December 17th, 2020 – 4pm (CET, Vienna) – Selma Šabanović (Indiana University Bloomington, USA) 

Robots for us: Participatory and community-centered design of robots

Abstract

Our visions of having robots present in day to day use in schools, homes, and workplaces are becoming increasingly technically achievable. This brings to the fore concerns about how we can design robots to not only operate in these everyday contexts, but also to fit the needs, practices, values, and preferences of potential users. So far, a majority of user and design research in human-robot interaction has focused on individual responses to robots, which in aggregate represent more generalized attitudes and needs. Robot design, however, rarely takes into account the organizational and community dynamics that robot users, robots, and other stakeholders are a part of. In this talk, we will discuss how organizational and community dynamics and goals affect robot adoption and use, and how we can take them into account in the course of robot design. We will particularly discuss examples of participatory and community-centered design approaches for social robots.

Bio

Selma Šabanović is an Associate Professor of Informatics and Cognitive Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research combines the critical study of computing with research on human-robot interaction (HRI). She particularly focuses on the design, use, and consequences of socially interactive robots in different cultural contexts. Her work has explored social robot applications in healthcare, education, and the home, and includes comparative studies of robot design and user perceptions in the US and Japan. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction. She recently co-authored the book “Human-Robot Interaction: An Introduction”, published by Cambridge University Press.

with Astrid Weiss (TU Wien) as conversation partner. 

Recordings of selected previous lectures are available on youtube.

Please register for this free lecture series (held on Zoom) here: https://forms.gle/NGH6bhU4w3uGV8ki9