From Beeping Machines to Caring Companions: Redesigning Social Robots Through Reflective Ethnography in Elderly Care Work

Roboticists have long focused on areas far removed from everyday human work practices, raising questions about the usefulness of robots in various domains. An ethnographic study can help bridge this gap, but while there are some studies on human-robot interaction (HRI), many of them explore the relationship between ethnographic work and robot development without considering ethnographic reflexivity. This paper reports on a heterogeneous team involved in an elderly care project utilizing a pre-programmed social robot. Through a pragmatic inquiry lens, we iteratively improved the design of the robot systems as part of the research process. Our surprising findings reveal that the robot alone cannot fully support care work, and the design of the 'robotic' must extend beyond the robot itself and human-robot interaction. Instead, robot-assisted care work should focus on the design of the entire information technology system, of which the robot is only one component. This study highlights the need for real-life, user-centered, and pragmatic research, offering an exemplary account of how pragmatism can serve as a sensitizing framework for the HRI field.