User-centred design of an outreach robot

Abstract: The goal of this project is to involve adolescents in the design of their own social robots, and to explore their concerns and opinions about social robots during the design process. To support their design efforts, I have developed a digital toolkit that includes features for customizing the appearance, personality, and reactive behaviors of the robots. In addition, this paper presents some of the adolescents’ views on gender and robots that were elicited during the project. The insights and feedback from the participants can inform the design of future outreach robots and improve their social interactions with adolescents.