As social robots enter educational settings, how they are positioned as new social actors within existing teacher-student pedagogical relationships becomes an important yet underexplored question. They may be shaped by existing relationships, while also having the potential to reconfigure them. In this study, we explore the relational positioning of educational social robots through a drawing-based design activity with teachers. By analyzing the pedagogical configurations imagined by teachers, we reveal how teachers assign roles, responsibilities, and degrees of authority to robots, in relation to themselves and students. Building on these findings, we discuss the design implications for future educational social robots, highlighting the importance of considering how robots are added into and reshape pedagogical relationships.

While social robots have demonstrated effectiveness in supporting students' intercultural competence development, it is unclear how they can effectively be adopted for integrated use in K-12 schools. We conducted two phases of design workshops with teachers, where they co-designed robot-mediated intercultural activities while considering student needs and school integration concerns. Using thematic analysis, we identify appropriate scenarios and roles for classroom robots, explore how robots could complement rather than replace teachers, and consider how to address ethical and compliance considerations. Our findings provide practical design guidelines for the HRI community to develop social robots that can effectively support intercultural education in K-12 schools.

Emotion tracking is commonly practiced for mental wellbeing.In recent years, increasing attention is turned to automatic emotion tracking, including technologies based on Facial Expression Recognition (FER).However, work on FER based tracking so far has mainly focused on accuracy improvement, and little is on how it works in everyday lives.In this paper, we developed an FER-based emotion tracking web application, EmoAction, and used it as a technology probe to explore participants' experiences and perceptions of using FER-based emotion tracking in daily life.A field study with 9 participants trying it over 14 days reveals how such an emotion tracking tool enables people to gain new awareness and new perspectives of their emotions, and identifies several potential usages of such an automatic tracking tool.We then discuss the implications for future design, including providing real-time non-judgmental feedback, prioritizing triggering reflection over seeking maximum precision, and enabling social sharing with respect for privacy.

Forming friendship with peers from diverse backgrounds is key to children’s social emotional development. In this study, we explored the use of social robot, Haru, as mediator for remote communication in children group, to support connection and friendship building. We invited children from different countries aged from 10 to 15 to participate in two interaction sessions with peers from other countries, after which we conducted interviews with children from three countries, focusing on their experiences, and perceptions of the robot’s roles in the process. The findings indicated that social robot Haru effectively served as an icebreaker and entertainer; However, improvements are needed in conversation flow, transitions between different roles, and supporting children’s autonomy in guiding the conversation and the depth of their communication.

Designing and using technologies to support Non-Pharmacological Interventions (NPI) for People with Dementia (PwD) has drawn increasing attention in HCI, with the potential expectations of higher user engagement and positive outcomes. Yet, technologies for NPI can only be valuable if practitioners successfully incorporate them into their ongoing intervention practices beyond a limited research period. Currently, we know little about how practitioners experience and perceive these technologies in practical NPI for PwD. In this paper, we investigate this question through observations of five in-person NPI activities and interviews with 11 therapists and 5 caregivers. Our findings elaborate the practical NPI workflow process and characteristics, and practitioners’ attitudes, experiences, and perceptions to technology-mediated NPI in practice. Generally, our participants emphasized practical NPI is a complex and professional practice, needing fine-grained, personalized evaluation and planning, and the practical executing process is situated, and multi-stakeholder collaborative. Yet, existing technologies often fail to consider these specific characteristics, which leads to limitations in practical effectiveness or sustainable use. Drawing on our findings, we discuss the possible implications for designing more useful and practical NPI intervention technologies.