The methodological approach of Human-Centered Design, applied to the design of assistive robots, allows to know all those needs, beliefs, expectations and desires of people who often remain silent. The involvement of the user during the preliminary design phases facilitates the designer’s empathy who, through various methods (interviews, focus groups, ethnography, observation, etc.) can investigate and explore emotions, fears and all those abstract factors and that can not only acquired through quantitative methods and statistical data. Appropriate knowledge of the user, of the context in which the interaction takes place and of the activities to be performed, could favor acceptance and increase the attitude and intention of people to use assistive robots. this process would be even more effective if the designer had a general knowledge of the factors, constructs and variables of acceptance from the point of view of Human-Robot Interaction. In fact, although working closely with a multidisciplinary team composed of engineers, computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, etc., the designer, as a catalyst for the different professional skills involved in the project, should also know the evaluation methods of the HRI: this would allow him not only to broaden his design vision but, above all, to highlight the most important variables and constructs in relation to users, activities, context and type of interaction.
These, if compared with the qualitative data collected through the preliminary evaluation methods (according to the HDC approach), can generate crucial project suggestions, as well as provide specific directions to the project brief, based on information related to the specific case and detail on which the professionals work. In summary, the systematization of the data collected from the preliminary research phase of the HCD and of the HRI evaluations in the experimental phase (therefore, subsequent to both the design phase and the intermediate evaluation phase foreseen by the iterative cycle of the UX), can shorten the distances between the two disciplines and bring them together, in order to design assistive and social robots that are truly accepted and suitable for the specific needs of people.
Therefore, the innovation in assistive robotics becomes an innovation of meaning (Verganti, 2017), suggests new whys, or new reasons why people should use something: it gives new values to both problems and design solutions: meaningful innovation brings an original interpretation of what is relevant and significant for the market, or a new direction in which to go. In this perspective, design would provide that contribution to innovation and competitiveness that was recognized by the European Union (2009) in the context of the Commission Staff Working Document, in which we look at the “Design as a driver of user- centered innovation”, that is as a discipline and an approach whose activity is focused on the needs of the user, on his aspirations and skills which must then be integrated with environmental, safety and accessibility considerations in products, services and systems. The challenge of Design is therefore to consider in the project brief the needs and expectations, declared and/or tacit, of users, but also to foresee their interaction with the proposed system/service. The purpose is not only to communicate the information but also the personal stories and experiences that contribute to generating the complex human-robot interaction: this, although influenced by extremely subjective factors and the personal experience of each individual user, can be designed according to universally shared schemes and characteristics.
These considerations led to the development of an approach to bring closer the HCD and HRI areas.
The method aims to:
– Propose a theoretical approach aimed at connecting the HRI and HCD areas;
– Highlight the main variables that influence the acceptance of social and assistive robots and structure an a priori analysis approach of these elements: this would allow you to design according to the determinant variables of acceptance and not to evaluate them only in the context of experimentation with users, which takes place after the development of robots;
– Select and categorize the social and assistive robots currently developed on the basis of those qualitative and quantitative elements (concerning users, activities and the type of interaction) that determine acceptance, in order to structure an interactive database which, based on the particular context for which it is designed, can provide specific indications, suggestions and directions (which have value since they have already been experimented with users and in real contexts);
– Structuring an interactive and constantly evolving method, which can be enriched by users’ design and experimental experiences.