Relational machines

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

Relational machines are technological artifacts that interact with people on an ongoing and extended basis to the benefit of their users. Sample applications include learning companions for children, assistive robots for the elderly, software agents that act as trainers or assistants, interactive game characters that engage in social relationships, or machines that cooperate with humans as members of human-robot teams. In these scenarios, the user interacts with the machine as a peer rather than as a tool. Furthermore, the social rapport between human and machine has a positive impact on performance gains. This raises the question of how to design for a successful human-machine relationship over the long-term. What kinds of relationships can be established and maintained between humans and technological artifacts? How might one model such a relationship, reliably measure its important aspects, and modify them in order to create successful interactions over time? What kinds of relationships have been explored and how will they evolve in the future?

This course examines the issues, principles, and challenges toward building relational machines through a combination of studio-style design and critique along with lectures, lively discussion of course readings, and assignments. Insights from social psychology, human-computer interaction, and design will be examined, as well as how these ideas are manifest in a broad range of applications for software agents and robots. Student projects explore selected course themes in depth. There will be a final project due at the end of the semester.

Students are required to submit a 1-2 page critique or reaction to the readings at noon the day before class meets.

This class will be a combination of lecture/discussion with a project studio format. The first hour shall comprise review and discussion of course readings. The second hour will consist of in-class exercises to small design problems followed by short presentations and discussion.

One goal of this course is to go through a full design cycle of a relational artifact. This includes developing a design concept of a relational artifact, getting feedback from focus groups, implementing technical aspects of it, evaluating those aspects, and possibly revising the design. A working demo at the end of the semester is ideal.

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