7.1.3 Theoretical framework
At the theory level, a theoretical framework was elaborated on the basis of the knowledge produced through the projects and through the review of the literature. Thus, it results from a combination of existing theories and lessons learned from the two case studies. The framework, composed by
elements, areas of action, and influencing factors, is
aimed at representing the main challenges posed by the act of designing acceptable child-robot play experiences, and it can be used as a reference for developing projects.
The primary crucial elements of the framework are the three main actors, namely child/ren, robot/s and adult/s. the number of actors, both human and robotic, can vary according to the project.
The robot is illustrated as a general entity, but its nature can greatly vary, from a construction kit type to a character type, according to the project. Adults and children can assume a slightly different role according to the context and the intended purpose of the project. In a private context, such as the domestic environment, the child may be considered primarily as a player while in an educational context, such as a school, as a learner. Nevertheless, as pointed out by the literature review, the play and education are interrelated aspects of childhood development and it is inappropriate to consider one in the absence of the other. The two child’s roles, hence, are pointed out as a way to help to focus on certain aspects of the experience, rather than others.
A similar distinction is defined also regarding the adults who play a role in the project. In fact, according to the context, they can be parents or educators. Although in both cases the adult is involved in the approval of a product, its introduction to the child and through an eventual support and collaboration in play, educators might also have the chance of becoming users too, together with children.
Educators, who can be both teachers and external professionals who run extracurricular courses, are the ones who often introduce and carry out courses with new technologies at school. Thus, they become a particularly relevant figure when designing for child-robot play, especially in public contexts (e.g. schools, museums, hospitals, toy libraries…). However, although parents may not be directly
affected by a project, such as in a solution for schools, it is a good practice to involve them as experts about their children, but also because they play a crucial role as decision makers and they can greatly affect the acceptability of a solution.
These role’s differences highlight the importance of understanding the context of use of the proposed solutions, which is both a physical environment and as a socio-cultural environment. Adopting bottom-up approaches consisting of systematic investigations (Sabanovic 2010) and a framing (Forlizzi 2013) of the context of use is crucial for avoiding inappropriate solutions (Sabanovic 2010), for understanding the role of people within the system (Forlizzi 2013), and for unfolding those key emerging issues and phenomenon that Forlizzi (2013) proposes as “descriptive statements that are
used to guide the solution generation process”.
These main elements, namely the actors and the context are associated with the two main areas
of action that need to be addressed through the
design research process. These two areas consist of actions related to the purpose of a project and actions related to the features of a project. These, represented by the circles behind the human actors, are inverted in the case of adults and children. This is due to the fact that a play-based experience is expected to have a purpose by adults, while children do not have such expectation.
Play, in fact, is an intrinsically motivating activity that does not require further purpose, as long as it is challenging, gives a sense of control, and stimulate curiosity and fantasy (Malone and Lepper 1987). Fun, indeed, is considered the main purpose of play experiences for children which is determined by their user experience. Thus, the features of the project assume a greater role for children than for parents. On the contrary, in the case of adults, the purpose is the level of primary importance.
For both the areas of action of the purpose and the feature, a set of influencing factors is illustrated. These were identified from the literature review about acceptability in both HCI and HRI, and the assessment of fun in interactive systems.
168
Fig. 7.17 - Theoretical framework of designing acceptable solutions for child-robot play.
169 From the child point of view, the purpose-related
factors consist of the two main characteristics of fun, that are immersion and emotion, while the features-related factors are a larger, namely learnability, ease of use, control, attractiveness, familiarity, multimediality, sociability, and self- expression.
From the adults’ point of view, instead, the purpose- related factors consist of perceived usefulness, compatibility, and safety, while the features- related factors consist mostly in perceived safety, friendliness, and ethics.
These three, however, are integrated with the children’s features-related factors whenever the adult plays also an active role in the experiences and interact with the robot.
It has to be noted that the set of factors reported in the framework, especially regarding the features level, do not necessarily need to be considered all in each project, or exclusively. These can also be integrated or adapted.