Writing a Research Thesis @ University of California, SC
HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION · HUMAN-FACTORS RESEARCH
OVERVIEW
As part of my Computer Science degree from BITS Goa, I wrote a research thesis at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We researched how mini robots can be used to express emotions through movement gestures.
DURATION
Jan 2024 to Present. Collecting data as of today.
ROLE
HCI Researcher at the Social and Emotional Technology Lab in UCSC.
TEAM
My supervisor, Prof. Katherine Isbister and Ph.D. student Chen Ji.
SKILLS
HCI research, human-factors, academic workshops, surveys, writing.
IMPACT
This research is late-breaking work in the field of HCI: it original and innovative technology. This work forms the basis of further research that is going to be used in academic papers.
THE ROBOTS AND HOW THEY MOVE
THE BRIEF
In the field of HCI, the possibility of emotional expression through robots holds great importance. In this research, we focus on a relatively underexplored subset of this: communicating emotions using movement gestures performed by non-humanoid robots.
We imagined a unique way of communicating using these robots. During use, each user would have the ability to share emotions with their peers through the robots. When shared, the emotions would be performed by their proxy robots in the form of movement patterns.
ENVISIONED USECASE, FIGURE CREDITS: CHEN JI
We hypothesised that with the right movement vocabulary, these robots could be used in mediated communication and serve as a novel social medium, allowing people to communicate and connect with one another. We also hypothesised that the gentle physicality of this interaction could be beneficial, especially since people are recovering from screen-caused fatigue after the COVID-19 lockdown.
RESEARCH METHOD
Our research cycle can be divided into three main subsections: (1) theoretical and foundational work, (2) data collection, and (3) data analysis.
After establishing a solid theoretical basis for our work, we wanted to collect data about the possibility of creating the emotional movement vocabulary from our hypothesis. We collected the first set data through a set of workshops. We performed a preliminary data analysis on the data that was collected. This analysis informed the design of the survey used in the next stage of data collection which is in progress as of today.
To summarise, our research methodology has been the following: establish a theoretical foundation → data collection phase 1 → data analysis phase 1 → data collection phase 2 → data analysis phase 2 → consolidate results. We are currently implementing “data collection phase 2”. The figures below elaborate on the steps that we followed in each phase.
(1) THEORETICAL AND FOUNDATIONAL WORK
(2) DATA COLLECTION
(3) DATA ANALYSIS
PRESENT DAY
As we are currently the process of collecting a second set of data (through a survey which I am working on), and since this is novel and innovative work the data we’ve collected is confidential — please get in touch with me for more details! 💌
