IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 54

simultaneously completing household cleaning tasks.
While obviously a caricature, this image says much
about gendered expectations of household tasks in
Japan. In Japanese society, women are often criticized
for putting their careers ahead of their traditional roles
of child caring and housework [2]. While the pink robot
might free a woman from her domestic tasks, it reinforces the allocation of these tasks to women.

Most gendered humanoid robots
currently being developed with
a realistic human appearance
are female.

Since gender is an important aspect of embodied
human-human interaction, making humanoid robots
without gender is unsettling for users. The Telenoid,
developed in Japan as a genderless, humanoid robot [5]
(Figure 6) has been described as "creepy" in popular
media, "something we'd see crawling out of the depths
of hell" [25], [26]. Here, it evokes the uncanny of the
undead, with its not-quite-human appearance. To try
and increase its appeal, researchers developed a science fiction back-story, which had some impact on its
likeability [27]. In this addition, the previously genderless Telenoid was gendered as male to make the robot
more relatable. Overall, gender is clearly an important
factor in a robot's persuasiveness, and its ability to alter
the behavior of humans interacting with it [28].

Human-Robot Interaction and
the Design Process
Human-robot interaction (HRI) is a multidisciplinary
research field that combines psychology, cognitive and
social sciences, artificial intelligence, computer science,
robotics, engineering, and human-computer interaction
[29]. It emerged from traditional robotics research and
underwent a paradigm shift away from highly rigid systems such as serial robots in industrial applications, to
robots that are more socially interactive with humans
[30]-[33].
Today, the "main goal of HRI is to endow robots with
various competencies that will facilitate their interaction
with humans" [34]. Considering socially intelligent and
skillful robots, Breazel et al. group social robots into
three broad categories: humanoid, zoomorphic, and
other [35]. When developing humanoid robots,

designers have sought to achieve natural, humanlike
interaction in various dimensions of form and behavior.
As discussed by Carpenter above, gender is frequently
used as a tool to facilitate HRI.
Research is increasingly using human-centered
approaches during the design process to consider
the complexity of interacting in social spaces. Within this process, user experience (UX) and usability
goals are essential prerequisites [36]. UX lies at the
core of interaction design as it applies to HRI [37],
describing a "person's perceptions and responses
resulting from the use and/or anticipated use" of a
system [38]. Usability on the other hand is the
"extent to which a product can be used by specified
users" [39], measured in respect to specific goals
[36]. The ISO standards provide a framework to incorporate these measures using an iterative process that
allows the complexity of HRI's multidisciplinarity to
be fully addressed.
The ISO standard for the human-centered design of
interactive systems comprises four key design activities
[38]. Designers must first identify the need for a particular product or service. They must then understand and
specify the context of use, describing the users (or
groups of users), their goals, tasks and environmental
characteristics that may be physical, social, and or cultural. This may include user understandings of gender in
particular cultural settings, as discussed above. Formal
requirements must then be specified, forming the basis
for design. Dialogues are then developed to create a
prototype satisfying the requirements; keeping UX at
the forefront. During this activity, "the experience and
knowledge of the multidisciplinary design team" and
their communication is critical [38]. Finally, evaluation is
required to obtain feedback and form baselines for subsequent iterations.
Implementing such a design process in HR I
"requires substantial amounts of resources... [and] the
development of such a robot may take years." [40]. In
order to fulfil the activities outlined above, research
questions are often simplified, focused on a specific
product or service, with narrow participant sampling.
As a result, socio-cultural issues outside the laboratory, importantly gender, are often neglected. Traditionally, designers have tended to only focus on technical
aspects, leaving broader interaction concepts of user
experience and usability "overlooked" [36]. Addressing
this, new research is confronting designers with questions like "What is 'natural' behavior for robots? Where
is the notion of 'self', their 'centre of narrative gravity'?" [41]. While psychologists have acquired extensive
data to measure human perception and cognition,
"most engineers who develop robots are often
unaware of this large body of k nowledge, and

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