The day-to-day experiences of aging citizens differ significantly from young, technologically savvy engineers. Yet, well-meaning engineers continue to design technologies for aging citizens, informed by skewed stereotypes of aging without deep engagements from these users. This paper describes a co-design project based on the principles of Participatory Design that sought to provide aging people with the capacity to co-design technologies that suit their needs. The project combined the design intuitions of both participants and designers, on equal footing, to produce a companion robot in the form of a networked robotic dog. Besides evaluating a productive approach that empowers aging people in the process of co-designing and evaluating technologies for themselves, this paper presents a viable solution that is playful and meaningful to these elderly people; capable of enhancing their independence, social agency and well-being.
CITATION STYLE
Leong, T. W., & Johnston, B. (2016). Co-design and robots: A case study of a robot dog for aging people. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 9979 LNAI, pp. 702–711). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47437-3_69
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