Designing Social Educational Robots: How User Participation Shapes Acceptance

Abstract

Recent trends in human-robot interaction emphasize the importance of user participation to foster acceptance. However, current research overlooks the influence of varying participation levels and lacks insights for non-participating users. We conducted two studies to explore user involvement in designing educational robots. The first study examined how different levels affected users' acceptance. Highly involved participants contributed to context, requirements, and prototyping, while those with low involvement only prototyped within predetermined parameters. Results showed that increased participation led to significantly higher utilitarian attitudes, hedonic attitudes, and intention to use. To validate this for non-involved users, a second study was conducted to assess whether prototypes designed with higher participation positively impacted non-participatory groups. Surprisingly, no significant differences were revealed. This finding raises questions about how participatory design processes should be structured to yield outcomes applicable to the broader user group not directly involved in the design process.