• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.135-179
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• 2018

How do robots interact with the elderly? In this paper, we analyze the contexts of interaction between robots and the elderly and the role of mediators in initiating, facilitating, and maintaining the interaction. We do not attempt to evaluate the robot's performance or measure the impact of robots on the elderly. Instead, we focus on the circumstances and contexts within which a robot is situated as it interacts with the elderly. Our premise is that the success of human-robot interaction does not depend solely on the robot's technical capability, but also on the pre-arranged settings and local contingencies at the site of interaction. We select three television shows that feature robots for the elderly and one "dementia-prevention" robot in a regional healthcare center as our sites for observing robot-elderly interaction: "Grandma's Robot"(tvN), "Co-existence Experiment''(JTBC), "Future Diary"(MBC), and the Silbot class in Suwon. By analyzing verbal and non-verbal interactions between the elderly and the robots in these programs, we point out that in most cases the robots and the elderly do not meet one-to-one; the interaction is usually mediated by an actor who is not an old person. These mediators are not temporary or secondary components in the robot-elderly interaction; they play a key role in the relationship by arranging the first meeting, triggering initial interactions, and carefully observing unfolding interactions. At critical moments, the mediators prevent the interaction from falling apart by intervening verbally or physically. Based on our observation of the robot-elderly interaction, we argue that we can better understand and evaluate the human-robot interaction in general by paying attention to the existence and role of the mediators. We suggest that researchers in human-robot interaction should expand their analytical focus from one-to-one interactions between humans and robots to human-robot-human interactions in diverse real-world situations.

• Archives of design research
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• v.19 no.2 s.64
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• pp.261-272
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• 2006

As we cannot think of our lives without a nation, it is closely related to almost every part of our daily lives. The role of government is becoming more important in the complex modern society as an essential element of national authority even though the government has indirect and secondary characteristics in its functional performance. Therefore, the government has to be efficient in planning and executing its policies, and it needs to be representative and fair as part of a national authoritative community. In the 21st century when symbolic and cultural importance of images are becoming more important, it is crucial for the government organizations to have an integrated identity design system that can satisfy both of these requirements of the government. However, the C.I.(Corporate Identity) of each Korean administrative branch has been developed separately and sporadically, which resulted in lack of consistency as part of the government. Shape and material of their C.I.s that follow short term design trend and popularity also lack uniqueness which can be distinguished from those of any private corporation. This may show that our government lacks systematic administrative capability, since image of a feature represents its characteristics and reality, and their recognition and evaluation from others become identity of the feature. In this perspective, the purpose of this thesis is to suggest an identity design system that has certain rules and regularity with wide variety of possible alterations for the central administration in Korea. In order to represent this visually, identity design system with both integrity and variety of possible alteration is created based on traditional Korean culture, especially the concept of Umyang-ohaeng and Samjae.