Teaching Astro the meaning of motion.

In day-to-day communication, humans express all kinds of non-verbal cues—beat gestures, backchanneling, dietic gestures; separately or in concert with each other. Astro needed its own cohesive body language fit for its morphology and character.

Building end-to-end use cases for a lifelike character.

Often the happy path for a robot’s task is straightforward. However, the real world is a chaotic place—closed doors, dark rooms, errant shoes in the way... Building end-to-end use cases for a robot requires a completely different design approach than traditional UX design. It must be driven by putting the character first.

Re-thinking a visual communication system for the illusion of life.

Reusing a standard tablet UI on a moving embodied agent breaks the illusion of a lifelike character. I created a flexible communication system that kept the character present while also being readable at a distance and in motion.

Creating a universal framework for crafting AI identities.

AI, embodied or virtual, is inherently social. How do we design consistent AI identities to help users intuitively understand who it is, what kind of relationship they want, and how it can help them accomplish their goals?