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To integrate social robots in real-life contexts, it is crucial that they are accepted by the users. Acceptance is not only related to the functionality of the robot but also strongly depends on how the user experiences the interaction. Established design principles from usability and user experience research can be applied to the realm of human–robot interaction, to design robot behavior for the comfort and well-being of the user. Focusing the design on these aspects alone, however, comes with certain ethical challenges, especially regarding the user’s privacy and autonomy. Based on an example scenario of human–robot interaction in elder care, this paper discusses how established design principles can be used in social robotic design. It then juxtaposes these with ethical considerations such as privacy and user autonomy. Combining user experience and ethical perspectives, we propose adjustments to the original design principles and canvass our own design recommendations for a positive and ethically acceptable social human–robot interaction design. In doing so, we show that positive user experience and ethical design may be sometimes at odds, but can be reconciled in many cases, if designers are willing to adjust and amend time-tested design principles.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is associated with adverse left ventricular (LV) remodeling causing dysfunction and malignant arrhythmias. Severely affected patients present with disease onset during childhood and sudden cardiac death risk (SCD) stratification is of the highest importance in this cohort. This study aimed to investigate genotype–phenotype association regarding clinical outcome and disease progression in pediatric onset HCM. Medical charts from forty-nine patients with pediatric HCM who had undergone genetic testing were reviewed for retrospective analysis. Demographic, clinical, transthoracic echocardiographic, electrocardiographic, long-term electrocardiogram, cardiopulmonary exercise test, cardiac magnetic resonance, and medication data were recorded. Childhood onset HCM was diagnosed in 29 males and 20 females. Median age at last follow-up was 18.7 years (range 2.6–51.7 years) with a median follow-up time since diagnosis of 8.5 years (range 0.2–38.0 years). Comparison of patients carrying mutations in distinct genes and comparison of genotype-negative with genotype-positive individuals, revealed no differences in functional classification, LV morphology, hypertrophy, systolic and diastolic function, fibrosis and cardiac medication. Patients with compound mutations had a significantly higher risk for major arrhythmic events than a single-mutation carrier. No association between affected genes and disease severity or progression was identified in this cohort.

HRI designers are faced with the task of creating robots that are easy and pleasant to use for the users. The growing body of research in human–robot interaction (HRI) is still mainly focused on technical aspects of the interaction. It lacks defined guidelines that describe how behavioral expressions for social robots need to be designed to promote high usability and positive user experience. To achieve this goal, we propose to apply the concept of design patterns to HRI. We present a design process that provides step-by-step guidance and methods for HRI designers to generate high quality behavioral patterns for social robots that can be used for different robots and use cases. To document the resulting patterns, we developed a documentation format that provides a clear, standardized structure to note down all relevant aspects of a pattern so that others can understand its design recommendations and apply them to their own robot and use cases. In the present paper, we demonstrate our pattern approach based on an example and describe how we arrived at a pattern language of 40 behavioral patterns that found the basis for future social robot design and related research activities.

Robots have been proposed as intelligent technology that can support the independent living and health of older adults. While significant advances are being made regarding hardware and intelligent software to support autonomous actions of robots, less emphasis has been put on designing robot behavior that is comprehensible and pleasant for older adults. However, good usability and user experience are crucial factors for acceptance and long-term use. One way to actively engage older adults in behavioral design for social robots is participatory design. The Modality Card Deck is proposed, a tool that helps to engage older adults in human-robot interaction design process and participate in design decision for robot behavior. The cards guide the users towards creating ideas for design solutions which are detailed enough to be implemented by interaction designers and software developers. This paper provides a detailed description of the Modality Card Deck and presents an evaluation of the tool in the scope of a case study. In the case study, the card deck was used in participatory design workshops with older adults to develop multi-modal robot behaviors for the Pepper robot and a quiz game application. After describing the procedure of the case study, the workshop results and learnings about working with the Modality Card Deck and older adults are presented.

Background: Right ventricular impairment (RVI) secondary to altered hemodynamics contributes to morbidity and mortality in adult patients after tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) repair. The goal of this study was to describe signaling pathways contributing to right ventricular (RV) remodeling by analyzing over lifetime alterations of RV gene expression in affected patients. Methods: RV tissue was collected at the time of cardiac surgery in 13 patients with a diagnosis of TOF. RNA was isolated and whole transcriptome sequencing was performed. Gene profiles were compared between a group of 6 adults with signs of RVI undergoing right ventricle to pulmonary artery conduit surgery and a group of 7 infants, undergoing TOF correction. Definition of RVI in adult patients was based on clinical symptoms, evidence of RV hypertrophy, dilation, dysfunction or elevated pressure on echocardiographic, cardiovascular magnetic resonance, or catheterization evaluation. Results: Median age was 34 years in RVI patients and 5 months in infants. Based on P adjusted value

It has been argued that people are more inclined to accept a robot in their daily lives and even their home, if they have the feeling that the robot's behavior and interaction style matches their characteristics, needs and abilities. The concept of personalization has been introduced in order to create such personal, tailored human-robot interactions (HRI). Personalizing HRI means that robot takes into account individual user characteristics and can adjust its behavior to the situation and the human interaction partner. Previous HRI research indicates that personalization can have positive effects on the user experience during HRI as well as the user's attitudes towards and perceptions of the robot. This workshop is aimed at discussing the value of and exchanging ideas about the concept of personalization for HRI design. More concretely, we want to explore tools, methods and processes for appropriate robot behavior design and interaction modelling for personalized HRI. The workshop uses interactive, creative activities inspired by design thinking and participatory design to promote collaboration and co-creation between the participants and to inspire new, innovative perspectives on personalized HRI.

Entertainment applications for robots are often based on voice interaction. In these scenarios, the robot is primarily used as a voice assistant with a physical body. We conducted a study to investigate whether the entertainment value of a robot during a game can be attributed to the experience of voice interaction alone, or whether it is related to the physical presence of a robot and its expressivity through gestures and movement. The study examined the user experience for three different set-ups of a quiz game (with voice assistant, robot without animation, and animated robot). The results indicate that the perceived hedonic quality increases with physical presence and movement of the robot. Pragmatic quality was not rated differently for the three game versions. Additional qualitative interviews suggest that it might be desirable to design not overly expressive, but meaningful robot behavior for entertainment applications, in order to promote both, hedonic and pragmatic experience.

We present an update from 6 years of practical use of UX Concept Exploration, a method for user research and user-driven innovation. After a short overview of the method, the paper describes experiences and suggests modifications of the method, where appropriate. Finally, we discuss guidelines to make the method usable in environments with only little UX expertise and limited resources, like small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) usually face.

To design successful, sustainable future mobility systems, it is crucial to provide incentives for commuters to change to eco-friendly alternative routes and means of transport. We believe that this can be realized by a user-centered, need-based design of a mobility infrastructure combined with an intelligent planning system that provides a positive commuting experience. As a first step towards this goal, we conducted interactive focus groups with commuters to identify their motivational drivers as well as opportunities for a positive, personalized commuting experience. The results reveal the demand to support the hedonic use of ways (taking routes for the enjoyable experience itself) and a segmentation into four mobility experience types (MxT) describing commuting and interaction preferences of commuters based on their need's profile.

User Experience research mainly makes use of self-reported measures to assess the user’s experience when using a technical product, especially regarding hedonic product qualities. Our study investigates whether pragmatic and hedonic qualities can be distinguished using two types of implicit measure: behavioural and neurophysiological. Participants interacted with two different software tools designed to emphasize hedonic and pragmatic qualities, respectively. Their implicit evaluations of the two prototypes were examined with the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT) and simultaneous electroencephalographic recordings (EEG), using snapshots from the interaction scenarios. While the AAT showed no differences, the analysis of event-related EEG potentials revealed differences around 300 ms after stimulus presentation. Significant higher cortical activity in the frontal cortex was found for approach tendencies towards snapshots taken from the hedonic prototype interaction. Higher potentials in the parietal (motor) cortex were found for avoidance tendencies towards the pragmatic prototype. The findings show that hedonic and pragmatic user experience qualities can be distinguished based on neuroelectrical data.

Basic human needs are a valuable source for creating meaningful products. Hence, designing for a positive User Experience requires an extensive understanding of those. Instead of just analysing abstract data, designers should also gather implicit information based on their own perception to gain holistic insights on the users' emotional perspectives. Inevitably there exists an influence of the designers' individual perspective on the accumulated insights during user research activities. However, if the designers are aware of their own and multiple other perspectives on needs, there is a good chance that they value relevant observations in user research.The NEEDS PROFILE (NP) is an approach to sensitise for diverse human needs and their characteristics. As designers often tend to find basic needs abstract, the NP enables them to explore basic needs as vivid personifications and encourages them to engage in a creative and playful manner first. Then these insights are confronted in guided discussions in order to enable sustainable learning. Evaluation results are positive, but further investigation needs to be done on long-term effects.

Building Ideas is a novel innovation approach to design interactive products that can evoke positive user experiences. The approach mainly relies on new ways to reflect and negotiate about emotional and implicit concerns and ideas in a tight collaboration between user and design team. This work explains the main principles of the Building Ideas approach. Moreover, it provides examples to illustrate how the approach is implemented in practice by systematic guidance and new methods of user experience design.

This paper explores how technology for older adults needs to be designed to enhance their subjective feeling of wellbeing, supporting independence and health. In experience interviews which consider aspects of Positive Design and User Experience we assess which elements contribute to a positive experience in the everyday life of older adults. First results show that most positive experiences revolve around other people (family & friends). In total, twelve experience categories were identified which can be grouped into the three experience themes "connecting with people", "expressing oneself" and "meeting a challenge".

User experience (UX) has become a key factor in interface design. Still, so far, no satisfying solution exists for measuring the emotional user experience (UX) during human-technology interaction (HTI) and linking them to design elements of the interface. Non-invasive brain imaging techniques are promising tools to assess the underlying causes and generation of emotional experiences in the brain. Against this background, especially functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a rather new and portable method, appears to have strong potential for measuring UX in real-world HTI settings. However, so far fNIRS has scarcely been used in emotion research. The present research evaluates the feasibility of using fNIRS to detect emotional user responses during HTI by comparing it to the well-established method of fMRI which, due to its set-up, is difficult to use in HTI context. Our feasibility study shows that fNIRS can detect brain activity patterns which are similar to those obtained using fMRI and can be used to distinguished positive and negative emotional reaction in an HTI context and displays brain activities which cannot be examined when fMRI is used. Future research should investigate whether similar results can be found when fNIRS is used in less controlled and more realistic HTI scenarios.

The present Ph. D. project explores possibilities to apply neurophysiological methods for affect detection during human-technology interaction (HTI). Portable neurophysio-logical methods such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) offer an objective, ecologically valid and rather convenient way to infer the user's affective state through the monitoring of brain activity. To identify neural signatures for positive and negative affective user reactions an empirical study is proposed. The experimental design of this study enables synchronous data acquisition for EEG, fNIRS and psychophysiological measurements while the user is interacting with an adaptive web-interface. During the interaction process positive and negative affective states are induced by system-generated adaptive actions which are either appropriate and helpful or inappropriate and impedimental. The findings of the empirical study shed light into the question whether EEG, fNIRS or a hybrid approach that combines the employed methods is most reliable for affect detection during HTI.

Our research explores possibilities to apply neurophysiological methods for real-time emotion detection during human-technology interaction. The present paper outlines our scientific approach, research plan and methodology.