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"You've got a friend in me": Co-Designing a Peer Social Robot for Young Newcomers' Language and Cultural Learning

Neil Fernandes, Cheng Tang, Tehniyat Shahbaz, Alex Hauschildt, Emily Davies-Robinson, Yue Hu, Kerstin Dautenhahn

Abstract

Community literacy programs supporting young newcomer children in Canada face limited staffing and scarce one-to-one time, which constrains personalized English and cultural learning support. This paper reports on a co-design study with United for Literacy tutors that informed Maple, a table-top, peer-like Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) designed as a practice partner within tutor-mediated sessions. From shadowing and co-design interviews, we derived newcomer-specific requirements and added them in an integrated prototype that uses short story-based activities, multi-modal scaffolding (speech, facial feedback, gesture), and embedded quizzes that support attention while producing tutor-actionable formative signals. We contribute system design implications for tutor-in-the-loop SARs supporting language socialization in community settings and outline directions for child-centered evaluation in authentic programs.

"You've got a friend in me": Co-Designing a Peer Social Robot for Young Newcomers' Language and Cultural Learning

Abstract

Community literacy programs supporting young newcomer children in Canada face limited staffing and scarce one-to-one time, which constrains personalized English and cultural learning support. This paper reports on a co-design study with United for Literacy tutors that informed Maple, a table-top, peer-like Socially Assistive Robot (SAR) designed as a practice partner within tutor-mediated sessions. From shadowing and co-design interviews, we derived newcomer-specific requirements and added them in an integrated prototype that uses short story-based activities, multi-modal scaffolding (speech, facial feedback, gesture), and embedded quizzes that support attention while producing tutor-actionable formative signals. We contribute system design implications for tutor-in-the-loop SARs supporting language socialization in community settings and outline directions for child-centered evaluation in authentic programs.
Paper Structure (22 sections, 5 figures)

This paper contains 22 sections, 5 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Research Questions
  3. System Implementation
  4. Robotic System and hardware Overview
  5. Control System Architecture
  6. UI System Integration
  7. Facial Animation and Speech Layer
  8. Node Orchestrator and Synchronization
  9. Methods
  10. Co-design Participants
  11. Co-design Methodology and Sessions
  12. Shadowing Sessions
  13. Expert Group Interviews
  14. Results and Discussion
  15. Guidelines and System Outcomes
  16. ...and 7 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: The Maple robot prototype fernandes2026codesigning (Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
  • Figure 2: System Architecture of the Maple robotic system and robot prototype.
  • Figure 3: Timeline of our co-design process with L2 and HRI experts, structured around Design Thinking: I (Empathize): This stage included Shadowing Sessions and Observational Analysis. II (Define): Stage included Transcript analysis, synthesis of challenges, and identification of user needs. III (Ideate): Included robot role definition, generation of design guidelines, and co-design of story based lesson activities. IV (Prototype): Included implementation and iterative refinement of the interactive system. V (Test): Included (and will include) empirical evaluation through tutor playtesting, interviews, and child case studies.
  • Figure 4: Expert grounded guidelines synthesized in fernandes2026codesigning.
  • Figure 5: Different facial configurations used in the Maple's system. (a) Maple's face used in previous work yang2024towards; (b) Maple's face used in the current system implementation fernandes2026codesigning.