Social cardboard: Pretotyping a social ethnodroid in the wild

Pretotyping is a set of techniques, tools, and metrics for gauging the interest in a product, prior to full-scale development [1]. This late breaking report describes a pretotyping case study of an ethnodroid - a robot that functions as an ethnographer - intended to engage with young children and record their learning progress. The central requirement for the project is that the robot will be able to interact socially with children aged 1-6 years in tablet-based tasks. We developed a simple robot made of MDF (thick cardboard), added tablets for the face and torso, and controlled a scripted interaction using Wizard of Oz (WoZ). Children's engagement with the robot was tested in an early learning centre which provided a relatively structured environment (“in the lab”) and at a science fair which provided a relatively unconstrained setting (“in the wild”). The rapid testing revealed distinct effects in the children's attitudes and behaviors in the two user contexts and provided insights into form, sensors and analyses for the design process.