Portrait of Rachel Ruddy

Rachel Ruddy

Research Intern - McGill University
Supervisor
Tal Arbel
GitHub

Publications

Understanding Social Appropriateness Perceptions in Secondary Users of Domestic Robots
Rahatul Amin Ananto
Seol Han
Rachel Ruddy
AJung Moon
A new generation of robots are being developed to enter our homes in a matter of months. But has the industry appropriately accounted for th… (see more)e complexities of the social environment that we call home? We conducted an exploratory design workshop to examine what secondary users—those who are not expected to be owners but nonetheless daily users—deem to be socially appropriate behavior of a domestic robot. A total of 90 students from Mexico participated in the study. By analyzing they define and reason about appropriateness of robot behaviors in the home, we show why deployment of domestic robots require much more thoughtful considerations than implementation of simplified social rules; judgments of what is appropriate depend on context, roles, relationships, and individual boundaries, and can differ between primary and secondary users. We call on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) practitioners to treat social appropriateness as a fluid, gradient factor at design time rather than a binary concept (appropriate/inappropriate).
2026-03-15
International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (published)
doi.org