1.
Exploring interaction design
opportunities for remote robotic services
Cecilia Boström & Varuna Mudumby

2.
Introducing ABB’s MyRobot
*ABB MyRobot served
as our design case

3.
ABB advertising MyRobot:
“ABB Robotics offers customers a powerful and truly
versatile tool to help keep their operations running”

4.
ABB advertising MyRobot:
“...filled with exciting features, including excellent
portability for multiple platform usage, a versatile
dashboard with fast and detailed information plus
powerful filtering tools”

5.
So what does that mean?
...and is it really what the users want?

6.
“What are critical aspects for a successful
remote robotic service, from an interaction design
perspective?”
Research question:

7.
Design goal:
Provide a remote service tool that meets
real user needs based on research and
evaluation of data

8.
Then, how do remote robotic services
work in the field?
We had to find out ourselves!

9.
Interviews: Robotics Customers
Company Number of
interviewees
Role of
interviewees
Number of
robots
Main robot
brand
Interview time
ALLARD
International
(Malmö)
1 Service engineer 2 ABB 45 min
Pågen
(Malmö)
1 Chief of
Distribution
14 KUKA 1,5 h
SKF
(Göteborg)
1 Robot technician 50 ABB 1,5 h
Volvo Trucks
(Skövde)
2 Manager of
Maintenance
Development &
EEM; Robot
technician
200 ABB 1,5 h

10.
Robots are caged
and dangerous

11.
Observations
Sawdust
Oilspill
Packets falling
Male dominance
Workers wear gloves
Loud noises
Fast moving trucks

12.
Interviews: Robotics Manufacturers
Company Number of
Interviewees
Role of interviewees Interview time
ABB Robotics 1 Product Manager 30 min
ABB Robotics 1 Technology Manager 30 min
ABB Robotics 2 R&D Manager;
Software Developer
1 h
KUKA Robotics 1 Director Automotive 1,5 h

13.
Transcribing
We transcribed
recordings of 8h 30m
to get valuable
requirements and to
understand the
users’ perspective
better
+ real quotes

14.
Requirement formulation
Notable quotes were cut into strips
to be arranged into groups
for further analysis

15.
Requirement analysis
The groups of quotes were categorized
on the wall and analyzed

16.
Findings: Plant Environment
“You are not allowed to walk and talk on phones, if you
see someone stop them.” -Volvo Trucks
A key selling point of MyRobot is that it’s designed to work in phones

17.
Findings MyRobot
“We don’t really know who is the typical user.
We haven’t done any benchmarking on it, so we don’t
really know”
- ABB MyRobot Developers
Interaction Design helped finding the most common user which is:
Robot Maintenance Technicians

18.
Findings MyRobot
“MyRobot will be good when it works”
- SKF
MyRobot has potential, but does not meet user requirements and needs.
These were however identified using IxD-methods

19.
Findings MyRobot
“...you get deeper and deeper in the system to see
what you want and when you get down,
you forgot what you want to see”
- SKF
It was discovered that the sitemap structure of MyRobot is too complex

20.
Findings Competitor
“the market is conservative… it is really difficult to
convince the customer the beauty of having this
[remote service]”
- KUKA
Problems occur in communicating the benefits of robotic remote services

21.
Brainstorming
100 ideas
Fast! (in less than one hour)
We did not want to constrain our solution to solely on the empirical data
Brainstorming helped spark innovation

22.
Requirements Analysis
+
New Ideas
=
Design Requirements Specification

23.
The Pythia Concept
To predict events that aid in
proactive decision making
*Pythia is originally the name for the oracle in Delphi, ancient Greece

24.
To form a visual design from the elicited requirements,
we turned to pen & paper
The Pythia Concept visualized

25.
Prototyping
Quick and dirty paper prototypes
for fast iterations

26.
Internal user tests
New perspective was gained from testing the prototypes
with a thesis peer group and ABB software developers
As the prototypes were in paper, changes were easy to make

27.
Pythia after the first tests:
Includes all vital information in one portal
- Alarms, robot details, backup, service history,
e-commerce and stock info for spare parts
Uses simple customizable table overviews
Acts as one stand alone application

28.
Pythia mockup
start page iteration 1

29.
External user tests SKF
Wants:
● Everything (service history, spare parts, alarms etc.)
connected to a specific robot
● Detailed information of all robots for an overview
● An overview of alarms in the home page
● No graphics that consume valuable screen space

30.
External user tests Allard
“I think it [the prototype] looks good except for some
minor things. Can one have two servers in a backup?
Can one change the interval of the backup?”

31.
External user tests Pågen
"It maybe looks a bit too theoretical for our business,
but it probably works fine in other organizations"
Pythia may not be beneficial for Pågen as
they don’t have robot maintenance staff

32.
External user tests Volvo Trucks
"I think [Pythia] gives a good picture over the facility
and I like the heading 'predictions' even if it doesn't
look like it's going to be used that way?"
It was revealed that the term predictions needs a clear definition

33.
Pythia mockup
start page iteration 2

34.
Future work
Iterate the mockups from the feedback
Find a better way to organize alarms
Solve the issue with spare parts

35.
Interaction Design helped identify:
Work hierarchies and widespread distribution of
employees within robotic manufacturers
complicate design work
Lack of user research makes it impossible to
identify actual users and their needs
Vital user activities can be left concealed if they
are not observed

36.
For further information:
Varuna Mudumby
mvaruna@gmail.com
@asusual_unusual
Cecilia Boström
cia.therese@gmail.com
@ciatherese