Exploring University Students’ Preferences for Educational Robot Design by Means of a User-Centered Design Approach

Abstract

User-centered design approaches have become more prominent in various domains and have slowly been adopted in robotics research. Previous research on user-centered design highlights the beneficial effects of actively involving end users into the design process. Results further imply that end users have different notions about ideal robot design, placing special demands on social robots depending on the context and personal factors. In the present exploratory research, we applied a user-centered design method and investigated university students’ (N = 116) preferences regarding the design of educational robots. With regard to robot design, university students prefer a medium-sized machinelike robot with human characteristics and minimal facial features. Our results further suggest that a robot should primarily interact via speech and be able to display basic emotions, especially the positive ones. Additionally, from a university students’ perspective, an ideal educational robot should display behavior that is marked by conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness. We discuss implications of our results for educational robot design, and highlight the gains of user involvement in design decisions for human–robot interaction research.