Page 226 - Socially Intelligent Agents Creating Relationships with Computers and Robots

From PETS to StoryRooms 209

realized that they were all the same, whether or not they had a star on their
bellies.
We wanted to express this story through a StoryRoom. In our adaptation,
children became the Sneetches by wearing a special box, which has a star-
shaped cutout and an embedded microcontroller connected to a lightbulb, on
their bellies. We then turned our lab into the Sneetches StoryRoom (figure
25.2) by placing the Star-On, Star-Off, Narrator, Mr. McBean, and Money
props. The Star-On and Star-Off were cardboard boxes with colored paper
glued over it. On each, we attached a light bulb and a contact sensor. The Nar-
rator and Mr. McBean were applications that recorded, stored, and replayed
digitally recorded passages from the story. The Money application controlled
a projected image of a pile of money, with the Sneetches on one side, and Mr.
McBean on the other side. Finally, the boxes on the children’s bellies were the
Stars that can turn on and off. To help convince the children that the stars made
a difference in their social standings, we added a Toy prop, which responded
only to those with stars on their bellies. In effect, interactions with the Toy
made the children feel as if they were the Sneetches.
When children initially entered our Sneetches room, the star boxes on some
of their bellies lit up, while others did not. Next, the Narrator introduced the
story. These children explored the room and discovered the Toy. They also
noticed that the Toy lit up only for those who had stars on their bellies, but not
for those who did not.
Soon, Mr. McBean introduced himself and told the children about the Star-
On machine. When a child without a star on her belly crawled through it, her
belly lit up; she heard Mr. McBean thanking her for the three dollars she “paid”
him and the “ka-chink” of a cash register; she sensed the Star-On box lit up as
she passed through it; finally, she saw that some of the Sneetches’ money had
moved from their pile over to Mr. McBean’s pile. Most importantly, when she
went to the Toy, it lit up for her! This story continued, until all the money had
been spent, and concluded with some final words from Mr. McBean and the
Narrator.

6. Observations
At our 1999 Human Computer Interaction Lab Open House, our child de-
sign partners showed PETS to other children. They were eager to type in stories
to see what PETS would do. Indeed, they wrote at least half-dozen short stories
within half an hour. They also enjoyed changing PETS’ facial features. One
child even turned PETS into something that could belong in a Picasso painting.
We also noticed that children responded to the robot’s “emotions” because its
actions were similar to what they would have done had they felt the same way.