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1. Can We Keep Him Forever? Teens’ Engagement and Desire for Emotional Connection with a Social Robot

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00539-6  

   Björling, Elin A. ; Rose, Emma ; Davidson, Andrew ; Ren, Rachel ; Wong, Dorothy ( March 2019 , International Journal of Social Robotics)

   Today’s teens will most likely be the first generation to spend a lifetime living and interacting with both mechanical and social robots. Although human-robot interaction has been explored in children, adults, and seniors, examination of teen-robot interaction has been minimal. In this paper, we provide evidence that teenrobot interaction is a unique area of inquiry and designing for teens is categorically different from other types of human-robot interaction. Using human-centered design, our team is developing a social robot to gather stress and mood data from teens in a public high school. To better understand teen-robot interaction, we conducted an interaction study in the wild to explore and capture teens’ interactions with a low-fidelity social robot prototype. Then, through group interviews we gathered data regarding their perceptions about social robots. Although we anticipated minimal engagement due to the low fidelity of our prototype, teens showed strong engagement and lengthy interactions. Additionally, teens expressed thoughtful articulations of how a social robot could be emotionally supportive. We conclude the paper by discussing future areas for consideration when designing for teen-robot interaction. 

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2. The Effect of Interaction and Design Participation on Teenagers’ Attitudes towards Social Robots

   https://doi.org/10.1109/RO-MAN46459.2019.8956427  

   Bjorling, Elin A. ; Xu, Wendy M. ; Cabrera, Maria E. ; Cakmak, Maya ( October 2019 , The Effect of Interaction and Design Participation on Teenagers’ Attitudes towards Social Robots)

   Understanding people's attitudes towards robots and how those attitudes are affected by exposure to robots is essential to the effective design and development of social robots. Although researchers have been studying attitudes towards robots among adults and even children for more than a decade, little has been explored assessing attitudes among teens-a highly vulnerable population that presents unique opportunities and challenges for social robots. Our work aims to close this gap. In this paper we present findings from several participatory robot interaction and design sessions with 136 teenagers who completed a modified version of the Negative Attitudes Towards Robots Scale (NARS) before participation in a robot interaction. Our data reveal that most teens are 1) highly optimistic about the helpfulness of robots, 2) do not feel nervous talking with a robot, but also 3) do not trust a robot with their data. Ninety teens also completed a post-interaction survey and reported a significant change in the motional attitudes subscale of the NARS. We discuss the implications of our findings on the design of social robots for teens. 

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3. Designing a Collaborative Virtual Reality Game for Teen-Robot Interactions

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3325314  

   Kim, Ada S. ; Bhatia, Simran ; Björling, Elin A. ; Li, Dong ( June 2019 , Designing a Collaborative Virtual Reality Game for Teen-Robot Interactions)

   Virtual reality (VR) offers potential as a prototyping tool for human-robot interaction. We explored a way to utilize human-centered design (HCD) methodology to develop a collaborative VR game for understanding teens’ perceptions of, and interactions with, social robots. Our paper features three stages of the design process for teen-robot interaction in VR; ideation, prototyping, and game development. In the ideation stage, we identified three important design principles: collaboration, customization, and robot characterization. In the prototyping stage, we developed a card game, conducted gameplay, and confirmed our design principles. Finally, we developed a low-fidelity VR game and received teens’ feedback. This exploratory study highlights the potential of VR, both for collaborative robot design and teen-robot interaction studies. 

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4. I Am the Robot: Teen Collaboration in an Asymmetric, Virtual Reality Game

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2021.746521  

   Björling, Elin A. ; Kim, Ada ; Oleson, Katelynn ; Alves-Oliveira, Patrícia ( January 2022 , Frontiers in Virtual Reality)

   Virtual reality (VR) offers potential as a collaborative tool for both technology design and human-robot interaction. We utilized a participatory, human-centered design (HCD) methodology to develop a collaborative, asymmetric VR game to explore teens’ perceptions of, and interactions with, social robots. Our paper illustrates three stages of our design process; ideation, prototyping, and usability testing with users. Through these stages we identified important design requirements for our mid-fidelity environment. We then describe findings from our pilot test of the mid-fidelity VR game with teens. Due to the unique asymmetric virtual reality design, we observed successful collaborations, and interesting collaboration styles across teens. This study highlights the potential for asymmetric VR as a collaborative design tool as well as an appropriate medium for successful teen-to-teen collaboration. 

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5. Public Versus Private: How Teens Perceived Teen-Robot Interactions in a School Setting

   https://doi.org/10.1109/hri53351.2022.9889579  

   Oleson, Katelynn ; Bjorling, Elin A. ; Zhang, Lotus ; Dwikat, Heba ( March 2022 , ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction)

   Social robots may be a promising social-emotional tool to support adolescent mental health. However, how might interactions with a social robot in a school setting be perceived by teens? From previous studies, we gathered qualitative data suggesting a design tension between teens wanting both public and private interactions with our social robot, EMAR. In our current study, we explored interactions between a social robot and a small group of adolescents in a semi-private, school library setting. We found: (1) Some teens preferred to have a friend present while they engaged with the social robot, (2) Teens found comfort in being physically visible, but audibly private during interactions, and finally (3) Strangers in the school environment were not disruptive of the teens' robot interactions, but unexpectedly friends were. After presenting these findings, we briefly discuss how these qualitative data can be situated and our next steps for further exploration. 

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