For the love of Robots…

Although more and more things around us are being automated, from hotel check-ins to whole dining experiences, that doesn’t mean that we necessarily like working with a robot or anything “smart”.

Did you know we prefer to interact with technology in different ways in different sorts of spaces? We’re more willing to share information about ourselves in smart homes than we are in smart workplaces, which has implications for how “smart” any technology can actually be.

Unless smart technology is carefully calibrated for space users those users will likely come up with some “system” to manipulate it to do what they need it to do. In one famous incident, it turned out that motion sensors that kept lights on were placed so that they were unlikely to be activated by space users.  The space users set up a Drinking Bird toy, that’s the plastic bird that bobs up and down, dipping its beak into a glass of water in front of one of the motion sensors, so the lights never turned off when people were working.  Since the Drinking Bird was not deactivated at the end of the workday, the lights in the area were on continuously, 7 days a week.  Users need to be involved when smart systems are designed or they turn out to be pretty dumb.

Also, humans have an issue with relinquishing control to robots and smart systems; we don’t like to lose our autonomy. When we feel we have less control because smart systems have been introduced, we become much less tolerant of uncomfortable conditions, such as those that are too hot or too cold—but our stress levels fall if we can override the smart systems.  Also, as time goes on, we’re less likely to use the more advanced features of our smart home systems.

When a machine seems more human, perhaps because of its “voice,” we are more likely to perceive it as having a human’s sort of mind and intelligence, and tend to trust it more.

In situations such as at tourist offices, we value information that we get from talking to humans more than that we get from automated processes.

When we’re dealing with humanoid service robots (these are robots that have humanlike features, such as faces) instead of an actual human, we’re uncomfortable, the situation seems eerie and we feel threatened as humans; as a result, we’re likely to take compensatory steps to feel better, such as ordering and eating more food.

When robots are used as chefs, to prepare food, if those robots are more humanlike, we think that food quality is higher.

At hotels, people prefer to interact with a person and not a machine of some sort during service encounters, such as while checking in. Service robots at hotels that seem female (as opposed to male), particularly as “humanness” increases, have been tied to higher satisfaction with services provided.