On the Purdue campus, there are many delivery robots, Starship. These small butties help deliver foods, drinks, groceries, etc. to Boilermakers. This project reimagines these robots for a new purpose: fostering social connections among first-year students.
By transforming Starship robots into interactive "playmates," we aim to:
Help students explore campus in an engaging way.
Promote meaningful interactions between students, enabling friendships and collaboration.
Starship Robots help deliver things around Purdue campus
Problem
Making friends could be challenging for students who do not know anyone before they arrive on campus.
Onboarding to the university could be fun for most people, but what if you don’t know anyone before you arrive? People tend to stick with people they knew before in the first few weeks, and this will lead others to feel left out. To solve this problem, we designed Starship Playmate to help students make new friends in a new environment.
My role
Spearheaded interview protocol and conducted two out of three user interviews.
Led design of scavenger hunt, designing rules, puzzles, and prototypes for a usability test.
Developed a compelling pitch video that effectively communicated the project vision, garnering positive feedback from peers and stakeholders.
Collaborated with peers to conduct observation, brainstorming, and design iteration.
Facilitated usability test with three teammates, using multiple devices to stimulate human-robot interactions.
Solution
Design Solution
Engaging in games fosters collaboration and breaks down barriers, making it easier for individuals to connect and meet new people without the usual awkwardness.
We transformed the Starship robot into an interactive playmate that:
Facilitates group activities and games.
Encourages students to explore campus landmarks.
Helps students build connections through gamified experiences.
Pitch Video
Pitch Video of Starship Playmate
Research
To design an engaging and effective experience, we needed to deeply understand our target audience—first-year students at Purdue University—and their interactions with Starship robots. Through observations, surveys, and interviews, we explored how students navigate campus, their challenges in making friends, and their openness to engaging with robots in social contexts. This research provided the foundation for our design decisions, ensuring our solution was user-centered and impactful.
Observation
To understand how Starship robots interact with their environment and users, we conducted multiple observations of their operations on campus. This included:
Watching food service workers load orders into the robots.
Tracking the robots’ navigation across sidewalks and streets.
Observing customers retrieving their deliveries.
Key findings from the observation include:
Robots efficiently navigate through campus but lack any interactive features beyond delivery.
Students and workers treat the robots as purely functional, with minimal engagement.
Starship robots have the potential to gather attention but quickly lose novelty.
Survey
We distributed a survey to first-year Purdue students, receiving 26 responses. The survey aimed to assess students’ socialization challenges, familiarity with Starship robots, and interest in interactive group activities. Key insights include:
Free Time: The majority reported limited free time, suggesting that activities must be concise and engaging.
Making Friends: Many students rated making friends on campus as moderately difficult, indicating a need for structured social opportunities.
Starship Usage: A large portion had never used a Starship robot, but most were open to engaging with it in a different context.
Interest in Activities: Students expressed interest in gamified, collaborative experiences, especially if they provided opportunities to meet new people.
User interview
We conducted three semi-structured interviews with Purdue students to explore their experiences, challenges, and preferences.
“I’m all for playing games with random people. As long as they communicate. As long as I can get a sense of, like, how can I make this fun for them? How can I keep this fun for them?”
Each interview included participatory design activities to incorporate user feedback into our design process.
Comfort Zones: Students often remain within their comfort zones, especially when meeting new people. A structured activity led by a robot could encourage stepping out of this space.
Team-Based Interactions: Collaborative activities, such as games or group challenges, make interactions less awkward and encourage teamwork.
Collaborative Games: Activities like trivia, scavenger hunts, and puzzles are effective in fostering teamwork and socialization.
Relatability: Games that incorporate campus-related themes or student life experiences feel more relevant and engaging.
Guided Exploration: Participants were excited about the prospect of using the robot to navigate campus landmarks, learn fun facts, and explore Purdue in a gamified way.
Ideate
Scavenger hunt
Storyboard
I led the design of the scavenger hunt and created storyboards, rules, and puzzles. As the interviewees mentioned, the games should foster collaboration and interaction between participants and will be better if related to the Purdue campus, so I designed this Purdue-themed scavenger hunt.
“Most of the time, we tend to stay in our comfort zone. Outside of our comfort zone we can find people that share ... common interests.”
The scavenger hunts aim to strengthen bonds and help participants make new friends by working together, solving puzzles, walking around campus, and communicating.
Storyboard of Scavenger Hunt with Starship.
Puzzles
I intentionally kept the puzzle related to the surroundings. For example, the puzzle we used in our usability test around Armstrong (Neil) Hall of Engineering. The participants could find the answers around the building, look at the statue, follow the concrete boot prints, or scan the QR code on the lamp to find the answers.
🧑🏻🚀🎓: At what year did Purdue’s first astronaut graduate?
👩🏼🚀👨🏽🚀: How many Purdue graduates have gone on to become astronauts?
🥾👣: One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Follow the boot prints. How many steps do you take?
Test
Usability test setting
All usability tests were conducted in a real-world environment outside the Armstrong Building at Purdue University. This setting ensured the tests simulated authentic user interactions with the Starship robot and campus landmarks. Participants engaged with both digital prototypes and physical surroundings, creating a realistic experience.
Key Highlights:
Testing occurred in outdoor campus areas to enhance the realism of scavenger hunt tasks and location-based trivia.
Participants used multiple devices, including mobile phones and an iPad simulating the robot’s screen.
The usability test was conducted in the real-world environment to simulate authentic user interaction.
The realistic environment allowed us to observe how participants navigated both the activities and campus landmarks, providing valuable feedback for refining the prototype.
First Usability Test
The first phase involved individual testing with three participants. Each participant interacted with the prototype at separate times, enabling us to identify usability challenges and refine our activity design.
Key Findings:
Icebreaker games worked well as initial engagement activities but needed clearer instructions.
The scavenger hunt presented logistical challenges, particularly when participants lacked internet access to find answers.
Trivia required a shift from historical questions to more relatable and student-focused themes.
Design iteration of scavenger hunt
Based on feedback from the first usability test, we made several key improvements to enhance the prototype’s usability and align it with participant expectations:
Key Findings:
Standardized Activity Sequence: The order of activities was fixed as Icebreakers → Scavenger Hunt → Trivia to create a logical and engaging progression.
Revised Trivia Questions: All trivia questions were converted to multiple-choice format and refocused on campus-relevant topics, making them more relatable and engaging for participants.
Enhanced Scavenger Hunt: The scavenger hunt design was significantly iterated. Initially, participants were required to manually enter the building code of their next destination. However, testing revealed that many participants were unfamiliar with these codes, which caused confusion and slowed progress. To address this, I redesigned the scavenger hunt to feature an interactive map, allowing participants to simply click on their next destination. This adjustment streamlined navigation and improved the overall user experience.
Renamed Small Games: The "Small Games" section was renamed to “Icebreakers” to better reflect its purpose of fostering initial interaction.
Refined Icebreakers: Additional rounds were added to the minigames, while the underperforming “Make a Story” game was removed. The remaining games were refined for better engagement.
Conceptual Voice Interaction: A text-to-speech feature was conceptualized to give the Starship robot a voice, adding personality and enhancing interaction. Although this feature wasn’t fully implemented during testing, it remains a planned improvement.
These iterations addressed key challenges from the first phase, improving the ease of use, engagement, and relevance of the prototype’s activities.
Second Usability Test
The second phase introduced group usability testing with three participants interacting as a group. This approach replicated the social interaction environment intended for the final product.
Key Findings:
Icebreaker activities encouraged initial interaction but were less engaging compared to scavenger hunts and trivia.
The scavenger hunt emerged as the most interactive and collaborative activity, driving group engagement and exploration of campus landmarks.
Trivia encouraged discussions among participants, with a recommendation to display answer options on mobile devices for clarity.
Group testing revealed significant increases in social interaction among participants, even when they started as strangers.
Future Impact
Enhanced Social Integration for New Students
The project has the potential to significantly improve the social experience for new students by fostering connections in a fun and engaging way. Activities like the scavenger hunt and icebreaker games can help overcome initial social barriers, creating a more inclusive campus environment.
Increased Campus Engagement
By introducing gamified activities tied to Purdue landmarks and traditions, the project can promote a deeper connection with the university’s culture. This not only enhances the student experience but also increases awareness of campus facilities and resources.
Expanding the Role of Starship Robots
The reimagined Starship robots go beyond their traditional delivery function to become facilitators of social interaction and learning. This innovative use could inspire further development of interactive technologies for educational and community-building purposes.
Lessons
Manage the interview pace with “Silence”
I conducted two out of three user interviews and learned the power of utilizing silence during the interview. Initially, I felt that silence could be awkward during the interview. However, during the co-design part of our interview, I realized that silence can give the participants more time to think and come up with a lot of interesting ideas.
Passion brings creativity and productivity
During user interviews, I discovered the challenge of designing unbiased questions, particularly when discussing personal experiences. Additionally, giving examples could introduce another type of leading question, as participants may tend to answer in a way they think aligns with what we want to hear.
