New Tech for ageing well at home: the first BNP Paribas Cardif x frog x Strate within Robotics by design lab
The first BNP Paribas Cardig, frog and Strate design school within the Robotics by Design Lab (RbD Lab) workshop was held at BNP Paribas Cardif on November the 10th 2021. This workshop aimed to explore the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) and social robotics on the relationship between seniors and their pets. The event involved experts from different BNP Paribas Cardif (data analytics, marketing, customer experience, CSR, sales). This community was created thanks to our insider accomplice Hélène Chabert (BNP Paribas Cardif Lab and active member of RbD Lab) who assembled these participants to imagine new services to support in an ecological way the aging well at home.
This workshop is at the heart of the PhD project conducted by Hazar Zilelioglu’s - PhD student supervised by UPEC and Strate in collaboration with frog, Capgemini Engineering, BNP Paribas Cardif: “Using AI and robots to preserve the pet-human relationship and support ageing well at home”.
The first part, presented by Ioana Ocnarescu, exposed a panorama of social robotics definitions and the disciplines that tackle it. She then presented the functioning of Robotics by design Lab which positioned design as a user-centred approach focusing on the implications of emerging technology.
Then, Clément Bataille and Rose Dumesny, from frog Lab, presented existing robotic services designed for pets. The experimental solutions or those already on the market were classified into three types: physical needs, emotional needs and security. This panorama allowed the opportunity to rethink the place of a social AI for well-being and assistance, especially for a sector such as insurance
An ambitious subject with several challenges
Participants were asked the following question: How to imagine intelligent services and systems to maintain the relationship between the elderly person and their pet to preserve autonomy and maintain a good quality of life at home?
The ongoing PhD project has several challenges: the first one is certainly the originality of the subject. Indeed, the tryptic relationship between humans, pets and technology is a topic which is little or not addressed in the literature. Additionally, the PhD project regroups a considerable number of partners: frog, Capgemini Engineering, BNP Paribas Cardif, UPEC and Strate, therefore the pluridisciplinary is also a challenge (AI, design & research). The third challenge, particularly explored in this workshop, was to present this research to experts in the sector of insurance and to co-design scenarios that could be developed (Research & Development and not just Research).
Course of the workshop
The co-creation phase was designed around a set of three decks of cards and a narrative framework:
9 senior-profile cards corresponding to the categorization of seniors along their generation and their consumption strategy according a report made by Générations Séniors par Adjuvance
5 life moment cards with verbatims from interviews conducted during the PhD project
4 experiential benefit cards with metaphorical representations (from the Dixit cards) of robots or AI expressed in terms of experiential benefits. These cards were also used in the other Rbd Lab workshops : workshop Korian, workshop SNCF.
A narrative framework, a guide that allows participants to project themselves and propose a use-case.
The participants imaged 13 scenarios within the ecosystem of an elderly person, their pet and a technological device or service. These scenarios show the diversity of visions and sensibilities according to the expertise of the participants and their interactions.
One of the first results of this group ideation is undoubtedly the projection of certain needs of seniors that are not exclusively linked to the question of age. Indeed, these needs show certain aspirations of new and more fulfilling ways of life in mutating environments and societies. These aspirations can give rise to other use cases for other profiles beyond the target of our project, seniors.
The ensemble of scenarios were shared to engage discussions and get a global vision of the potential needs and functionalities expressed by the participants.
In order to have a first classification of the scenarios, each participant was invited to vote (2 votes/ person) according to two criteria :
Green : YES NOW: oh yes I want this starting now
Orange : PROSPECTIVE : very interesting to have for the future
The next step for the project will be to continue the analysis of these scenarios, to illustrate and enrich them with other experts within BNP Paribas Cardif. The aim of this research is to stage life situations so that we can live them and make them be lived by the different stakeholders of the projects and of course users. Indeed, it is not only a question of understanding what is the best scenario in terms of "acceptability" but also in terms of the ecology of living together (a central methodology in RbD Lab which involves ethical and social dimensions). In parallel to this user-centred experimentation, there is also an exploration in the laboratory of UPEC on a technological demonstrator focusing on the recognition of people's activities through AI.