While the design of user interfaces is a field driven by people of Western origin and culture, most users of IT tools come from much more diverse backgrounds and cultures. This gap can give rise to ergonomic problems in the way interfaces are used. Therefore, numerous studies have highlighted a definite interest in designing a user interface adapted to the specificities of users in low-income countries. Among other things, these specificities are low literacy rates or the high prevalence of local languages. However, while the field of interface design adapted for users in low-income countries has been extensively studied, few studies exist regarding the methodologies behind designing interfaces for low-income contexts, despite the acknowledgment of their potential value. This paper introduces a transdisciplinary framework that strongly focuses on the culture of the end-user and considers the physical and cultural distance, which can be very high, between the persons who develop the product and the target users. The related methodology has been built from learnings gathered by analyzing 173 papers on user computer interface literature for low-income countries. The proposed methodology is highly iterative and allows a thorough study of the culture of the end user before diving into the design work, per se. This proposed methodology will be applied to a money transfer application in Senegal to validate its relevance.

Limited understanding exists regarding the methodologies behind designing interfaces for low-income contexts, despite acknowledging their potential value. The ERSA (Engineering design Research meta-model based Systematic Analysis) process, defined as a dynamic interactive multi-process system, proposes a new approach to constructing learnings to succeed in designing interfaces for low-income countries. ERSA is developed by integrating database searches, snowballing, thematic similarity searches for corpus of literature creation, multilayer networks, clustering algorithms, and data processing. ERSA employs an engineering design meta-model to analyze the corpus of literature, facilitating the identification of diverse methodological approaches. The insights from ERSA empower researchers, designers, and engineers to tailor design methodologies to their specific low-income contexts. Our findings show the importance of adopting more versatile and holistic approaches. They suggest that user-based design methodologies and computational design can be defined and theorized together.

As part of a multidisciplinary research and a PhD project to strengthen the connection between retired couples living at home, we imagined and designed Yōkobo. It is a robot at the crossroads of a sensitive approach and a robotic trend that bridges the gap between humans (Human-Robot-Human Interactions field). As a theoretical contribution, Yōkobo is at the intersection of various concepts: behavioral objects, robjects, weak robotics, and slow technology. Yōkobo is a trinket bowl placed in the entrance of homes. Its discreet presence expresses hospitality and celebrates small moments of everyday life, welcoming visitors and inhabitants of the house. The name comes from the contraction of “yōkoso” (welcome in Japanese) and “robot” (with French pronunciation). In addition to these functions, Yōkobo expresses the state of the home using data from connected IoT devices, combining various house parameters (such as temperature, air quality, etc.) to express the home's “mood” through its motions. Finally, Yōkobo used in tandem with house keys, can convey a trace, a message based on motion. And a trace is a memory of the partner's passage. Yōkobo is resolutely innovative and disruptive. It does not sit within the lineage of the general vision of what robots are and what they can do: it is an object intended to be unobtrusive, stemming from ambient computing, while having an ongoing subtle presence. It does not make sounds, unlike voice assistants and the trend for using voice modality interaction. It expresses its environment only through motion and light. to move away from home's companion robots and the biases they can generate through facial representation, Yōkobo has neither an anthropomorphic shape nor can talk. Yōkobo is intended to be made of natural materials such as ceramic, wood, or wool to break with the idea of plastic, disposable, and toy robots, and to improve its integration in everyday home life. as a slow technology product, understanding and integrating Yōkobo into one's life takes time and requires accepting not having a clear, repetitive, and instantaneous response to an action. Its contribution is not measured in terms of efficiency and utility; it is the sum of different experiences with the product over time that creates the object's meaning and value. Getting to know Yōkobo's expressive motions is continuous and progressive. Yōkobo is an object that is understood through perception and touches the poetic sensibility of its users. Yōkobo is a concept that puts people's relationships at the center. It does not impose itself to propose an exclusive Human-Object relationship. It reveals the presence of the other by expressing the last impermanent trace of the other's passage. It is an object of sensitive presence. This work is the result of interdisciplinary research between roboticists, designers, and ergonomists. The navigation (directions and overlay) of this pan.able demonstrates the design and engineering processes, as well as the interaction modalities.

In this work, we introduce a novel solution for configuring a Raspberry Pi (a popular single-board computer) as a central unit for a home robot, leveraging shared data to adapt the robot's behaviours. Our solution utilises a smartphone application connected via Bluetooth to remotely configure the Raspberry Pi, following state-of-the-art standards for IoT de-vice configuration. To validate the usability of our system, we conducted a user study, which showed that the application is robust enough for deployment and can be easily used by non-technical individuals. This approach can also be extended to other Linux devices, providing a convenient and accessible way to bring robots to smart homes. In conclusion, our proposed solution offers several benefits over traditional methods, including ease of use and the ability to extend the method to other devices, offering a convenient and accessible way to bring adaptability to the growing market of smart homes through the use of robots.

Yōkobo is a robject; it was designed using the principle of slow technology and it aims to strengthen the bond between members (e.g., a couple). It greets people at the entrance and mirrors their interactions and the environment around them. It was constructed by applying the notions of a human–robot–human interaction. Created by joint work between designers and engineers, the form factor (semi-abstract) and the behaviours (nonverbal) were iteratively formed from the early stage of the design process. Integrated into the smart home, Yōkobo uses expressive motion as a communication medium. Yōkobo was tested in our office to evaluate its technical robustness and motion perception ahead of future long-term experiments with the target population. The results show that Yōkobo can sustain long-term interaction and serve as a welcoming partner.

Feeling together and at the same time feeling free while sharing the same roof is a balance that newly retired couples try to reach. Indeed the beginning of retirement is complex, and sometimes, even when both spouses find themselves at home together, some spouses could experience a feeling of loneliness. To respond to this insight, we introduce the concept of “sensible presence robject” - Yōkobo to fill this loneliness gap through subtle interactions. The pictorial introduces and describes the different steps of the design process of Yōkobo as a non-anthropomorphic and non-vocal robot for the entrance of dwellings. Through its expressiveness, Yōkobo is a presence messenger for newly retired couples. On a larger scale, this research is a manifesto for the slow technology trend in which perceptions and time open a discussion on poetic sensibility.

Socially interactive robots are being introduced in daily life as common objects that facilitate people’s life. A wide range of possibilities are offered and the trends show a growing market. In this survey 40 commercial robots were analysed to evaluate the state of the art from a design space perspective, aspects like embodiment, task, social role, context of use, DOF (Degrees of Freedom) and user studies performed on the robot are included. As a result, a clear design pattern was identified: an egg-shaped, white plastic robot with a rendered face that displays expression of emotions and a speech interface is the common base of the majority of the social robots available in the market. The preference for this kind of embodiment is not even studied nor documented in the literature and varies according to the target group and culture.

In an effort towards the democratization of Robotics, this article presents a novel End-User Development framework called Robot Interfaces From Zero Experience (RIZE).The framework provides a set of useful software tools for the creation of robot-oriented software architectures and programming interfaces, as well as the modeling and execution of robot behaviors, with a specific emphasis on social behaviors.Programming interfaces built on top of RIZE enable professionals with different backgrounds and interests to design, adapt, and scale-up robotics applications.As an example of a programming interface, we present Open RIZE, which exploits an End-User Programming paradigm combining blocks, tables, and forms-filling interfaces.Unlike previous approaches, robot behavioral code generated by Open RIZE is intrinsically modular, re-usable, scalable, neutral to the employed programming language, and platformagnostic.In the article, we present the main design guidelines and features of Open RIZE.Additionally, we perform an initial usability evaluation of the Open RIZE interface in an online workshop.Preliminary results using the System Usability Scale with 10 novice end-users indicate that Open RIZE is easy-to-use and learn.

Categorie de soumission : communication affichee RESUME Nos travaux concernent la conception d'une machine sociale pour l'ecosysteme de foyers de retraites actifs. Dans ce cadre, nous proposons une methodologie ecologique en cinq phases tres ancree sur la rencontre reguliere des usagers etudies. Dans cet article nous presentons le contexte theorique, la methodologie et le cadre applicatif de ces travaux ainsi que l'etat d'avancement du projet.

In ergonomic practices, user testing is a central method to get feed-back from users regarding usability. In the last decade, new design methods have emerged like agile method, design thinking, lean startup. Most of these methods are looking for direct user’s feedback. In this context, in 2013 we published a book “user-centered agile method” which goal was to propose a method which enables to have continuous user’s feedback during the entire life circle of a project integrating agile development. Our approach was to take advantage of agile method to apply user testing also during development that is, during each agile iteration. We call this kind of user testing, applying around five participants, “mini-user testing”. Four years later, we wanted to evaluate the usage of “mini user testing” during agile development, into our ergonomists community and what it could imply regarding the evolution of these community’s practices. To answer these questions, we built a questionnaire which was filled by two survey populations. This article reports the results of this study.