Teens experience dangerous and chronic stress, more so than any other age group. The adolescent brain is also extremely vulnerable to the impact of stress increasing the risk for mental and physical illnesses for teens. Researchers lack quality data to understand how, when and why stress occurs in teens or even to understand what “normal” stress might look like. To gain a deeper understanding of teen stress, our team is developing a social robot that can be deployed in a high school setting. This robot, called EMAR, (Ecological Momentary Assessment Robot), is being developed using participatory and human-centered approaches that engage high school students. Our hope is that by capturing the experiences of stress in real-time, an engaging social robot will gather much needed, accurate data to help researchers to better understand teen stress. In this talk, we share two prototypes of the robot and how the teen design groups have informed the design and impacted our thinking. This is a cross-campus and interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Washington and we are actively looking for interested faculty and students who wish to join us on project EMAR.
Elin Björling, Ph.D. holds both a professional research scientist position for the Office of Research and a clinical faculty appointment in the school of Nursing and Healthcare Leadership at University of Washington Tacoma. Over the past two decades, Elin has utilized an ecological momentary assessment/experience sampling approach using community based design and mixed-methods to study stress in adolescents.
Emma J. Rose, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at University of Washington Tacoma. Her research focuses on the practice of user experience, how people use expertise to overcome resource constraints, and the development of technical identity. Her research is motivated by a commitment to social justice and a belief that the way technologies are designed ultimately shapes our world. She received her PhD in Human Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington in 2011.