February 27, 2017
What Gender is EMAR?
The last couple of weeks have gone into trying to understand the data we collected from our first on-site research activity, as well as going back to our research questions and seeing which ones have been answered and which ones need some more work. One underlying theme the research team gathered from the research process was how EMAR was referred to as “he” by the two female students and as “it” by most of the others. This lead us to ponder about whether teenagers – and by extension – perhaps we ourselves – inherently associate robots with a gender. Does this association depend on traits of the robot itself – such as physical and behavioral traits (shape, color, voice, functionalities, etc.)?
Some of the broader research questions that would help us understand EMAR is knowing whether certain gender(s) of EMAR help teenagers of a different gender(s) associate and relate differently to robot. Understanding these underlying associations will help the research and design teams in the long run by providing good design direction. Designing and developing a robot that teenagers are able to better associate with takes us a step closer to the purpose of this project – trying to gauge, measure and reduce teenage stress.
A few other themes and possible design ideas were discussed. One of these being the question of incorporating color into the screen dashboard of EMAR. There is some ongoing research on what colors teenagers associate with different levels of stress and mood. Quick prototyping was done to gain feedback on these design ideas and colors. The research team plans to have these designs tested out in short tests with a younger student population, to understand which design ideas could work.
The research team is also preparing for the next on site research activity that would take place in two weeks. We would look for similar and new themes from the interactions between EMAR and the teenagers. We have also worked on refining our interview skills – a crucial element to user experience research. Interviewing teenagers can be challenging, as they do not always offer a lot of information and need to be prodded gently in order to gain the required data. They also usually say what comes to their mind and tend to be quite individualistic about their opinions. We are hoping to have students outside of the robotics and computer science clubs as well to have some diversity of feedback in our research.
