Engaging Community Members as Co-Designers of Robots Using Culturally Responsive Methods

In 2024, the global service robotics market was worth USD 36.1 billion and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 17.1% to USD 166.6 billion by 2034 [1]. As the market expands, robots are increasingly applied in fields ranging from healthcare and farming to everyday domestic tasks. Importantly, these emerging technologies are also being introduced in communities with limited resources and infrastructure, where they aim to improve quality of life and expand access to essential services [2].

Although these advanced technologies offer promising opportunities to improve work and daily life in various contexts, they are often developed by researchers, designers, and engineers who hold greater knowledge and control over the process [3]. As a result, such innovations have typically been designed to address users’ perceived deficits by providing solutions such as language translation, mobility assistance, and delivery of health information, rather than building on the culture, resources, and strengths that each community already possesses [4]. This lack of cultural grounding can hinder the full integration of robotic products into people’s everyday lives. Given the rapid integration of advanced technologies into daily routines and critical services, it is essential to engage community partners from the earliest phases of technology development and to ensure that engineers, researchers, and designers are able to create solutions that better address user needs.

Drawing upon design-oriented perspectives in Human–Computer Interaction and Human–Robot Interaction, Dr. Shin’s research group examines how participatory design—an approach that actively involves end users in the creation and development of technologies—can be applied with diverse communities, including low-literacy groups, family caregivers of patients with chronic conditions, and farmers in small communities, to reshape technology designers’ perspectives on underserved populations [5–7]. By working directly with end users, this approach complements the pervasive needs-based model by introducing perspectives and methods that engage community members as co-designers and active contributors to technology development. Participatory design provides strategies for identifying, mobilizing, and amplifying community assets from the earliest stages of the design process, emphasizing collaboration, respect for local knowledge, and shared decision-making [3].

Participatory Design in Practice: Two Case Studies

Two recent case studies from Dr. Shin’s research team illustrate how participatory design can support the development of technologies, including social robots, in collaboration with diverse user groups such as resettled communities, farmers, and informal caregivers.

Community-Engaged Design to Support Health and Wellness for Small Communities. We conducted a multi-phased study with over 80 participants from a small, resettled community in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, which included provider interviews, community-based workshops, and design activities to explore the assets they draw on to manage everyday health and navigate outpatient clinic visits. Recognizing the importance of selecting methods that reflect the community’s characteristics—such as a preference for visually oriented activities and storytelling—we employed participatory design methods that emphasized visual engagement and narrative-based discussion (e.g., scenario-based storytelling) and developed tailored activity content. 

This research revealed critical design criteria for interactive technologies, including social robots, such as leveraging intergenerational support and storytelling-based communication practices and culturally tailored LLMs designed for provider education to enable relatable and culturally grounded interactions. Our findings illustrate how participatory design workshops can foster approaches that inform the design of technologies that build on patients’ existing capabilities to support their health management during outpatient visits.

Children as Co-Designers of Bedtime Routine Management Robots. Identifying children’s perceptions and needs in robot development is challenging, as the linguistic skills of children and researchers often do not match and differ from those of adult researchers. Traditional design methods often fail to accommodate children’s unique characteristics, including shorter attention spans and a tendency to be either unable or unwilling to share opinions. 

While social robot development has increasingly involved end users, it often overlooks children’s unique perspectives and sensory needs. Partnering with the Child Development Laboratory School at the University of Minnesota, we address this gap by exploring how directly engaging children in the design process can reveal their needs and preferences for sleep-related robots. We conducted participatory design sessions with 16 children aged 3 to 5 years, using co-design toolkits containing pre-designed blocks and crafting materials to encourage self-expression and engagement in the robot design process. These sessions revealed children’s ideas about bedtime-support robots, including functions beyond sleeping time and specific environments for robots. Based on our findings, we propose effective approaches for participatory design with young children, emphasizing the use of age-appropriate stories, colors, and textures in design materials to enhance engagement during the ideation process.

References

[1]    Suraj Gujar & Saptadeep Das. (2025, February). Service robotics market size, by component, by type, by mobility, by technology, by application, forecast 2025 – 2034 (Report ID: GMI130). Global Market Insights Inc. Retrieved August 25, 2025, from https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/service-robotics-market-size.

[2]    H. R. Lee. 2024. Contrasting perspectives of workers: Exploring labor relations in workplace automation and potential interventions. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–17.

[3]  Christina Harrington, Sheena Erete, and Anne Marie Piper. 2019. Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design: Towards More Equitable Participatory Design Engagements. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 3, CSCW (Nov. 2019).

[4]  Marisol Wong-Villacres, Aakash Gautam, Deborah Tatar, and Betsy DiSalvo. 2021. Reflections on Assets-Based Design: A Journey towards A Collective of Assets-Based Thinkers. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2 (Oct. 2021).

[5]    Ji Youn Shin, Dima Chaar, Catherine Davis, Sung Won Choi, and Hee Rin Lee. 2021. Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: Exploring Experiential Knowledge and Assets of Family Caregivers. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2 (Oct. 2021).

[6]    Zhanming Chen, Alisha Ghaju, May Hang, Juan Fernando Maestre, and Ji Youn Shin. 2025. Designing Health Technologies for Immigrant Communities: Exploring Healthcare Providers’ Communication Strategies with Patients. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. 

[7]   Zhanming Chen, Minghe Lu, Minzhu Zhao, Gaoxiang Luo, Benjamin Withey, Seraphina Yong, and Ji Youn Shin. 2025. Empowering Farming Communities through Information Tracking: A Design Approach to Crop Planning and Management. In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA.