Towards the human-centered design of everyday robots

The recent and rapid advancement of robotic technology brings robots closer to assisting us in our everyday spaces, providing support for healthcare, cleaning, entertaining and other tasks. In this dissertation, I refer to these robots as everyday robots. Scholars argue that the key to successful human acceptance lies in the design of robots that have the ability to blend into everyday activities. A challenge remains; robots are an autonomous technology that triggers multi-faceted interactions: physical, intellectual, social and emotional, making their presence visible and perhaps even obtrusive. These challenges need more than just technological advances to be resolved; more human-centered approaches are also required in the design. However to date, little is known about how to support that human-centered design of everyday robots.;In this thesis, I address this gap by introducing an initial set of design guidelines for everyday robots. These guidelines focus on leading designers to consider the rich interaction experiences that robots may elicit in the home, and to reflect on them prior to and during the development of technical specifications. As a tool to accomplish this, the guidelines present a design framework called Domestic Robot Ecology (DRE) that visually depicts how robots shape relationships with physical space, householders and domestic activities. Concisely put, DRE is a design tool to account for the social and lived experiences with robots at home. Additionally, the guidelines provide more detailed design suggestions for how robots appear, interact and engage to best support the lived experiences with robots.;These guidelines are based on four empirical studies undertaken to identify how people live with robots in the home. These studies comprise a wide range of methods including interviews, online surveys, six-month-long field observations and participatory design sessions to mine insights about what interaction attributes of everyday robots elicit positive or negative user responses.;In addition to establishing an initial set of guidelines, this thesis shows how they can be applied to a real-world robot design process. The guidelines were deployed in the development of one type of everyday robot: a senior-care robot called HomeMate. It shows that the guidelines become useful during the early development process by helping designers and robot engineers to focus on how social and emotional values of end-users influence the design of the technical functions required.;Overall, this thesis addresses a question how we can support the design of everyday robots so that they are more readily accepted by users. I respond to this question by proposing a set of design guidelines that account for social and lived experiences of robots in the home, which ultimately can improve the adoption and use of everyday robots.