What can a Starship do?
Connect, engage, and play with Starship!
Enhancing social interaction at Purdue University by equipping Starship delivery robots with trivia bot features
Role
UX Designer
Team
Jun Hyok Lim
Chanseo Shin
Ivan Laguna
Jason Hung
Tools
Figma, Miro
Date
Feb 2025
Problem Space
What is a starship?
A Starship is a small, autonomous delivery robot currently used at Purdue to bring food from campus dining services to students. However, it could be utilized in new ways to help people connect and create human-to-human interactions through creative approaches.
This project explores how Starships can go beyond delivery to support communication, engagement, and connections among Purdue's community.
User Group
Who are we targeting?
We are targeting the Purdue University community, including students, faculty, and staff who interact with Starship robots on campus.
They are the people who would benefit most from new ways of using Starships to encourage social interaction and engagement.
User Interviews
How do Purdue students currently use Starship robots in their daily lives?
Conducted a total of 8 interviews with Purdue students and staff members who have interacted with Starship robots before.
Explore perceptions of safety, reliability, and convenience.
Identify pain points in the current delivery experience.
Uncover opportunities for expanding Starship’s role beyond food delivery.
Gather insights on student openness to interactive features, such as trivia bots, that could enhance community engagement.
Positive Insights
Easy to order food without leaving your dorm or study spot.
Better value compared to other delivery apps.
Students like the novelty of robots, which makes campus feel high-tech.
Negative Insights
Orders can take too long to arrive or may be delivered late.
Robots sometimes block paths or get stuck.
Food may arrive cold or be delayed.
Concerns about theft, misuse, or accidents.
Opportunities
Use robots for mail, packages, or bookstore items.
Fix navigation, keep food warmer, and improve reliability.
Add trivia or fun features to make robots engaging, not just functional.
Seconary Research
How can this improve human-to-human interaction?
Conducted supplementary research to deepen our understanding of Starship technology and explore its application and usage scenarios.
Key Insights
Easy & Safe
Robots make life simpler by delivering food and items quickly and safely.
Technology
Smart features like alarms and QR codes make them more reliable and secure.
New Job
User Engagement
Students like robots that feel cheerful and expressive.
More Uses
Robots could deliver mail, books, or even give campus tours.
Human-Centered
When designed for students, robots can enhance both delivery and human connection.
Ideation & Sketching
What would make Starship more engaging on campus?
During the brainstorming and sketching, our team explored many ways Starship robots could enhance human-to-human interaction. Using affinity diagrams, ideas were grouped into categories.
They are the people who would benefit most from new ways of using Starships to encourage social interaction and engagement.
Through multiple rounds of sketching and ideation, we categorized the ideas into software, AI, Navigation, and Delivery.
User Evalutation
What ideas do Purdue students want to make Starship robots more engaging?
Now that we had a bunch of ideas, we needed to understand what our user group wanted from the future use of Starship. To do this, we conducted a user evaluation to gather feedback from actual users and assess the product’s effectiveness.
User Evalutation Results
When we shared these concepts with Purdue students during the evaluation, here's what we heard:
"I’d love something fun, like trivia, that makes the robots more engaging instead of just dropping off food."
"Guided tours with a robot would be super cool for new students or visitors. It would make the campus feel innovative."
"Delivery is fine, but the robots should do more than food. They could be part of campus life."
Final Direction
Which ideas best align with what students really want?
Based on user feedback, we realized students were most excited by ideas that:
1. Make robots more interactive and social(Trivia games)
2. Highlight campus life and create a shared experience(tours)
From here, we narrowed our focus down to two main concepts:
Starship trivia on campus: Robots become mobile trivia hubs, encouraging students to gather, answer questions together, and compete for small rewards.
Purdue tour with starship integration: Robots guide students to visitors around campus, offering trivia questions, stories, or facts along the way.
User Interview
How do people react when they see a robot approaching them?
We conducted another round of 8 user interviews after finalizing our idea for Starship Trivia and the Purdue tour to understand how people react to encountering a starship that can communicate.
“At first I was kind of cautious, but when I realized it was friendly, I actually wanted to try interacting with it.”
“If the robot told a joke or trivia fact, I’d definitely stop and engage.
“Working together to answer trivia questions would be a good icebreaker with other students.”
Key takeaways
People are curious and open to engage with a communication starship.
Playful elements, such as jokes and trivia, make interactions enjoyable.
Trivia fosters teamwork and sparks conversation among students.
Design improvements, such as appearance or speed, can increase comfort and trust.
With over 88% positive feedback, we decided to move forward with these ideas.
Design Rationale
Our design decisions were guided by three key principles:
Human-Centered Focus
We listened to what Purdue students need—convenience, safety, and more ways to connect on campus.
Fostering Campus Connection
Trivia games get students talking, laughing, and working together, turning a quick robot encounter into a social moment.
Keeping Robots Engaged
Starship robots sit idle between deliveries. Adding trivia makes them useful and fun during downtime.
Storyboard
Shows campus tour route with animated robot location that students can tap to start trivia.
QR scanning simulation followed by timed multiple-choice questions with score tracking.
Shows a celebration screen with the final score, star icon, and congratulatory message before returning to the campus tour.
Join/create teams with friends to play collaborative trivia games together.
The rewards page displays students' earned points and allows them to claim prizes, such as free coffee and discounts, while tracking their achievements and progress.
Final Design
Reflection
Creativity & Practicality
Learned to balance creativity and practicality by narrowing broad ideas into focused solutions.
Human Connection
Saw how small design choices (like trivia or rewards) can spark meaningful human connections.
Collaboration
Improved team collaboration and communication while synthesizing research insights.
Actionable Design
Gained experience in turning user feedback into actionable design decisions.