Design and Evaluation of a Socially Assistive Robot Schoolwork Companion for College Students with ADHD

Studies have shown that college students with ADHD respond positively to simple socially assistive robots (SARs) that monitor attention and provide non-verbal feedback while completing a task, but the explorations have been done only in lab settings for short sessions. This work presents an initial design and evaluation of an in-dorm socially assistive robot study companion for college students with ADHD. This work represents the introductory stages of an ongoing user-centered, participatory design process, motivated by, and conducted through a lens of life-long assistive technology, rather than short-term interventions. In a within-subjects user study, a group of university students (N=11) with self-reported symptoms of adult ADHD were randomly assigned to have a study companion robot system or a computer-based system placed in their dorm room for a total of three weeks. With the goal of developing long-term assistive technology, we focus our analysis on: 1) evaluating the usability and desire for SAR study companions among college students with ADHD, and 2) collecting extensive feedback from participants about the design and functionality of the robot. We show that participants did find the robot useful, demonstrated by an excellent average system usability scale (SUS) score of 83.864. Furthermore, after one week of using the robot regularly, 91\% of participants (10 out of 11) elected to continue using the study companion robot in the second week when they were not required to do so. We found that participants’ perceived usability of the robot was strongly correlated with how long they voluntarily studied with the robot.