"The superhero of the university": experience-driven design and field study of the university guidance robot

Robots have recently gained popularity in customer service. Especially social robots are nowadays utilized in healthcare, elderly homes and schools. Although it is crucial to design social robots according to well-defined user experience goals, research related to experience-driven design of social robots is still scarce. Experience-Driven Design (EDD) is a framework to design interaction for technology based on certain goals, known as experience goals. In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of the university guidance robot based on the user experience goals defined in previous research. The experience goals are nurture, fellowship and recreation. We designed applications, interaction, and robot's behavior to support the fulfillment of the experience goals. The social robot Pepper served as a platform for the university guidance robot. The evaluation was conducted as a field study in a university campus with 32 university students during the orientation week. According to our findings, the university guide robot successfully evoked nurture, fellowship and recreation among participants.

[1]  Michael Chui,et al.  Where machines could replace humans - and where they can't (yet) , 2016 .

[2]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  An affective guide robot in a shopping mall , 2009, 2009 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[3]  David Harris Smith,et al.  The Death and Lives of hitchBOT: The Design and Implementation of a Hitchhiking Robot , 2017, Leonardo.

[4]  Selma Sabanovic,et al.  Designing robots in the wild , 2014, HRI 2014.

[5]  Takanori Shibata,et al.  Living With Seal Robots—Its Sociopsychological and Physiological Influences on the Elderly at a Care House , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[6]  Lundy Lewis,et al.  Ethical Implications of Using the Paro Robot, with a Focus on Dementia Patient Care , 2011, Human-Robot Interaction in Elder Care.

[7]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  Can a social robot help children's understanding of science in classrooms? , 2014, HAI.

[8]  Daniel Cremers,et al.  SPENCER: A Socially Aware Service Robot for Passenger Guidance and Help in Busy Airports , 2015, FSR.

[9]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Robots at home: Understanding long-term human-robot interaction , 2008, 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[10]  Gabriele Trovato,et al.  Introducing IOmi - A Female Robot Hostess for Guidance in a University Environment , 2016, ICSR.

[11]  Heli Väätäjä,et al.  The Fuzzy Front End of Experience Design: Eliciting and Communicating Experience Goals , 2015, OZCHI.

[12]  Staffan Björk,et al.  Designing for fun and play: exploring possibilities in design for gamification , 2013, Gamification.

[13]  Yan Zhang,et al.  Qualitative Analysis of Content by , 2005 .

[14]  N. Sharkey,et al.  Granny and the robots: ethical issues in robot care for the elderly , 2012, Ethics and Information Technology.

[15]  Kerstin Dautenhahn,et al.  Would You Trust a (Faulty) Robot? Effects of Error, Task Type and Personality on Human-Robot Cooperation and Trust , 2015, 2015 10th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[16]  Andrés Lucero,et al.  Applying the PLEX framework in designing for playfulness , 2011, DPPI.

[17]  Pieter Meyns,et al.  Do a humanoid robot and music increase the motivation to perform physical activity? A quasi-experimental cohort in typical developing children and preliminary findings in hospitalized children in neutropenia , 2019, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[18]  Vicente Julián,et al.  PHAROS—PHysical Assistant RObot System , 2018, Sensors.

[19]  Wolfram Burgard,et al.  The Interactive Museum Tour-Guide Robot , 1998, AAAI/IAAI.

[20]  ZiemkeTom,et al.  User Experience in Social Human-Robot Interaction , 2017 .

[21]  M. Joosse,et al.  Cultural differences in how an engagement-seeking robot should approach a group of people , 2014, CABS '14.

[22]  Cynthia Breazeal,et al.  Designing sociable robots , 2002 .

[23]  Barbara M. Wildemuth,et al.  Applications of Social Research Methods to Questions in Information and Library Science , 2009 .

[24]  Aino Ahtinen,et al.  Nice surprise, more present than a machine: Experiences evoked by a social robot for guidance and edutainment at a city service point , 2018, MindTrek.

[25]  Andrés Lucero,et al.  Reflections on experience-driven design: a case study on designing for playful experiences , 2013, DPPI.

[26]  Kaisa Väänänen,et al.  Experience-Driven Design of Ambiences for Future Pop Up Workspaces , 2015, AmI.

[27]  Staffan Björk,et al.  Designing gamification: creating gameful and playful experiences , 2013, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[28]  Tom Ziemke,et al.  User Experience in Social Human-Robot Interaction , 2017, Int. J. Ambient Comput. Intell..