Designing Robots with the Context in Mind- One Design Does Not Fit All

Robots' visual qualities (VQs) impact people's perception of their characteristics and affect users' behaviors and attitudes toward the robot. Recent years point toward a growing need for Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) in various contexts and functions, interacting with various users. Since SAR types have functional differences, the user experience must vary by the context of use, functionality, user characteristics, and environmental conditions. Still, SAR manufacturers often design and deploy the same robotic embodiment for diverse contexts. We argue that the visual design of SARs requires a more scientific approach considering their multiple evolving roles in future society. In this work, we define four contextual layers: the domain in which the SAR exists, the physical environment, its intended users, and the robot's role. Via an online questionnaire, we collected potential users' expectations regarding the desired characteristics and visual qualities of four different SARs: a service robot for an assisted living/retirement residence facility, a medical assistant robot for a hospital environment, a COVID-19 officer robot, and a personal assistant robot for domestic use. Results indicated that users' expectations differ regarding the robot's desired characteristics and the anticipated visual qualities for each context and use case. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Too Hot to Enter: Investigating Users’ Attitudes Toward Thermoscanners in COVID Times

One of the most evident symptoms of the SARS-CoV-2 infection is fever. In response to the ongoing health emergency, Thermoscanners are becoming more and more popular to measure citizens’ body temperatures in many public places. Indeed, they can be a useful tool for preventing the spreading of Covid-19. Most of the current research focused on understanding people’s decisions in the use of protective behaviors related to physical health and health risk perceptions, but still the acceptance and the user-experience related to the adoption and use of thermoscanner is unexplored. This paper explores the attitudes and behaviors towards a thermoscanner located at a public office in two different scenarios: a larger office accessible to employees and visitors and a smaller office with only employees. To this end, data in the field were collected, including self-reported quantitative ratings (i.e., questionnaire) and behavioral observations. Overall, participants (N = 206) showed a general positive attitude toward using the thermoscanner in public spaces and a propensity to comply with the rule of measuring temperature. Interestingly, external users report to perceive the public environment safer thanks to presence of the thermoscanner compared to employees. This finding suggests that employees have clearer the preventive role of the termoscanner. Finally, this study provides a series of guidelines for implementing an efficient large-scale monitoring tool on the territory, enhancing a correct users behavior. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Teleworker's Perception of Technology Use for Collaborative and Social During the COVID-19 Pandemic

With the flourish of collaborative and social technologies in the market since the pandemic, there is limited understanding of user's attitudes towards these technologies. We aim to understand teleworkers' perceptions of technology use during the pandemic and interviewed 46 teleworkers. We found that teleworkers generally hold a positive attitude towards social technologies and are creative to use these technologies to meet their social needs;they express overall negative feelings about remote collaboration technologies, though online communication flattens the communication hierarchy in the organization. The pandemic amplifies the extant challenges and highlights the shortcomings of technological design in well-established teleworking research and remote collaboration work. We suggest that future design should 1) combine and commercialize solutions that are well-grounded in prior work;2) consider scenarios that are typically missed and can be easily replaced with collocated interaction from the pre-pandemic context into the forced teleworking context. © Cai et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd.