Can We Keep Him Forever? Teens’ Engagement and Desire for Emotional Connection with a Social Robot

Abstract

Today’s teens will most likely be the first generation to spend a lifetime living and interacting with both mechanical and social robots. Although human–robot interaction has been explored in children, adults, and seniors, examination of teen–robot interaction has been limited. In this paper, we provide evidence that teen–robot interaction is a unique area of inquiry and designing for teens is categorically different from other types of human–robot interaction. Using human-centered design, our team is developing a social robot to gather stress and mood data from teens in a public high school. To better understand teen–robot interaction, we conducted an interaction study in the wild to explore and capture teens’ interactions with a low-fidelity social robot prototype. Then, through group interviews we gathered data regarding their perceptions about social robots. Although we anticipated minimal engagement due to the low fidelity of our prototype, teens showed strong engagement and lengthy interactions. Additionally, teens expressed thoughtful articulations of how a social robot could be emotionally supportive. We conclude the paper by discussing future areas for consideration when designing for teen–robot interaction.

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International Journal of Social Robotics (2020) 12:65–77
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00539-6
Can We Keep Him Forever? Teens’ Engagement andDesire
forEmotional Connection withaSocial Robot
ElinA.Björling1 · EmmaRose2 · AndrewDavidson1· RachelRen1· DorothyWong1
Accepted: 1 March 2019 / Published online: 14 March 2019
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract
Today’s teens will most likely be the first generation to spend a lifetime living and interacting with both mechanical and
social robots. Although human–robot interaction has been explored in children, adults, and seniors, examination of teen–robot
interaction has been limited. In this paper, we provide evidence that teen–robot interaction is a unique area of inquiry and
designing for teens is categorically different from other types of human–robot interaction. Using human-centered design, our
team is developing a social robot to gather stress and mood data from teens in a public high school. To better understand teen–
robot interaction, we conducted an interaction study in the wild to explore and capture teens’ interactions with a low-fidelity
social robot prototype. Then, through group interviews we gathered data regarding their perceptions about social robots.
Although we anticipated minimal engagement due to the low fidelity of our prototype, teens showed strong engagement
and lengthy interactions. Additionally, teens expressed thoughtful articulations of how a social robot could be emotionally
supportive. We conclude the paper by discussing future areas for consideration when designing for teen–robot interaction.
Keywords Teen–robot interaction· Engagement· Prototype· Human-centered design
1 Introduction
Many North American adolescents have been surrounded
by technology since birth. And, their relationships with
current technology are unlike previous generations [1] as
much of their communication is now digital [2, 3]. Despite
teens’ strong relationship with technology, they remain a
fairly underexplored population when it comes to technology
interaction and design. Adults have always been the primary
focus of design in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). It
was not until the late 1990s that children became a focus in
the budding field of Child-Computer Interaction [4]. How-
ever, researchers in this field focused primarily on children
10 and under, still overlooking teen users. It wasn’t until the
new millennium that researchers began focusing on teens as
a unique population in technology [4].
Similar to HCI, teenagers are an audience that is over-
looked inhuman–robot interaction (HRI). While there is
a great deal of research in HRI related to children [5–7],
adults [8, 9] and seniors [10, 11], few studies have explicitly
explored interactions between teens and robots. Social robots
have been found to be effective with vulnerable populations
such as children with autism [6, 7, 12], adults suffering from
trauma [8], to reduce loneliness [13] and depression [14].
Teens are also a unique and vulnerable population due to
depression [15, 16] and stress [17, 18].Given teens’ already
existing relationships with technology, social robotics seems
a worthwhile exploration in an effort to provide support for
this vulnerable population.
Project EMAR is an interdisciplinary, participatory,
human-centered design project to design and deploy a
social robot that captures stress and mood levels from teens
in a school setting while simultaneously providing a micro-
interaction to address stress. The Ecological Momentary
* Elin A. Björling
bjorling@uw.edu
Emma Rose
ejrose@uw.edu
Andrew Davidson
adavid7@uw.edu
Rachel Ren
rachren@uw.edu
Dorothy Wong
dwong51@uw.edu
1 University ofWashington, Seattle, USA
2 University ofWashington Tacoma, Tacoma, USA
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