In a series of design workshops, the HRI Equitable Design framework from previous work (see Ostrowski et al. 2022) was expanded to a workshop format and card-based tool that has been deployed with industry members, academic labs, and policy thinkers focused on robotics. The design workshops are a 1 time 4 hour workshop or 2, 2 hour workshops, depending on what would work best for the workshop participants. Both design workshops are structured with two parts: a case study portion where participants applied a design method to the case study to gain familiarity with the method; and an applied portion where participants applied the same design method to their own design problem. The design method for the first workshop are design fictions. The second workshop uses a structured ideation design justice and policy toolkit as the design method.
Results demonstrate that participants gain a better understanding of design justice and how to apply it to the policy context and express how the HRI Equitable Design Framework can be used as a tool in their future work in the policy space. Participants comment on the ability of the framework and design workshops to support more reflective design decisions and proactive policy making around robots and new innovative and disruptive technologies.