Timeline
October 2020 - December 2020
The Team
UX Designer (Just me)
Deliverables
Qualitative research
Observational study
User interviews
Prototypes
Participatory design
Tools
Zoom
Google Slides
Intro
In my Fall 2020 semester at my university, I took a class called "Innovative Interfaces". In this class I learned about Human Robot Interaction (HRI) and how user experience plays a key role in designing robots that interact with people.
Problem
- How safe do customers and workers currently feel in grocery stores with the current COVID-19 rules and precautions?
- How do customers and employees deal with people who are not socially distancing or wearing a mask?
- What will the robot look like? Will it be human-like or robot-like?
- How will the robot communicate with people and what tasks will it perform?
- What are customers and workers’ ideal robots for grocery stores during the pandemic?
— UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT
Observational study
In order to understand how to design my robot prototype so that customers and employees of grocery stores would find it useful, I first had to gain insight on how customers and workers operate in the setting with the current COVID-19 rules. To achieve this, I conducted an observational study at my local grocery store. This observation portion also allowed me to generate more informed interview questions to ask customers and employees. The main things I looked out for during my observation study were:
- Do customers tend to notice the stickers on the floor that encourage them to stand six feet apart? If they do notice, do they follow it?
- When customers are standing too close to each other, do they confront the people that are too close to them?
- In what emotional state do workers appear to be in while doing their jobs right now during the pandemic?
- When a customer is not socially distancing, what do workers do to address it?
- When a customer is not wearing a mask, what do workers do to address it?
- How often do workers clean the self-checkout areas and what does the process look like?
- How often do workers clean the carts and baskets and what does the process look like?
Observation of safety measures: The main theme that came out of this observation study was that customers do not always follow the attempts that grocery stores make to enforce social distancing, such as large stickers on the ground that say “six feet apart” or “one way aisle”.
— COLLECTING THE DATA
First interview
After I collected the data from my observational study, I then conducted interviews with five participants (four customers and one employee of a grocery store). I asked different questions depending on if the participant was a customer or employee.
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The questions I asked customers were more related to the perceived safety measures that they noticed stores were taking and how safe they personally felt
- The questions I asked the employee was more related to how her job responsibilities have changed since the pandemic began and the actions that she takes to keep customers safe in the grocery store she works at
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For both customers and employees, I had them describe and draw their "ideal robot" for me
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Ideal Robot activity
As part of the interview, I had participants draw and describe their ideal robot for keeping people in grocery stores safe as well as removing burden off of employees. I asked participants to consider the robot's appearance, its features, and how it would interact with people. The five drawings are below.
— ANALYZING THE DATA
Themes
By comparing participants' ideal robot designs and their answers to each interview question, I generated the following themes:
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Perceived store precautions: Customers all notice and appreciate the measures that grocery stores have taken to keep customers safe during COVID-19, which includes mask mandates, stickers on the floor, plexiglass at the registers, sanitizing the carts, store limits, and special “senior citizen” hours.
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Safety overall: Participants felt pretty safe in grocery stores overall.
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Safety in certain situations: Though participants generally felt safe in grocery stores, they had varying feelings of safety depending on the situation.
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Silence when confronted with people who are not socially distancing or not wearing a mask: Customers and employees do not say anything when someone around them is not socially distancing or wearing a mask even when they feel uncomfortable.
- Appearance and presentation: Some participants wanted a human-like appearance and some wanted an appearance that blended with the store (such as a basket, a cart or a shelf).
- Function: There was a large variety in robot function that participants discussed, although all of them had to do with keeping people in the store safe.
- Use: Participants agreed that the robot would be touch-free to reduce the possibility of COVID-transmission.
— DESIGNING THE ROBOT
Initial prototype
The data collected from the observation and interviews revealed what participants valued in a robot that would keep them safe and the different ways that could look like. The analysis of the data informed me that the robot would allow people to feel safe by sanitizing products, detecting and confronting customers in the stores who are not socially distancing or wearing masks, removing situations that would result in crowded areas (such as the checkout area), and providing COVID-19 products such as masks and hand wipes as well as additional assistance. The robot would have to appear friendly and safe, as well as be polite and non-accusatory so as to reduce aggression when confronting customers.
The available functions the prototype would have are:
- Looking more human-like and very cute and friendly so as to not be intimidating or scary to customers
- Detecting when people are not socially distancing or wearing masks (or wearing masks correctly) through its eyes,
- Spraying sanitizing product on packaged products to clean them from its arms
- Speaking to customers through a speaker on its throat
- Dispensing a mask or hand wipe from a tray that extends outside of the robots’ apron when a customer asks for one
- Pushing the cart so that the customer does not have to touch it
- Connecting an app to the robot to tell the robot what is on their grocery list
- With an app, the robot would be able to guide the customer to where the products are located and automatically calculate the grocery bill so the customer does not have to wait in the checkout lines
— EVALUATING THE PROTOTYPE
Second interview
After designing an initial prototype, I then conducted a second interview with four of the five previous participants (three customers, one employee) to understand what prototype features participants liked and what needed to be improved, as well as any additional ideas. For this interview, I set up a virtual role-play through Google Slides for my participants to “dress up” the COVID-19 robot with certain features that they would want it to have in four scenarios in a grocery store setting. I chose this participatory method in order to better understand what features participants liked or didn't like and to see if they preferred different features in different scenarios.
For the original slide, I inserted features along with descriptions of each feature around the robot for participants to choose from to “dress up” the robot for each scenario. The scenarios I asked customers were 1) You are entering the store, 2) You are walking through the aisles and picking your groceries, 3) Someone around you is not social distancing or not wearing a mask, and 4) You are checking out. The scenarios I asked the employee were 1) You are entering the store, 2) You are performing your job, 3) Someone around you is not social distancing or not wearing a mask, and 4) You are leaving the store.
— ANALYZING THE DATA
Findings
After I collected the data from second interview, I then analyzed the data and generated themes from what participants thought about the initial prototype. The themes were:
- Tiny robot with cart compatibility: For all scenarios, there was a pattern of all the participants using the cart because they wanted the option of having an automatic checkout and 2 of the 4 participants wanted the robot to be tiny so that it wouldn't get in in people's way
- Limited but polite communication with people: All participants wanted the robot to interact with them and others but only when necessary, and they all mentioned that when it talks it should be polite and non-accusatory
- Some features are “nice but not needed”: Most participants found the mask and sanitizing arms to be nice and "fun to have" but did not feel they were "necessary". All participants but one did not like the apron.
Reflection
Based on these findings, a future prototype of the COVID-19 robot:
- Should have a cart with the option to have smart capabilities, such as calculating the grocery total/checking customers out/transferring your grocery list to it with an app, as well as have a tiny robot alongside it to detect and alert people of customers who are not socially distancing or wearing a mask with its eye sensors and speaker
- Should be calm, polite and approachable
- For additional features, the robot could maybe have the sanitizing hand and mask, but not the apron because none of the participants found that feature to be useful
A redesigned prototype would look something like this:
Furthermore, Participant 2 suggested that this robot be called "RAS" which stands for "Robot Assistant Shopper". This name is very fitting based on the fact that the robot assists shoppers in the grocery store, so that is the name I decided to give my robot.
If I were to continue working on this project, I would interview more employees of grocery stores to gain more insights on what robot designs would not only keep everyone in grocery stores safe, but reduce the additional burden employees are taking on during the pandemic without causing employees to lose their jobs. A next step for the future would also be to actually build a physical prototype of RAS with code (such as Arduino).