CO-HUMANICS preliminary study successfully completed

In order to be able to start the CO-HUMANICS project right away with empirical data, a scientific preliminary study was conducted in February 2021 (lead researcher Prof. Döring). This study is preregistered and has been approved by the ethics committee of the TU Ilmenau.

Within the scope of this preliminary study, the status quo of grandparent-grandchild communication with established media was to be worked out first. Up to now, it has not been known exactly which media grandparents use to communicate with their grandchildren in everyday life and how the grandchildren experience this. In addition, the study aimed to determine how the innovative media to be developed in CO-HUMANICS on the basis of augmented reality and social robotics are assessed in the context of grandparent-grandchild communication from the grandchildren's point of view.

N=286 students from all faculties of TU Ilmenau participated in the study (average age of grandchildren 22 years, 57% female). They reported their typical communication with a selected grandparent, the majority of which was the grandmother (average age of grandparents 79 years, 77% female).

The CO-HUMANICS consortium is currently working on analyzing the study results in more detail and publishing them in an international journal.

We would like to thank all participants for their kind support of our study.

Further studies are planned in which, among other things, the views of grandparents will also be recorded. In addition, the CO-HUMANICS project follows a human-centered design approach in its practical development work, which means that technical developments are tailored to the expectations and requirements of future users from the very beginning.