Abstract
This paper presents an exploratory study on children’s contributions to the design of a robotic teaching assistant for use in the classroom. The study focuses on two main questions: 1) How do children’s designs differ from interaction designers’? 2) How are children’s designs influenced by their knowledge of robotics (or lack thereof)? Using a creative drawing approach we collected robot drawings and design discussions from 53 participants divided into 11 groups: 5 groups of interaction designers (24 participants), 3 groups of children with robotics knowledge (14 participants), and 3 groups of children without formal robotics knowledge (15 participants). These data revealed that (1) interaction designers envisioned a small or child-sized non-gendered animal- or cartoon-like robot, with clear facial features to express emotions and social cues while children envisioned a bigger human-machine robot (2) children without formal robotics knowledge, envisioned a robot in the form of a rather formal adult-sized human teacher with some robotic features while children with robotics knowledge envisioned a more machine-like child-sized robot. This study thus highlights the importance of including children in the design of robots for which they are the intended users. Furthermore, since children’s designs may be influenced by their knowledge of robotics it is important to be aware of children’s backgrounds and take those into account when including children in the design process.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Dautenhahn, K.: Human-robot interaction. In: Soegaard, M., Dam, R.F. (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. The Interaction Design Foundation (2014)
Lee, H.R., Sung, J., Sabanovic, S., Han, J.: Cultural design of domestic robots: a study of user expectations in korea and the united states. In: 2012 IEEE RO-MAN, pp. 803–808, September 2012
Mubin, O., Stevens, C.J., Shahid, S., Al Mahmud, A., Dong, J.J.: A review of the applicability of robots in education. Journal of Technology in Education and Learning 1 (2013)
Riek, L.D., Howard, D.: A code of ethics for the human-robot interaction profession. In: Proceedings of We Robot (2014)
Sciutti, A., Rea, F., Sandini, G.: When you are young, (robot’s) looks matter. developmental changes in the desired properties of a robot friend. In: The 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2014 RO-MAN, pp. 567–573, August 2014
Shin, N., Kim, S.: Learning about, from, and with robots: students’ perspectives. In: The 16th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human interactive Communication, RO-MAN 2007, pp. 1040–1045, August 2007
Woods, S.: Exploring the design space of robots: Childrens perspectives. Interacting with Computers 18, 1390–1418 (2006)
Woods, S., Davis, M., Dautenhahn, K., Schulz, J.: Can robots be used as a vehicle for the projection of socially sensitive issues? exploring childrens attitudes towards robots through stories. In: 2005 IEEE International Workshop on Robots and Human Interactive Communication (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Obaid, M., Barendregt, W., Alves-Oliveira, P., Paiva, A., Fjeld, M. (2015). Designing Robotic Teaching Assistants: Interaction Design Students’ and Children’s Views. In: Tapus, A., André, E., Martin, JC., Ferland, F., Ammi, M. (eds) Social Robotics. ICSR 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9388. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_50
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25554-5_50
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25553-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25554-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)