User Expectations and Preferences to How Social Robots Render Text Messages with Emojis

Abstract

Social robots are increasingly entering our households, being able to interact with humans in various ways. One functionality of social robots may be to connect to a user's mobile phone and to read text messages loud. Such a technology and communication platform should therefore be able to support emojis properly. We therefore address emoji usage in computer-mediated communication in order to develop appropriate emoji conveyance in social robot behavior. Our research explores how participants feel about the behavior of a tabletop robot prototype named Nina that reads text messages to user and to what extent different renderings correspond to user expectations and preferences of how text messages and emoji combinations should be delivered. Based on online animated videos and questionnaires, respondents evaluated the behavior of Nina based on different renderings of text messages with emojis in them. The experiment results and data analysis show that respondents liked the social robot to display emojis with or without sound effect and to act out emojis in text messages almost equally well, but rated it less useful, less fun and more confusing to replace the emojis by words.