Empowering Robot Designers: A Digital Tool for Early-Stage Social Robot Prototyping and Communication

While social robots promise to benefit people with emotional and informational needs, persistent concerns exist around their ability to effectively manage expectations and meet user needs. In this study, a digital toolkit was developed as a possible solution to support the early-stage design of social robots and address the current absence of a structured, research-informed approach. The prototype toolkit provides an interactive and visual process to assist designers of different backgrounds and varying degrees of technical knowledge; and to guide the development team throughout iterative ideation, prototyping, and communication regarding new social robot designs. The toolkit employs established human-robot interaction principles and insights from existing research to incorporate a guiding framework in the design process. This paper presents key prototype features, an outline of the user flow, a preliminary expert evaluation of the tool's concept and usability, and future aims.