Participatory Research Principles in Human-Centered Design: Engaging Teens in the Co-Design of a Social Robot

Abstract

Social robots are emerging as an important intervention for a variety of vulnerable populations. However, engaging participants in the design of social robots in a way that is ethical, meaningful, and rigorous can be challenging. Many current methods in human–robotic interaction rely on laboratory practices, often experimental, and many times involving deception which could erode trust in vulnerable populations. Therefore, in this paper, we share our human-centered design methodology informed by a participatory approach, drawing on three years of data from a project aimed to design and develop a social robot to improve the mental health of teens. We present three method cases from the project that describe creative and age appropriate methods to gather contextually valid data from a teen population. Specific techniques include design research, scenario and script writing, prototyping, and teens as operators and collaborative actors. In each case, we describe the method and its implementation and discuss the potential strengths and limitations. We conclude by situating these methods by presenting a set of recommended participatory research principles that may be appropriate for designing new technologies with vulnerable populations.

Service robots for affective labor: a sociology of labor perspective

“…This approach has already been well developed and used in HRI (see e.g. Bertel et al 2013;Björling and Rose 2019), and using PD would enable us to likewise explore, on an empirical ground, open and interpret issues like those discussed above in relation to emotion-rule dissonance. It is promising that, in recent years, participatory design approaches are gaining popularity in the HRI community (Lee et al 2017).…”

Exploring Teens as Robot Operators, Users and Witnesses in the Wild

“…Photos and videos were taken for research purposes and parents and teens had the option to also opt in to give permission for the photos to be used for social media and research publications. Given the importance of maintaining trusting relationships with teens (Björling and Rose, 2019 ) and their school communities, no deception was used in our study. In fact, teens were told up front about our research and our project, our intention for this particular study, as well as our process of using a participatory, human-centered design approach.…”

A critique of robotics in health care

“…The "users" appear in a very specific role-as those to be treated-who are integrated in rationalized routines. Although user-centered or even participatory methods are increasingly applied in HRI context (Hornecker et al 2020;Björling and Rose 2019;Lee et al 2017;Lee and Riek 2018), the use of such methods itself does not protect against decontextualization of the social situation of use. Both examples of care robotics projects presented here understood themselves as user-centered design.…”

“…Even though, in recent times, more projects have sought to align their research efforts with actual care needs (Sabanovic 2014;Riek 2017; Jeon 2020), criticize anthropomorphic robot ideas (Duffy 2003;Sandini and Sciutti 2018;Weber 2005) or use participatory methods (Hornecker et al 2020;Björling and Rose 2019;Lee et al 2017;Lee and Riek 2018) this is still not a mandatory requirement in mainstream robotics research. This discrepancy between the poor suitability and acceptance of care robots and the massive political and scientific investments in this field makes care robotics an especially pertinent site for critical inquiry.…”