Duo Dials
Micro UX - Week 6
Brief: Design the social relations and interactions between a robot chef and its human guests.
External Partner: Moley Robotics
Team: Tiana, Ana, Sanjana, Sylvester
Moving on from last week’s feedback and reflection, we now have a relatively clear path for our design outcome:
Design a method of exploring different levels of human-robot relations and interactions applied to the Moley Robot.
Our tasks for this week cover creating a higher resolution research framework, specify scripts for each mode in quadrants, optimise the shooting scene and make a trial video.
Refining the grid
We first had a meeting to address how to divide the original framework into a more detailed grid. We adopted the previous implication of the robot and machines categorising but encountered some challenges since it is now more complicated and continues than the extreme cases. After several discussions and adjustments, a rough framework appeared with increased factors in both axes.
- The Interactions Axis starts from a press-and-go system to choosing food ingredients, then non-collaborative cooking, and lastly, frequent, nearly non-stop engagement.
- The Relations Axis begins with intentionally imitating a kitchen appliance to support customisation and then knowing the guests’ interest and showing personality.
After finishing the rough features in cells, we split up and wrote scripts for each of them. It is funny that we all have the chance to cover each quadrant, so I assume everyone feels conflicted yet imaginative, from intentionally separating human and robot to making them friends and family members.
Setting the scene
Meanwhile, I am accountable for making the shooting plan. With the floorplan sketch and help from my friend Hugh studying Documentary, I borrowed serval cameras and tripods from LCC. On Wednesday, we spent hours and finally set up and test the shooting scene. It included two cameras and a GoPro, covering the front, side and top views. We only had time to shoot one video that day, and then present it as a trial on Thursday’s speed dating.
Presentation and Reflection
On Thursday, we presented our progress to different groups over the last weeks, which made us realise that communication needs more craft. The video’s quality is good enough, but the design method part is still confusing. Alex and Tatiana proposed serval questions about which industry is this method for and how designers and engineers will use it, which echos John and Al’s thoughts about presenting the outcome in a grid model. Part of the problems in communication is that we only finished one video but verbally elaborating the massive framework. The final week left will be heavy in both video shooting, editing and deliver an appropriate representation.
👉🏻 See next week: Final Outcome: A design and evaluation method