Robots for us: Participatory and community-centered design of robots—Selma Šabanović (Indiana University Bloomington, USA) 

Our visions of having robots present in day-to-day use in schools, homes, and workplaces are becoming increasingly technically achievable. This brings to the fore concerns about how we can design robots to not only operate in these everyday contexts, but also to fit the needs, practices, values, and preferences of potential users. So far, a majority of user and design research in human-robot interaction has focused on individual responses to robots, which in aggregate represent more generalized attitudes and needs. Robot design, however, rarely takes into account the organizational and community dynamics that robot users, robots, and other stakeholders are a part of.

In this talk, Selma Šabanović will discuss how organizational and community dynamics and goals affect robot adoption and use, and how we can take them into account in the course of robot design. She will particularly discuss examples of participatory and community-centered design approaches for social robots. 

Selma Šabanović will be joined by Astrid Weiss (TU Wien Informatics).   

Access

Registration and participation are free and open to the public.

About the Lecture Series

Technologies invade our everyday lives, take part in constructing our identity, classify (often violently) bodies, and, pushed by recent regulations on social distancing, play an expanding role in connecting families and friends. The effects of this rapid increase of technological dependency, though, further exacerbate existing inequalities, introduce new ones, and lead to previously less apparent pockets of freedom.

In the series “Critical Perspectives on Technology”, the project “Exceptional Norms,” part of the research unit Human Computer Interaction at TU Wien Informatics, invites interested audiences to participate in biweekly talks and critically engage with recent research on technology assessment.

Our speakers are trailblazing scholars and internationally renowned experts from a range of (inter)disciplinary standpoints in conversation with Austrian researchers as hosts.

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