IdleBot : exploring non-engaging interaction design in personal spaces

In our personal spaces, we are increasingly surrounded by interactive, connected and engaging "things" that increasingly demand attention and convey a sense of continuous pace. This work showcases how things could be designed from a different perspective: seemingly aware, but intentionally non-engaging. IdleBot is a very furry robotic puppet that is waiting. Unlike many applications in social robotics, IdleBot has neither clear purpose, nor explicit functionality - it merely exists and waits. The subtleness of its interaction, consisting of mostly idle motions, is the starting point to investigate forms of interaction bordering non-interaction situated in a personal context. In two iterations, we designed a fully working interactive prototype that embodies different modes of waiting. The design of waiting behaviors is based on a prior observation study with 20 participants, whose waiting behavior was recorded for each one minute under the false pretense of having to wait for a "real" experiment to start. A Kinect device tracks people in close proximity and allows IdleBot to glance at them in serendipity. The video shows what happened when we released IdleBot into the wild.