Selma Šabanović will be the Keynote speaker for the Inter.HAI workshop

Better Together: Methods and tools to support co-designing an assistive robot for older adults

Designing socially assistive robots requires not only the engagement of multiple disciplines – such as social, health, and computer scientists – but also practitioners and potential end users and others affected by such robots. To build such collaborations, researchers and their co-design need to spend time together to develop a common understanding and trust. They also often need to amend design methods to engage different types of participants, and develop tools that can support design by people with different skillsets and background knowledge. In this talk, I will discuss both design methods and tools that we have developed to support the creation of a socially assistive robot meant to support older adults in 2 countries: the US and Japan. I will particularly focus on challenges and solutions to bringing together participants from different disciplines and institutions in the 2 countries, including clinicians and older adults, to design the robot together.