Social Robot Assistant for Group Interactions with Secondary School Students: A Participatory Design Study

The application of social robots in group settings is an emerging area of research with the potential to transform numerous fields, particularly education. This paper explores the potential of social robots as assistants in collaborative group interactions among secondary school students through a Participatory Design (PD) study. This was achieved by conducting a focus group (10 participants, ages 11 to 15 years) that included discussions, robot interactions, and co-design activities. The findings reveal the students’ challenges in group interactions, and their perceptions of how robots could assist them. The first part of the focus group was a exploration and co-design stage to encourage participants to discuss about and interact with social robots for group collaboration. This stage highlighted some of the challenges students face during group work and how they believe a social robot could assist them. The second part of the focus group involved getting the participants to discuss and co-design robot behaviours for a specific group collaborative task. This revealed the participants emphasis on the robot behaviours being clear, specific and relevant for the task. These insights contribute to the design of effective social robots for group collaborative settings for this user group.