Article Summary by Christina E. Stimson

This ongoing study is working with children with brittle bone disease and their families to explore accessible ways of getting ordinary people involved in the design of robots and assistive technology. Using science fiction and other popular culture as a common frame of reference for designers and non-technical stakeholders such as end users, the families were invited to meet a range of real-life robots and imagine how such technology might or should be in the future. The combination of people having direct contact with current robots and writing short stories on what they do and do not want from future technology facilitates their meaningful involvement in technology design. It does this by helping designers to understand what people actually want, instead of coming up with a list of technical requirements that might not meet their needs in real life. Once the study is complete, what the families said and wrote throughout the process will be analysed to get a better understanding of how they see technology in their futures. Their feedback on the process itself will be used to propose a framework that roboticists can use to design products and services with their own stakeholders as opposed to for them.