a
second study where we have compared the use of the Robo2Box
toolkit and clay as elicitation methods. In the remainder of
this paper we first discuss related work on design elicitation
methods for children, and their involvement in the design of
robots in particular. Thereafter we present the design of the
Robo2Box and describe the results of the empirical study
of children’s robot designs using the Robo2Box. Finally we
present the second pilot study where we have compared the
use of the Robo2Box with clay as a free-format design
material.
2 Related Work
The Human–Robot Interaction (HRI) research community
has focused on defining the design requirements and
implications for robotic features that include physical and behavioral
aspects. Often, investigations are conducted based on
laboratory studies using commercially available robots [
8
], or
the focus is mainly on children’s attitudes towards robots
rather than how they would envision a robot themselves (for
example, [
16
]). However, some researchers have focused
more specifically on children’s own expressions of what is
important in the design of robots. Below, we will provide an
overview of related research on children’s design methods,
and thereafter we will give an overview of related important
studies on involving children in robot design.
2.1 Designing with Children
While there is a limited number of studies actively
involving children in the design of robots, it has become rather
common to involve them in the design of many other
technologies. According to Druin [6, p. 18] (...truncated)