Daily Note: In-Home Social Robot Design

These notes are a summary of concepts presented in “Designing for In-Home Long-Term Family-Robot Interactions: Family Preferences, Connection-Making, and Privacy. ”

Bengisu Cagiltay. 2023. Designing for In-Home Long-Term Family-Robot Interactions: Family Preferences, Connection-Making, and Privacy. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 491, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3577035

  1. Role of the Robot
    • Acts as a companion
      • Playmate, reading partner, conversational confidant
    • Functions as an assistant
      • Supports day-to-day tasks like cooking, homework, and tool usage
    • Participates in group interactions and shared recreational activities
  2. Family Dynamics and Privacy Concerns
    • Conversational privacy
      • Managing sensitive information shared in private or group settings
    • Privacy controller
      • Models privacy boundaries using contextual metadata (e.g., sentiment, relationships, topics).
    • Communication Privacy Management (CPM) Theory
      • Explains boundary setting, co-ownership of private information, privacy violations, and resolution strategies
    • Family Systems Theory (FST)
      • Focuses on how relationships and roles within the family system influence individuals’ emotional and behavioral issues
  3. Design Across Family Contexts
    • Contexts include
      • Nuclear families
      • Inter-generational families
      • Single-parent families
    • Examines the robot’s influence on group dynamics and processes within different family structures
  4. Interaction Dynamics
    • Initial Interactions
      • Children engage with the robot by dancing, playing songs, asking questions, and playing icebreaker games
    • Collaborative Activities
      • A board game designed for family playtime which includes robot
      • Combines verbal and physical activities
      • Supports group interactions, awareness of group changes (e.g., members joining or leaving)
      • Uses verbal, pro-social support to promote turn-taking and sharing
    • Methodological Analysis Frameworks
    • Grounded theory
      • An inductive, theory discovery methodology that allows the researcher to develop a theoretical account of the general features of a topic while simultaneously grounding the account in empirical observations or data (Glaser & Strauss, 1967)
    • Reflexive Thematic Analysis
    • Reflexive thematic analysis is a methodological approach within qualitative research that emphasizes the role of researcher self-awareness and critical reflection throughout the analysis process