IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 55

sometimes run naïve experiments in order to verify
their designs" [42]. Further, the performance criteria
"lie within the satisfaction of their users... not ... within the robots themselves" [42]. To consider HRI's
broad problem space, designers need to follow established human centered design processes in a manner
that can incorporate social dimensions.
So where would gender fit within the HRI design process? First, gender would need to be specified as a
requirement drawn from the context of use. Second,
gender would need to be appropriately studied in the
evaluation stage, with results feeding back in subsequent iterations. However, gender is often applied
naively, with experiments using stereotypical concepts of masculine and feminine, such as [43] who
uses over-simplified gender cues, and [44] who only
differentiates robot gender by ha ir leng th. To
address this and the breadth of the design process;
including the necessary social and cultural considerations, we also need to understand and minimize
bias from designers.

Designer Bias in HRI
Designers bring social, moral, and aspirational biases to
their designs. While they may follow a human-centered
approach, bias affects their ability to be aware of social
and cultural aspects such as gender, which may influence the design outcome.
Designers have existing mental models that influence what they envisage as possible [45], [46]. This
includes the concept of framing, in which they may
over-emphasize or otherwise distort certain aspects of
context [47]. In Richardson's case study of robot
designers at M.I.T., the group was influenced by the
"geek culture" in which they inhabited, a highly gendered world in which "attractiveness [was] rated as a
specifically female quality and intelligence as male"
[48]. Part of this culture includes the important role of
science fiction in creating a narrative in which future
technologies are imagined (see [40]). Female robots
and cyborgs in science fiction are often highly sexualized, their humanlike bodies accentuated by tight-fitting
clothing to reveal their breasts and buttocks. Male
robots are often machine-like in appearance with
accentuated, stereotypical male features such as large
muscles and broad shoulders. As Richardson argues,
"fiction [has] led the way and inspired science" [48] (see
also [40]).
Biases may also be formed due to a range of internal and external motivations. According to Fitzpatrick,
"the emulation of human-level abilities in a human-like
robot serves as a grand challenge for robotics." Such a
motivation has permeated research with challenges
issued by organisations like DARPA or the American
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Association for Artificial Intelligence (A A AI), and
events such as Robocup and Robo - One, driving
research forward [33]. Designers may be narrowly
focused on technological advancement, rather than
including consideration of the social implications in
their work.

Designers bring social, moral, and
aspirational biases to their designs.

To encourage designers to consider a range of
worldviews, Cheon and Su developed a framework
called Value Sensitive Design (VSD) for the design of
humanoid robots [49]. The authors found that "roboticists talk very little about values and ethics, but
instead relish how robots provide a research playground." [49] Consequently, "a VSD process for humanoids needs to expand its scope beyond engineering-like
values, [to] emphasize a united definition of robots
that includes cultural and spiritual aspects" [49], see
also [50].
In general, robot designers show little awareness of
the contingent relationship between gender and human
bodies. Some designers have expressed a clear preference to not assign gender (or other characteristics such
as race) to robots [48] and Japanese designer Hiroshi
Ishiguro's Telenoid robot is one such example, discussed earlier [5]. However, as feminist writers have
demonstrated, human bodies are gendered, and science and technology are also gendered [51], [52]. Thus
even when designers may seek to "uncritically" create
gender-neutral robots, gendered bias is likely to seep
into design.

Robots, Gender and Social Implications
Gendered humanoid robots are likely to have significant social impacts. As Wiener notes, we are "slaves of
our technical improvement," radically altering ourselves to exist in our new environment [53]. Indeed,
the role of the designer is to intervene with "an in tentional effort to create change" [52]. Today we can
already see examples of how so-called intelligent artefacts can change society. As Weber argues, humans
adapt themselves to machines, unconsciously compensating for their deficiencies while at the same time
perceiving the machines as "intelligent" [19]. This
requirement for humans to adapt themselves is a sign
of poor design. People already react socially to computers and such social effects would be heightened

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