Designing a social robot to evoke climate hope among youth via social media
Linvik, Liana (2024)
2024
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-04-26
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202403283176
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202403283176
Tiivistelmä
The goal of this thesis is to research what can be done to support young people who have climate anxiety with the support of a social robot. The main goal was to design a virtual persona prototype for the social robot to help support young people with climate awareness and activism. This virtual persona could be used to reach young people via social media or give remote access for a social robot via application.
Climate change is a crisis that will affect the younger generation. This has had an impact on how younger people feel about the future. Worry and anxiety about the climate crisis has led to climate anxiety with the younger generation. Social media has been a key part of communication and sharing ideas especially among youth. It’s used for activism for its large range of reaching potential awareness and action for change.
Social robot technology has been used to help humans with their social needs and to interact with people. Even with more social robots coming to the market, they can’t always interact with users due to the physical limitation of the robot not being able to be everywhere or being trans ported. However, a social robot with a virtual persona could reach these users and be more avail able remotely to a wider userbase. Virtual persona is gaining popularity, in its use for chatbots, AI assistants and social robots.
User Experience Design has been used to help people’s experience when interacting with a service or product. User Experience Design offers frameworks and approaches to find the user needs and to provide meaningful experience for the user. With the design methods used in this research, the goal is to ease climate anxiety and let users be able to vent their emotions and be able to evoke climate hope within themselves and others. The design process was to outline a way to ease climate anxiety and let users be able to vent their emotions and be able to evoke climate hope within themselves and others.
This research involves two phases. The first phase was concept design and evaluation which includes the literature review to explore about climate activism, social robots and virtual agents. The semi-structure interviews to gain insights into what participants experiences and viewpoints on these topics, questionnaire built from the interview results to evaluate the design and approach of the virtual persona. The second phase was prototype development. Based on the insight gath ered from the first phase of the research. A chatbot interaction will be developed. This prototype serves as a tangible output of the research findings.
The key findings from this thesis were that youth prefer the technology to utilize its machine features such as logic, observant and analytical. They preferred a hopeful communicate style, active listening role, and advice based on analysis data. The results from this thesis can be used to help with designing guidelines for effective virtual persona interactions via social media with the social robot use.
Climate change is a crisis that will affect the younger generation. This has had an impact on how younger people feel about the future. Worry and anxiety about the climate crisis has led to climate anxiety with the younger generation. Social media has been a key part of communication and sharing ideas especially among youth. It’s used for activism for its large range of reaching potential awareness and action for change.
Social robot technology has been used to help humans with their social needs and to interact with people. Even with more social robots coming to the market, they can’t always interact with users due to the physical limitation of the robot not being able to be everywhere or being trans ported. However, a social robot with a virtual persona could reach these users and be more avail able remotely to a wider userbase. Virtual persona is gaining popularity, in its use for chatbots, AI assistants and social robots.
User Experience Design has been used to help people’s experience when interacting with a service or product. User Experience Design offers frameworks and approaches to find the user needs and to provide meaningful experience for the user. With the design methods used in this research, the goal is to ease climate anxiety and let users be able to vent their emotions and be able to evoke climate hope within themselves and others. The design process was to outline a way to ease climate anxiety and let users be able to vent their emotions and be able to evoke climate hope within themselves and others.
This research involves two phases. The first phase was concept design and evaluation which includes the literature review to explore about climate activism, social robots and virtual agents. The semi-structure interviews to gain insights into what participants experiences and viewpoints on these topics, questionnaire built from the interview results to evaluate the design and approach of the virtual persona. The second phase was prototype development. Based on the insight gath ered from the first phase of the research. A chatbot interaction will be developed. This prototype serves as a tangible output of the research findings.
The key findings from this thesis were that youth prefer the technology to utilize its machine features such as logic, observant and analytical. They preferred a hopeful communicate style, active listening role, and advice based on analysis data. The results from this thesis can be used to help with designing guidelines for effective virtual persona interactions via social media with the social robot use.