November 2, 2018
Greeting & Navigation Team: Ideating with Students at Chief Sealth
Blog post written by Jenna James, Lynn Pham & Soham Hinduja
The Greeting and Navigation Team is spending this quarter looking at how we can create an initial, meaningful interaction between EMAR and teens. We are also interested in creating a holistic experience across the different functions of EMAR. In order to do this, our team is looking to answer teens’ questions, including:
- What is this robot?
- What can it do?
- Why should I use it again?
Ideation: Turning ideas into sketches
To prepare for our field visit with Chief Sealth High School, our team read supporting papers to understand the problem space, potential challenges, and to empathize with our users. We then went on to brainstorm how teens can form an initial welcoming interaction with EMAR. We approached ideation for these interactions through sketching and storyboarding. Our team came up with three potential ways teens can initially interact with EMAR:
- Touch screen: Teens form an initial interaction with EMAR by touching an emoticon on a screen
- Haptic touch: Teens form an initial interaction with EMAR by giving EMAR a fist bump
- Voice activation: Teens form an initial interaction with EMAR through conversation
We were then able to take these drawings to the field to understand how teens envisioned their initial interaction with EMAR.
Teens fist bump EMAR to trigger EMAR to turn on
Teens instruct EMAR to wake up, starting a conversation
Teens approach EMAR and touch the screen to start an interaction
Engaging students in design
To test the initial interaction with EMAR, we presented the students at Chief Sealth with our three sketches. Once we presented our sketches to the students, we asked the teens to sketch their ideas of how they would envision themselves interacting with EMAR. Some of the teens sketched their interaction with EMAR through the process of storyboarding. However, we noticed that the teens were most engaged when they were given time to share their ideas out loud with one another as opposed to sketching their ideas out on paper.
A sketch drawn by a student from Chief Sealth High School depicts a student turning EMAR on using a button
Reflecting on findings from the field
Visiting Chief Sealth High School gave us insight on how we can better engage with teens in the future. Moving forward, we hope to create an experience that is enjoyable for teens and helps inform the design of the greeting and navigation system later on. For example, we plan to create a prototype of EMAR out of cardboard boxes that students can engage with in the field. In doing so, we hope to create a friendly initial interaction that resonates with teens. We are looking forward to sharing our advancements with you this quarter!
