Daily Note: User Engagement with Intelligent Systems

These notes are a summary of concepts in “Why Do They Refuse to Use My Robot?: Reasons for Non- Use Derived from a Long-Term Home Study.”

Maartje de Graaf, Somaya Ben Allouch, and Jan van Dijk. 2017. Why Do They Refuse to Use My Robot? Reasons for Non-Use Derived from a Long-Term Home Study. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’17). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 224–233. https://doi.org/10.1145/2909824.3020236

  1. User Engagement Strategies
    • Usefulness and ease of use
      • Provide practical and intuitive solutions to immediate needs
    • Adaptability and intelligence
      • Personalize interactions based on user behavior
    • Enjoyment and attractiveness
      • Ensure engaging and visually appealing designs
    • Social presence and sociability
      • Incorporate elements that mimic human interaction
    • Trust and status
      • Build credibility and align with user aspirations
    • Gratifications beyond smartphones
      • Offer unique features unavailable on mobile devices
    • Companionship and animacy
      • Develop socially supportive functionalities
    • Addressing anxiety and innovativeness
      • Minimize user apprehensions and encourage exploration
    • Self-efficacy and adaptability
      • Empower users to leverage system capabilities effectively
    • Sustained novelty and motivation
      • Regular updates and fresh experiences
  2. Countering Disenchantment and Discontinuance
    • Common reasons for disenchantment
      • Over-intelligence
      • Lack of fun
      • Poor interaction design
    • Restrictions and problems
      • Address technical barriers, e.g., connectivity and usability.
      • Needs not satisfied: Enhance functionality to meet unmet user needs
      • Replacement by other devices: Provide distinct value over existing technologies
    • End of novelty
      • Keep users engaged with innovative updates
    • Addressing specific concerns
      • Language barriers
      • Privacy concerns
      • Uncanny valley in robot behavior
  3. User perceptions in social contexts
    • Robot as a tool
      • Align user expectations with task-oriented capabilities
    • Social influence and norms
      • peer recommendations and societal acceptance
    • Impact of attitudes and prior expectations
      • Manage expectations to avoid disappointment
  4. Addressing Limitations of Current Intelligent Systems
    • Simplistic interactions
      • Enhance with richer social and functional behaviors
    • Mismatch in expectations
      • Reduce gaps between anticipated and actual performance
    • Technical barriers
      • Improve accessibility and operational reliability
    • Personalization challenges
      • Increase system adaptability to varied user preferences
  5. Research opportunities
    • Expectation-Confirmation Model and Theory of Planned Behavior
      • Understand the gap between initial adoption and continued use
      • Investigate belief structures impacting long-term engagement
    • Defining “long-term”
      • Explore duration differences across technologies
      • Examine how novelty and familiarization phases affect usage
    • User skills and digital divides
      • Assess the required digital competencies for effective robot use
      • Address societal inequalities in access and familiarity with technology
  6. Design Implications
    • Human-centric design
      • Focus on user needs, preferences, and behaviors
    • Incremental autonomy
      • Allow users to adjust intelligent behavior gradually
    • Targeted functionality
      • Develop features that solve specific, unmet user problems
    • Interactive feedback
      • Provide real-time responses to user inputs to build trust