Bridging the gap: Generating a design space model of Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) for Older Adults using Participatory Design (PD)

Participatory Design (PD) methods are effective in understanding older adults' perspectives, concerns, and wishes and generating ideas for new intelligent aids. The aim of our study was first to map perceptions and explore the needs of older users from socially assistive robots (SARs) and then, to integrate new tools and experiences for end users to express their needs as part of a PD process. The outcome of the process is a design space model of functional, behavioral, and visual relationships and elicited emotions. This process enables to explore, map, and understand the needs of older users before and after experiencing with SARs, and to learn how they impact robotic designs, behavior, and functionality. First, by interviewing older adults, caregivers, and relatives we learned older adults' daily routines, habits, and wishes. Then, we reconstructed those needs into design requirements and further detailed them with older adults using focus groups. Based on the functional, behavioral, and visual design factors that emerged from this phase, we built experimental human-robot tasks, on a commercially available robot, to examine feasibility and acceptance of the technology in one-on-one interactions. Participants' responses throughout the study led to the creation of the design space model mapping relationships and elicited emotions.