Designing Socially Interactive, Robotic Environments through Pattern Languages

Architecture has long been conceptualized as “a machine for living in” and more recently as “a robot for living in.” Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has developed robots as social agents—our friends, companions, and partners. Could robotic environments be perceived and interacted with as socially intelligent agents? If so, how should we design a Socially Interactive, Robotic Environment (SIRE)? To address the first question, we offer the empirical evidence and theoretical support of SIREs. We then address the second question by discussing the “Spatial Design” and “Interaction Design” of SIREs through an explorative, pattern-based approach. For “Spatial Design,” we present a co-design study for a partner-like office, generating new spatial patterns that form pattern languages to convey sociality to individual users. For “Interaction Design,” we employed four “Design Patterns for Sociality in HRI.” Our results show that “Spatial Patterns” and “HRI Patterns” can be integrated as one pattern language for sociality and that such a pattern language can vary from person to person. Through the explorative works of this paper, we wish to introduce SIRE to IE communities and cultivate the conversation about the design and application of SIREs in everyday life.