Päivi Heikkilä

Hello Pepper, May I Tickle You?: Children's and Adults' Responses to an Entertainment Robot at a Shopping Mall

We took a social robot Pepper to a shopping mall for one day to see what kind of initial responses it draws from people. We observed that the robot was quickly surrounded by children when there were others-especially adults-interacting with it. The children seemed to especially enjoy the activity-related applications, such as tickling the robot or giving a high-five. Adults were interested in hearing about useful applications and tended to talk to the robot as if it were any machine capable of speech recognition. These observations will help to design more interactive and entertaining applications for shopping mall robots.

A Social Service Robot in a Shopping Mall: Expectations of the Management, Retailers and Consumers

Consumers often respond positively to social service robots in retail context but less is known about the expectations and success criteria of the management and retailers for such robots. We have introduced a humanoid social robot (Pepper) in a shopping mall and report the results of a mall management workshop, interviews of eight retailers and a consumer customer workshop. The results show that the stakeholders find important that the robot creates warm and fun atmosphere in the mall as well as provides practical help for the customers and workers.

Human-driven design of micro- and nanotechnology based future sensor systems

Purpose – This paper aims to present an overview of the various ethical, societal and critical issues that micro- and nanotechnology-based small, energy self-sufficient sensor systems raise in different selected application fields. An ethical approach on the development of these technologies was taken in a very large international, multitechnological European project. The authors approach and methodology are presented in the paper and, based on this review, the authors propose general principles for this kind of work. Design/methodology/approach – The authors’ approach is based on a great amount of experience working together in multi-disciplinary teams. Ethical issues have usually been handled in the authors’ work to some degree. In this project, the authors had the opportunity to emphasise the human view in technological development, utilise the authors’ experience from previous work and customise the authors’ approach to this particular case. In short, the authors created a wide set of application scen...

User-originated innovation of mobile financial services

This paper presents a three-phased study in which new mobile financial services were designed iteratively in close co-operation with users and experts on finance. The studies utilized a web platform for open innovation and evaluation of new service concepts. The first study with quite raw concepts revealed needs and worries that were then taken into account in developing the concepts further. The second phase of the study included parallel design utilizing both student assignments and experts on finance. The most interesting and promising concepts from this phase were then selected in cooperation to be assessed by the consumers in the web platform. The different perspectives of the participants in the studies, and the iterative approach engaging potential users right from the beginning, helped us to enhance the quality of the new service concepts in a cost-effective way.

Shopping Mall Robots – Opportunities and Constraints from the Retailer and Manager Perspective

Social service robots are gradually entering into shopping malls to provide guidance and information services to the consumer customers. Earlier literature has reported that usually consumers response positively to these robots. Less is known about how do retailers and other business actors in the shopping mall perceive the robots. We present results of an interview study carried out with eight retailers and other service providers in a shopping mall, and three shopping mall managers. The results provide insight into their views about potential application roles of social service robot in the mall: what kind of services the robot could provide to customers besides guiding and information providing, and what kind of opportunities, requirements and constraints a shopping mall sets as a business environment for robot developers and service providers. The capability of the robot to emotionally engage with the customers was seen highly potential in shopping business but balancing entertainment with utility functions is crucial. A Pepper robot was used as a demonstrative platform in the study.

Positive Stress and Reflective Practice among Entrepreneurs

While heavy stress loads seem an unavoidable aspect of entrepreneurship, the positive side of stress (often referred to as ‘eustress’) remains a neglected area of research. This paper contributes to entrepreneurship research by linking the research streams of eustress and reflective practice. As a tool for analysing and developing thoughts and actions, reflective practice plays an important role in the interpretative work essential to positive stress experiences. Following an overview of approaches to stress at work, eustress and reflective practice, the paper explores how entrepreneurs experience the role of positive stress and reflective practice in their work and describes the reflective tools utilized by entrepreneurs in promoting eustress. The research process was designed to support reflective dialogue among the 21 Finnish entrepreneurs from different fields who participated in the study, with results based mainly on qualitative interviews. Nine of the interviewed entrepreneurs also kept a positive stress diary, including a three-day physiological measurement analysing their heartbeat variability. The findings suggest that positive stress and reflective practice are intertwined in the experiences of entrepreneurs and illustrate the role of reflective practice as a crucial toolset for promoting positive stress, comprising six reflective tools: studying oneself, changing one’s point of view, putting things into perspective, harnessing a feeling of trust, regulating resources and engaging in dialogue. Individual reflective capabilities vary, and a theory-driven division of reflective practice into individual, social and contextual dimensions is considered useful in understanding those differences. The research offers a starting point for exploring how eustress and reflective practice affect the well-being of entrepreneurs.