Hi everyone, Looking forward to this week's seminar! Our speaker for the week is Dr. Marlena Fraune, who's joining us from Colorado. They focus on human-centered design, with an impressive track record working as a faculty member, an Amazon visiting academic, a professional UX researcher in industry, and as the CEO of a consulting firm within the last decade. As a reminder, everyone is expected to come to the seminar. We’ve got a strict no-device policy. We also have, as always, coffee and coffee cake. For the spring term, we're in Rogers Hall 230. Seminar is at 10am Friday. See you then! Cheers, Naomi ____________________________________________________________ Title: Towards user acceptance and accessibility in today’s robots Speaker: Marlena Fraune, Plover Abstract: To truly help people, current robotic technology must (1) solve a problem users have and (2) be accepted and used in the long-term. In this talk, I describe two overarching research projects on this topic: one with a grant from Toyota Research Institute to reduce social isolation of older adults, and one while working as a Visiting Academic at Amazon to improve usability of a warehouse robot that autonomously moves through shared space with people. I describe my trajectory in these projects from need-finding research to work on longitudinal and accessibility acceptance. Bio: Dr. Marlena R. Fraune (they/them) works to improve today’s robots for diverse users. As Founder and CEO of Plover: Human-Centered Technology Consulting, they draw on their experience in industry and academia. They leverage their real-world experience researching and improving robots for industry, via Toyota Research Institute, Amazon, and Kaleidoscope Innovations, to determine current robot needs and capabilities, and user needs and preferences for those robots. They leverage their decade of academic research experience – including five years as a professor at New Mexico State University, and visiting research positions in Germany and Japan – to develop and answer overarching research questions to meet users’ real needs with robots, such as: How can we promote long-term acceptance of home robots? How can we enhance these robots for interactions across cultures? How can we transcend current accessibility guidelines to create accessible mobile robots? Outside of work, Dr. Fraune enjoys engaging in as many types of dance as possible – from floor work and rolls, to ballroom and fusion, to aerial arts like trapeze – and then sitting down for tabletop games and creative writing.