Xiao Xiao

Project Website GitHub

English

RoboCom is a social robot designed to provide sustained interaction with older adults. The core goal is to induce self-disclosure through a carefully designed conversation agent — a persona of a recently graduated college student.

Primary design and user testing results were presented at the ARIS 2024 (Lo et al., 2024) conference in Taipei. Subsequent work further examines the depth and patterns of self-disclosure induced across extended interactions.

Our first product is XiaoXiao, which is a companion robot designed for older adults, featuring a voice-user interface (VUI) with background storytelling to encourage extended, natural conversation.

The system achieved an average engagement duration of 40+ minutes per session with older adult participants. The project served as the foundation of my bachelor’s thesis, involving 28 user research sessions with 7 older adults across 4 system iterations.

Key features:

• Background narrative framing to provide conversation context
• VUI enabling fluid spoken interaction without screen dependency
• Iterative user-centered design grounded in gerontechnology

中文

曉曉（XiaoXiao）是一款專為高齡使用者設計的陪伴型機器人，具備融入背景故事情境的語音使用者介面（VUI），引導使用者進行自然且深入的對話。目的是透過對話代理人促進自我揭露（self-disclosure）行為。 機器人的角色設定為一位剛畢業的大學生，藉由分享自身的生活經驗，以自然對話引導使用者分享個人經驗與想法。

初步的設計構想與使用者測試結果發表於 ARIS 2024 (Lo et al., 2024)。後續研究進一步分析自我揭露的深度與模式。

主要特色：

• 背景故事框架，為對話提供情境脈絡
• 語音介面，不依賴圖形介面流暢互動
• 以高齡科技（gerontechnology）為基礎的使用者中心設計