  Social robots, also known as service or assistant robots, have been developed
to improve the quality of human life in recent years. Socially assistive robots
(SAR) are a special type of social robots that focus on providing support
through social interaction. The design of socially capable and intelligent
robots can vary, depending on the target user groups. In this work, I assess
the effect of socially assistive robots' roles, functions, and communication
approaches in the context of a social agent providing service or companionship
to users with developmental disabilities. In this thesis, I describe an
exploratory study of interaction design for a socially assistive robot that
supports people suffering from developmental disabilities. While exploring the
impacts of visual elements to robot's visual interface and different aspects of
robot's social dimension, I developed a series of prototypes and tested them
through three user studies that included three residents with various function
levels at a local group home for people with developmental disabilities. All
user studies had been recorded for the following qualitative data analysis.
Results show that each design factor played a different role in delivering
information and in increasing engagement, and there are more aspects of HRI to
consider besides robot's graphical user interface and speech, such as proxemics
and robot's physical appearance and dimensions. I also note that some
fundamental design principles that would work for ordinary users did not apply
to our target user group. I conclude that socially assistive robots could
benefit our target users and acknowledge that these robots were not suitable
for certain scenarios based on the feedback from our users.
