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This paper investigates the integration of robots into family routines by co-designing robot interactions with ten families and deploying a mobile social robot for in-home user studies. The study focuses on contextual reminders as a key application, revealing that while families appreciate the offloading of reminding tasks, tensions arise regarding timing, authority, and family dynamics. The findings offer design implications for robot-facilitated reminders and broader considerations for designing robots in family settings.
Families welcome robots that offload reminding tasks, but integrating them successfully requires navigating complex dynamics of timing, authority, and existing routines.
Robots are increasingly entering the daily lives of families, yet their successful integration into domestic life remains a challenge. We explore family routines as a critical entry point for understanding how robots might find a sustainable role in everyday family settings. Together with each of the ten families, we co-designed robot interactions and behaviors, and a plan for the robot to support their chosen routines, accounting for contextual factors such as timing, participants, locations, and the activities in the environment. We then designed, prototyped, and deployed a mobile social robot as a four-day, in-home user study. Families welcomed the robot's reminders, with parents especially appreciating the offloading of some reminding tasks. At the same time, interviews revealed tensions around timing, authority, and family dynamics, highlighting the complexity of integrating robots into households beyond the immediate task of reminders. Based on these insights, we offer design implications for robot-facilitated contextual reminders and discuss broader considerations for designing robots for family settings.
