Developing a Prototyping Method for Involving Children in the Design of Classroom Robots

International Journal of Social Robotics, Nov 2017

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.

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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)


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Mohammad Obaid, Gökçe Elif Baykal, Asım Evren Yantaç, Wolmet Barendregt. Developing a Prototyping Method for Involving Children in the Design of Classroom Robots, International Journal of Social Robotics, 2017, pp. 1-13, DOI: 10.1007/s12369-017-0450-7