Interaction Design
2025
Overview
Robot vacuums are great at cleaning and bad at explaining themselves. I explored how a Wall-E-style status surface could let the robot communicate what it is doing, how far along it is, and what it needs — at a glance, from across the room.
Approach
I mapped the vacuum’s states — cleaning, docking, stuck, charging — and designed a compact display language for each: progress as a single bar, intent as one verb, and personality through timing rather than decoration. Prototypes were tested in living rooms, not labs, to check legibility at distance.
Outcome
The concept reframed the robot from an appliance into a housemate you can read. The status-surface direction informed how the team thinks about ambient communication across the robotics line.