The Unboxing Experience: Exploration and Design of Initial Interactions Between Children and Social Robots
Published in CHI 22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2022
Recommended citation: Christine P Lee, Bengisu Cagiltay, and Bilge Mutlu. 2022. The Unboxing Experience: Exploration and Design of Initial Interactions Between Children and Social Robots. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 151, 1–14.
Abstract: Social robots are increasingly introduced into children’s lives as educational and social companions, yet little is known about how these products might best be introduced to their environments. The emergence of the ``unboxing’’ phenomenon in media suggests that introduction is key to technology adoption where initial impressions are made. To better understand this phenomenon toward designing a positive unboxing experience in the context of social robots for children, we conducted three field studies with families of children aged 8 to 13: (1) an exploratory free-play activity ($n=12$); (2) a co-design session ($n=11$) that informed the development of a prototype box and a curated unboxing experience; and (3) a user study ($n=9$) that evaluated children’s experiences. Our findings suggest the unboxing experience of social robots can be improved through the design of a creative aesthetic experience that engages the child socially to guide initial interactions and foster a positive child-robot relationship.