Social Robots for Children with Cancer
How will the development change when including affect theory in the design of a telepresence system with a purpose to create a sense of presence over distance for kids with cancer and their peers?
In collaboration with fellow students I wrote my master thesis in 2020. During the project I conducted research, interviews, user testing and was in charge of planning the work of the project. Moreover I took charge in comparing and inventing new telepresence and affect theories to understand the underlying factors of designing for children with cancer.
January 2020 - June 2020
What Is Affect?
Affect in psychology is described as the underlying experience of mood, feeling or emotion.
Example: I am happy, therefore I feel like playing along.
What is Telepresence?
Telepresence is the ability to connect two or more physical/spiritual places.
Example: My partner called me on the phone during a concert I couldn’t attend, and It almost felt like I was there with him.
The problem
The treatment of children with cancer is more successful than ever. As technology and medical science advances, it is possible to detect and treat the children in a more effective manner than ever. This, however, means that more children are hospitalized for a longer period of time, resulting in an everyday life away from friends and classmates. The children will be out of school for 6-18 months while they undergo treatment. The focus on mental health within the field has gotten more attention over the last few years and has created new collaborations.
What we did
In order to get a broad understanding of the situation of the children we conducted user research by asking several experts in the field of study at Bonkolab (Børneonkologisk Laboratorium). To also get an understanding of children we did user testing in elementary schools to get an idea of how willing kids would be to support each other in order to create successful play in telepresence.
In order to solve the issue we used methods from design theory that included personas methods, emotion driven design, Cooperative design. By combining these methods we made it possible to get as close as possible to the needs of the users, without being able to meet them.
Discoveries and conclusions
With a purpose of creating a feeling of closeness between the children and their friends at school, I argued for the importance of using affect theory in order to measure which areas should undergo further development to increase the chance of successful telepresence. Furthermore, I used techniques from design theory such as ‘personas’ and ‘emotion driven design’ in order to bring the wants and needs of the children to light.
By combining Lottridge et al.’s model of affective interaction (2011)* with theory of telepresence, I was able to discover a new layer of the interaction. This led me to pinpoint which environments might heighten or lower the chance of successful telepresence on a meta-level, in which the interaction has become the properties of connection between telepresence devices - computers, phones, etc. With this discovery, I wrote a report which has been used in the development of the Fable Connect that is now used at schools all over Denmark for the purpose of bringing children together.
*Lottridge, D., Chignell, M., & Jovicic, A. (2011). Affective interaction: Understanding, evaluating, and designing for human emotion. Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics.
