Project: Designing a Robot Through Prototyping in the Wild
Purpose: A research project to continue the Breakbot study through a second iteration.
Team: Selma Šabanović | Sarah Reeder | Bobak Kechavarzi | Zachary Schall-Zimmerman
Duration: 10 weeks
Completed: August 2010
Methods: Arduino prototyping, interviews, surveys, experience sampling, Microsoft product reaction cards, focus groups, PHP/MySQL prototyping
Late Breaking Report & Poster at HRI2011

A continuation of the Breakbot project, the purpose of this study was to build and test a prototype we call "Dewey." In order to determine whether the collocated presence of a robot would encourage compliance with a break-reminder system, we studied participant reactions to two versions of our prototype: an embodied version built on the Arduino platform, and a Web-based version implemented using PHP and MySQL. While technical difficulties prevented our coming to any statistically significant conclusions, feedback from participants was strongly in favor of the embodied design. In a future study, we will compare two versions of the embodied prototype to determine whether the robot's behaviors might affect compliance.

For this project I helped design and conduct the study, was responsible for programming the online version of Dewey in PHP, and designed the poster.

Abstract:

This paper describes the design and initial evaluation of Dewey, a do-it-yourself (DIY) robot aimed to help users manage break-taking in the workplace. We describe the application domain, prototyping and technical implementation, and evaluation of Dewey in a real office environment to show how research using simple prototypes can provide valuable insights into user needs and practices.