A user-centered agile approach to the development of a real-world social robot application for reception areas

Abstract

As social robots are increasingly entering into the real world, developing a viable robot application has become highly important. While a growing body of research has acknowledged that the integration of an agile development methodology with user-centered design (UCD) provides advantages for both organizations and end users, integrating UCD in an agile methodology has been a challenging endeavor. The present paper illustrates a user-centered agile approach that integrates user perspectives through formative usability testing during an agile development process of a robot application and thus differentiates from most robot application evaluations, which conduct summative usability testing (i.e., they quantitatively test goal achievement after technological developments). Through an active involvement of organization and end users, we were able to develop a social robot application that is both useful and usable. Therefore, the illustrated approach is particularly suitable for developing real-world robot applications while ensuring the desired high level of usability.