How Service Robots Can Improve Workplace Experience: Camaraderie, Customization, and Humans-in-the-Loop

This paper presents the results of a three-week in-the-wild deployment of a wizarded service robot in a shared campus workplace. The study introduces robot-centric ethnography, a concept in which a wizarded robot acts as a mediated anthropologist, used in this case, to further our understandings of how service robots impact and integrate into everyday workplace experiences. Our research site included participants familiar with robots, recruited from 90+ students and faculty working in a shared lab space. Our wizarding team visited these participants each workday they were there for three weeks, navigating open office and lab spaces to remind participants to be aware of their mental, physical, and nutritional health needs. Using a semi-structured format, the wizards adapted the standard interaction flow to the situation. This interaction sequence was guided via pre-populated buttons on our health coach interface, with human wizards triggering the timing and adding extra responses as felt natural. Our ethnography-informed approach used the social knowledge of both participants and wizards, blending the robot into the cultural environment in which it was operating. Our data supports the positive impact of fluent service robot experience on participant mood and overall workplace experience. This suggests that effectively designed service robots can benefit workplace environments above and beyond their intended functions.