Abstract:
Children who live in out-of-home, residential care facilities have typically experienced adversity and trauma and consequentially exhibit psychological distress (e.g., despair, detachment). Residential care facilities are understaffed while needing to establish a healthy liaison between staff and children. This lamentable state of affairs has become more pressing following the Covid-19 pandemic.
With expertise in design, robotics, interaction design, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and early childhood education, our research team has designed three early robotic prototypes that we call “e,” “Mo," and “Bo,” in our longer design endeavor to develop “eMoBo,” an interactive, non-humanoid robot for young children living in residential care facilities to playfully express themselves.
The aim of this child-centered project is to provide the opportunity for children who have experienced hostile environments and inappropriate care to become aware of, regulate, and express their inner socio-emotional world via tactile and visual experimentation with eMoBo so that they might more easily communicate their feelings and needs with non-biological caregivers, striving for a significant, long-standing improvement in the wellbeing of these children. In this paper, the authors present their designs and envision their use in two use cases.
The three prototypes will be shared with our research partners, the Hillside Residential Center (Rochester, New York) towards advancing the design of eMoBo with the Center's stakeholders.
The 22nd annual ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference was held on June 19-23, 2023 at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. IDC is the premier international conference for researchers, educators and practitioners to share the latest research findings, innovative methodologies and new technologies in the areas of inclusive child-centered design, learning and interaction. IDC’23 is hosted by the Center for Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University.