Our analysis of interview data from parents highlights three interacting themes informing the design of a learning companion robot that supports the context-based needs for parent-child interaction. The first theme,
parent-robot collaboration, highlights parents’ wanted to work with the robot as
collaborators based on relative capabilities between the parent and the robot, the availability of the parent, and the motivation of the parent. A consideration of the
relative capabilities of the parent and the robot would involve assigning more responsibility in a learning task to the party with higher skill on that task [
29]. For example, the task of generating educational prompts might be delegated to the robot, while the parent might offer personalized scaffolding for children. The parent’s
availability can help determine times when the parent has limited availability, such as when taking care of younger siblings, and assign more responsibility to the robot. Finally, the parent might situationally lack
motivation in pursuing some learning activities or repeating prompts, which might provide an opportunity for the robot to assume more responsibility.
The second theme,
parent-guided factors on collaboration, underlines parent expectations for the robot to respond to their overarching
educational objectives and
concerns for the use of a robot at home. The learning objective can determine the necessary tasks for a learning activity. For example, the parent’s learning objective might be understanding the process of problem solving, in which case either the parent or the robot needs to explain the process rather than only provide an answer. The concerns will define the constraints for the tasks and the corresponding delegation of the tasks, unless a design feature effectively mitigates the concern. For example, the parent’s concern might be about the privacy of their video data, in which case they may not delegate tasks that require computer vision or video capturing to the robot. And the third theme,
robot-guided factors on collaboration, highlights parents’ vision that the robot flexibly enables and manages effective interaction paradigms, including the concept of
interaction dynamics and
interaction initiatives, in line with the collaboration patterns and parental expectations. The notion of interaction dynamic refers to how the robot manages the number and kind of participants as well as the involvement of each party. For example, the robot might need to switch to a different interaction mode when the parent is involved in its interaction with the child. The idea of interaction initiatives pertains to how much autonomy the robot is granted to initiate an interaction. For example, the robot might initiate an interaction anytime when free playing but initiate only as requested when reading with the child. We present the details of each theme in the following sections, and a summary of these findings can be found in Figure
5.
4.1 Parent-Robot Collaboration
In our data, parents frequently discussed several tasks (e.g., generating creative educational prompts for specific learning concepts, offering personalized scaffolding, etc.) that must be completed to achieve the learning goals they expected for their child. More specifically, they illustrated how these tasks should be delegated between themselves and the robot as they reflected on their as well as the robot’s strengths and weaknesses in daily learning scenarios. This pattern in our data suggested that parents were thinking more about how they could collaborate with the robot, which was further verified by their explicit description for the robot’s role as their “
collaborator.” In addition, task delegation choices were based on three dimensions: parent/robot relative capability, parent availability, and parent motivation. A summary of these findings can be found in Figure
6.
4.1.1 Robot as a collaborator.
The majority of parents (P3, P4, P5, P7, P8, P9, P10) wanted the robot to act as their collaborator to alleviate some of their workload rather than having the robot replace their responsibility entirely. P5 summarized this perspective by stating, “I think the robot is partnering with me. I don’t think it’s taking the place of me.” In addition, P8 highlighted the robot’s role as a team member to alleviate her authoritative stance with her child, saying “Misty and I are a team and we are working together to try to grow those concepts.” Furthermore, P9 and P10 emphasized how the robot offloaded pressure from them by generating appropriate intellectual prompts during their interactions. As articulated by P9, “parent is still very involved in being the teacher, but the robot takes the pressure off of the parent to have to come up with questions.” Although some parents also used different terms to describe the robot’s functional role as, for instance, a facilitator (P4, P7), a caregiver (P1, P2), or an educator (P1, P7), their articulations of how the robot served these roles are still conceptualized as a collaborator. We argue that parents perceived the robot’s functional roles differently depending on which tasks the robot collaborated with parents on. For example, the robot may have been perceived more as a facilitator if it helped with prompting parent-child conversations. On the other hand, the robot may have been perceived more as a tutor if it helped with demonstrating a problem solving process. In whichever case, the robot served as a collaborator to the parent by offering different kinds of support, leading to the perception of different functional roles while staying under the umbrella of a collaborator. In the following sections, we further describe what factors should be considered to determine the complicated patterns of parent-robot collaboration.
4.1.2 Parent/Robot Relative Capability.
The relative capability between the parent and the robot refers to the strengths and weaknesses of the parent and the robot with respect to each other in carrying out certain tasks. For each task, the more proficient party is likely to assume more authority. We describe the collaborative tasks that emerged from our data through the lens of this perspective in the following sections.
Parents can use the robot to supplement their limited knowledge domains for prompt generation.. All parents (P1–P10) mentioned that spontaneously generating prompts associated with advanced or unfamiliar concepts might have been beyond their capabilities. Despite their comprehension of the underlying academic concepts, they recognized their limited knowledge of the pedagogical strategies required to independently create age-appropriate prompts. For instance, P2 admitted that she would find herself “reliant on the content provided in the book,” while P4 mentioned that she could only generate “straightforward and basic questions,” lacking the ability to formulate more advanced ideas. Additionally, P10 perceived the collaboration to be based on hers and the robot’s respective proficient domain knowledge, stating “I read the story and provide literacy-related interaction, and the robot can assist by suggesting math-related questions for them[children] to think about.” Moreover, parents not only sought academic support but also envisioned prompting the child to reflect on social interaction and emotions, nurturing their emotional intelligence. For example, P3 and P5 believed that the robot could play a pivotal role in generating prompts encouraging children to reflect on their own and others’ feelings and emotions. These findings suggest that in cases where parents lacked specific knowledge, the robot could assume the role of generating advanced concepts and prompts to facilitate children’s learning.
Parents can use the robot’s responses as a source of validation and social persuasion method.. The majority of parents (P1, P4, P5, P6, P7, P8) leaned towards leveraging the robot’s responses as a source of validation. They saw the responses as a means to offer their children contextualized feedback and encouragement. P8 exemplified this concept, stating, “one thing I liked is that after [child] came up with the wrong answer, and misty[robot] told us the right answer. And then we could work backwards and figure it out together.” Interestingly, several parents (P4, P5, P7, P8) explained that they utilized the robot’s response because their children trusted third-party and non-parental opinions more than their input. P4 summarized this phenomenon by noting, “if they have feedback from someone who’s other than a parent, they seem to take that feedback better.” One possible rationale, articulated by P5, is that “it’s good to see answers not just always coming from mom and dad; there are various information sources validating that. Another explanation, as described by P8, is that she thought her child had “never seen Misty made a mistake, unlike her parents, so she has more chance to trust Misty’s abilities.” However, in the spectrum of parental preferences regarding the robot’s responses, extreme cases exist, where parents either expressed a desperate need (P2) or no need at all (P3) for receiving a response or an answer to a prompt from the robot. P2 admitted feeling uncertain about offering a proper response for her child, while P3 demonstrated stronger leadership in guiding her child in line with her parenting values, stating that “It’s not really about getting the right answer. It’s more about the interaction between us and having open conversations about the questions.” These findings indicate that the robot could act as a source of validation for facilitating learning interactions, be leveraged as a trusted third-party opinion to effectively persuade and guide children, and support parents who lacked confidence in their own responses.
Parents envision the robot tailoring the level of scaffolding to their capabilities.. In the current system design, many parents (P1, P4, P5, P6, P8, P10) expressed that they needed to provide substantial scaffolding during the interaction with the robot. This scaffolding encompassed activities such as clarifying the meaning of questions (P4, P6, P8) and explaining the problem-solving process (P1, P4, P5, P6, P8, P10). For instance, P6 stated that “If I wasn’t there with her[child], she[child] would not understand the question, although She[child] understood the math part of it.; P1 noted, “Robot didn’t explain, but for young kids, they wouldn’t necessarily know unless someone is explaining to them.” However, one parent (P2) encountered challenges in providing scaffolding for her child. She expressed uncertainty, stating, “I am unsure what to do, after observing that her child answered incorrectly. Unlike most other parents, she pressed the robot’s bumper button to obtain the standard responses without providing her child any feedback. These findings highlight the need for the robot to tailor its level of scaffolding to the parents’ capabilities to optimize the learning experience.
Robot could enhance child’s engagement with physical and interactive features. Parents excelled at customizing their approaches based on their understanding of their child’s interests (P1, P7, P10). For instance, P7 knew how to“use something he[child] is interested in get their attention.” Simultaneously, parents recognized the significance of the robot’s physical appearance (P3, P4, P5, P8, P9) and interaction features such as buttons (P3, P6, P8, P9, P10) in maintaining their child’s engagement and motivation. As P5 described, for someone “who doesn’t like reading, it would be an incentive to have Misty[robot]’s presence.” Moreover, when asked to compare delivering prompts with the robot through speech versus via text, P3 mentioned that she would “be more interested in robot than paper because it would engage her child better.” P8 also emphasized the robot’s interactive feature, saying, “she really liked to push the button so that kind of kept her engaged.” In summary, these findings indicate that while the robot may not excel at offering customized motivational approaches as effectively as parents, its physical and interactive features can assist parents in enhancing their child’s engagement.
4.1.3 Parent Availability.
The parent’s availability dimension helps identify times when the parent has limited availability to support the child. Although we did not discuss the robot’s availability respectively as it did not emerge from the discussion, it could contextually mean the battery level of the robot or the ease of access to the robot.
Parents can use the robot as educational support when they are temporarily unavailable.. Parents (P1, P4, P5, P6, P8, P9) recognized that there are occasions when they cannot be available to assist their child. These scenarios may occur due to various commitments such as household chores (P6), work (P4, P6), caring for other siblings (P5), or even during the recovery of an unexpected incident (P1). P5 described this situation by saying, “I have two other kids, so sometimes I’m occupied with helping them, and I can’t be there.” Similarly, P6 suggested that “the robot could help her[child] for five minutes while I’m cooking dinner.” Furthermore, P1 shared a personal experience, stating, “Last year, I was in a severe accident and bedridden for three to four months. During that challenging period, I might have taken the assistance of a robot to entertain my kids when I was physically unable to do so.” Additionally, P9 highlighted that she preferred the robot to support her child doing learning activities instead of being occupied by entertainments, stating, “When we are busy, we would feel better about kids engaging in educational activities with the robot than watching TV.” These parents’ perspectives emphasize the potential role of the robot in offering educational support when parents are temporarily unavailable or occupied with other responsibilities.
4.1.4 Parent Motivation.
The parent’s motivation dimension helps identify times when parents lack motivation in certain learning activities or tasks. We did not discuss the robot’s motivation respectively as it did not emerge from the discussion and we also assumed this dimension is not applicable to the robot.
Parents envisioned the robot taking on repetitive and scripted work that they have less motivation for.. Several parents (P1, P2, P3, P4, P6, P9) expressed a preference for the robot to handle certain tasks, particularly those that are repetitive, structured, and scripted. For example, some parents (P1, P2, P3, P6) showed the desire to have the robot read the content of the books, allowing them to focus on providing personalized and instructional support. P6 illustrated this by stating, “
Misty[robot] can read the book to her[child], but I don’t think that she[child] would understand additional instructions. I need to explain to her.” Furthermore, P3 wanted the robot repeat stories to her child, so he can “
hear it again in a different way from somebody else.” P4 extended this idea to educational games, as her child enjoys playing them repeatedly. She envisioned having “
Misty[robot] play the game with her[child]”, reducing her involvement in repetitive tasks as she “‘
sometimes don’t like to play it as much.” This illustrates parents’ intention to delegate lower-level and repetitive responsibilities to the robot, freeing them to engage in more interactive and personalized interactions with their child.
4.2 Parent-Guided Factors on Collaboration
Parents formulated their individual policies for using the social robot, while upholding their core educational objectives when engaging in learning activities with their child. Even when guided by prompts from the social robot, they instinctively tailored their parental guidance to fill in any gaps and ensure the attainment of these objectives. This not only reveals the parents’ aspirations in supporting their children but also highlights potential design implications for the social robot. We categorized these learning objectives into three domains: intellectual development, social and emotion development, and promotion of independence. A summary of these findings can be found in Figure
7.
4.2.1 Educational Objectives.
Intellectual development. For the majority of parents (P1, P2, P4, P5, P6, P8, P10) their primary goal was to nurture their children’s comprehension of the problem-solving process, prioritizing it over the mere attainment of correct answers. As articulated by P1, her goal was “just to make sure he [child] knew how the right answer was achieved,” and P10 added that she was “not super concerned with him getting the answer right.” However, P2 noted that she was “unsure or didn’t know what to do” when her child encountered difficulties in understanding how to tackle a problem, highlighting the challenges she faced in providing effective guidance to achieve her desired educational outcomes. Additionally, beyond the realm of problem-solving, P2 mentioned her efforts to teach her child Spanish and English to facilitate bilingual communication, allowing her child to interact effectively with both family members at home and peers at school: “ I tried to speak more Spanish at home, because they speak English in school. Their grandma doesn’t speak English, so we have to speak Spanish with her.”
Social and emotion development. Some parents expressed that one of the objectives in doing learning activities at home is to spend time together to strengthen their parent-child bond (P3, P9, P10) and promote the child’s comprehension of social interactions with others, including the ability to recognize and empathize with others’ emotions (P3, P5, P7, P9). For example, P3 mentioned that “it was the interaction between us that we were going for, rather than whether you are right [for the answer].” In addition, P9 described her aim saying: “we’re more focused on social and emotional learning, and get him [child] to talk about feelings.”
Promotion of independence. Parents believed that a substantial aspect of learning involves cultivating the independence of acquiring knowledge (P3, P1, P5, P7) and making critical judgements on information from various sources (P4). As articulated by P1, her aim was to “try to get him to figure things out on his own.” Similarly, P4 shared that she was “trying to teach them good values around technology, and to use critical thinking skills to find good sources [of information] by themselves.” In addition, this perspective was cited as a rationale for favoring occasional one-on-one child-robot interactions, a choice contingent upon the specific learning goals at any given moment (P5). As specified by P5, she thought “there’s some value in interacting and stepping back to let them process things for themselves and try to understand stuff, which also depends on what the goals are in that moment.”
4.2.2 Concerns and mitigation approach.
Parents expressed concerns about using the social robot at home and discussed potential solutions. These findings shed light on the factors that limit the robot’s usage and offer insights into how design improvements could help alleviate parental concerns. Three primary concerns emerged from our analysis: privacy, content appropriateness, and achieving a balanced use of the robot.
Privacy risk and mitigation. While some parents voiced apprehensions regarding privacy, with a particular focus on data security (P1, P4, P6, P8), and their child’s understanding of data privacy (P4), others (P9, P10) explicitly stated that they had no such concerns. Specifically, P8 harbored concerns about the robot’s installed cameras potentially capturing in-home video data, cautioning that “Remote cameras can be used in malicious ways. I would need to be mindful of what room the robots in.” Meanwhile, P4 voiced uncertainty about the content and timing of data recording, raising questions such as “Is it always quietly listening, waiting for a voice activation feature? Can I actively turn it on and off?Is it recording my house all the time?” Additionally, both P4 and P6 shared concerns about their child inadvertently disclosing personal information to the robot without a comprehensive understanding of how data would be handled, including unexpected sharing and retention. P4 emphasized this by remarking “even just reminding my kids that what goes on the internet really is forever.”
Parents offered several suggestions to mitigate their privacy concerns, emphasizing transparency (P4), clear explanation (P4), and reduced reliance on internet connectivity (P8). P4 proposed that data recording, storage and usage should be transparently and comprehensibly explained through the system interface in a user-friendly manner. She said, “I would want transparency about what the robot is doing. If it is collecting data. I want to know what it’s collecting.” Meanwhile, P8 expressed a preference for the robot’s operation not to be contingent on an internet connection to safeguard data privacy, stating “If Misty could download the stories and the question so it will not be Wi-Fi dependent, I would feel more comfortable with it.”
Content Appropriateness and parental control. Several parents raised concerns about the age-appropriateness (P2, P4, P5, P6, P7, P10) and trustworthiness (P6) of the content delivered by the robot. They shared the desire to prevent the robot from presenting questions or materials they considered inappropriate. Parents held varying perspectives on how best to control and filter the content. The majority strongly preferred to personally evaluate and determine content suitability (P4, P5, P6, P10). As remarked by P4, “
I would have the ability to say–Yes, this is appropriate; No, this is not.” Additionally, P6 added that she wants “
very explicit parental controls over what the kids can access and what’s being said and heard and talked about.” Aside from simply filtering the content, P10 emphasized her desire to be “
involved in what the child is doing, instead of giving him the robot and leaving.” This hands-on approach allowed her to actively supervise her child’s usage in line with her parental expectations. It’s worth noting that these observations stem from a short-term study and may evolve as parents establish increased trust in the robot over time. Further elaboration on this point is provided in Section
5.3.
Balanced robot use with human-human interaction. Several parents (P1, P5, P6, P7, P9) expressed concerns about their child potentially overusing the robot and consequently neglecting other important aspects of learning and development, such as outdoor activities and social interaction. P1 worried that her child might become excessively absorbed in electronic devices and “
just want to sit in front of it all day versus being social or playing outside.” Similarly, P6 expressed concerns about children becoming isolated, primarily engaging with technology instead of learning how to interact with others: “
I feel like kids are not learning how to interact with each other and just want to play by themselves, with technology involved.” Despite these concerns, parents recognized the value of the robot in enriching their children’s learning. P7 voiced a preference for technology to improve their lives positively rather than exerting excessive control: “
It’s more like I want technology to enhance their lives instead of letting it control them.” This sentiment highlights the parental aspiration for a balanced integration of technology into their child’s development.
4.3 Robot-Guided Factors on Collaboration
The concept of
interaction paradigm defines a specific module of interaction with the robot, governed by the interaction dynamic and the preferred initiation of communication. In our data, we found that parents preferred the robot to flexibly supplement their level of involvement and they favored taking more control over when the robot initiates an interaction. A summary of these findings can be found in Figure
8.
Parents wanted the robot to adapt to flexible choices of interaction dynamics.. The concept of interaction dynamics refers to how the robot manages the number and kinds of participants as well as the involvement of each party. Instead of adhering to a fixed mode, most parents (P4, P5, P6, P8, P9, P10) wanted the robot to flexibly support a range of interaction dynamics based on situational needs. For instance, P5 illustrated that she would like to “have choice to switch between having parents in the interaction or letting the child be on his own.” Parents conveyed a variety of dynamics they preferred in different scenarios with the robot, including child-robot interaction without a parent, parent-child-robot interaction, and parent-child interaction without the robot.
Firstly, in the dynamic of Child-robot interaction (without a parent), parents leaned towards allowing their child to interact with the robot independently when they are temporarily unavailable (P4, P5, P6, P8, P9), when they lack motivation (P1, P9), as the child matures to an older age (P2, P5), or when the objective is to nurture their child’s independence for self-directed learning (P5, P8). For instance, P5 described that when she was “trying to do three or four different things at the same time, [child] will be on his own.” Moreover, P9 indicated that she prefer to do more outdoor activities “rather than learning activities at home with her child,” and thus would favor a child-robot interaction model for in-home learning activities. In addition, P2 and P5 both imagined their children gradually interacting with the robot on their own as they get older. Lastly, P8 illustrated her desire to promote independent learning for her child, stating that the robot “provide the response that gives her the tools to be a little bit independent and practicing the skills without me” (P8).
Secondly, in the dynamic of Parent-child-robot interaction, all parents (P1—P10) expressed their preference for a flexible division of roles in guiding interactions with the child, allowing either the robot or themselves to take the lead while the other played a supplementary role. This adaptable approach results in varying levels of involvement for each party and thereby variations within this specific dynamic. Firstly, parents leaned towards increased robot involvement when they lack the availability (P5, P6), motivation (P4), or capability (P2, P8) to actively guide the activities, when they aim to cultivate their child’s independence in learning (P5). For example, P8 described the lack of experience her husband has in facilitating children’s learning, stating that “my husband does not know how to facilitate and he wouldn’t enjoy getting emails about it. The robot could guide his interaction and maybe have it model him[husband] more.” Conversely, parents themselves wanted more active involvement when they seek quality bonding time with their child during learning (P4, P6), when they intend to contribute specific intellectual concepts (P4, P10), when personalized support is deemed necessary, or when they want to maintain supervisory control over their child’s interaction with the robot to address any concerns (P7). P10 illustrated this when she stated “I think it is always beneficial from having some parental interaction and interest in what he’s doing. So I want to be there to encourage him and let him validate that he’s doing the job.” Combining these two views, parents prefer to have choice in both. P5 explained that she “would like to have choice” in the dynamics, and be able to “switch between involving parents to interact more and less.” In particular, she stated that “I can provide guidance or assistance, but only being pulled in when needed, letting him do what he needs to do by himself.”
Finally, in the dynamic of Parent-child interaction (without the robot), a few parents preferred to interact with their child without the robot when they want to enjoy their own time together (P9), when the concepts they want to explain are not enabled by the robot (P8), or when they have concerns over the information the robot offers (P6). For instance, P9 illustrated the situation when she said “I feel it is valuable to have one on one time with the child, doing reading or an activity together.”
Parents envisioned the robot accommodating flexible forms of interaction initiatives.. The notion of interaction initiative refers to how much autonomy the robot is granted to initiate interactions with users. Our data suggested different patterns of initiating an interaction including user-driven, user-authored and robot-driven, robot-driven with user permission, and robot-driven. In the following sections, we articulate each kind of initiative and the the possible scenarios correspondingly.
First, in a user-driven case, parents (P2, P3, P7, P8, P10) preferred the robot to initiate an interaction only when they manually request one. P3 described that she preferred the robot “to be manual, rather than talks on its own after a certain period of time.” Second, in a user-authored and robot-driven case, where parents prefer to author the timing and initiatives of the robot. P4 described that she “wouldn’t want the robot to just be able to barge in to say whatever it wants or ask for permission randomly.” She further illustrated her intention to author the robot’s initiatives by scheduling a specific prompt or behavior for a specific time frame, stating, “it[robot] can initiate to say, ‘it is time for this thing, do you want to do it now,’ and I can confirm if I want to do it now or later.” Third, in the case of robot-driven with user permission, parents (P2, P7) described certain scenarios when the robot can drive the initiative by indicating its intention but need to wait for user permission before actually putting the initiative into actions. P7 described that she preferred the robot to “raise her hand while we read together before bedtime” to keep the interaction “at a lower intensity level.” Finally, in a robot-driven case, parents (P6, P7) described that sometimes the robot can initiate an interaction or conversation anytime. P7 exemplified this case by describing a scenario when her child is playing toys: “There could be a time when she can just interact and interrupts. I can imagine her roaming around and say ‘let’s build a racetrack’ or something similar” to help come up with creative learning opportunities.”