Understanding Family Needs: Informing Social Robot Design to Support Children with Disabilities to Engage in Play

While children with disabilities often face barriers to play including reduced time, exclusion, and ill-suited toys, impacting their development, social robots provide the potential to help: they can motivate children, increase task engagement, and facilitate social interactions. However, social robots (and technological interventions in general) struggle to be adopted into regular use within homes by families, commonly being abandoned after a short time. Rather than focusing on the utility of these interventions, we instead look how they integrate into family needs and lifestyles. We designed and conducted a study where we engaged children living with disabilities and their families, using interactions with real robots and exploratory exercises, to learn about their perspectives, needs, and concerns regarding adopting a social companion robot in their home. We analyzed participant task engagement and feedback from the perspective of supporting play for children with disabilities and presented resulting design recommendations for addressing primary concerns and matching key expectations, and to support adoption pathways to improve the chances of success.