When Robots Feel Gentle: Co-Designing Tactile Interfaces for Social Robots in Older Adult Care

As social robots move into older adult care and companionship, soft shape-changing interfaces offer unique potential for safe and emotional tactile interaction. Yet, prior work often focuses on materials engineering, with limited design methods oriented towards older adults’ wellbeing. We present co-design materials for early exploration, including a staged workflow, 48 design cards, and unified robot form boards. We conducted four workshops with 12 interdisciplinary participants acting as family caregivers and proxies. The workshops yielded 18 concepts and a rich design space categorized into Functional Assistance, Physiological Regulation, Affective Companionship, and Tactile Play. This study proposes a restrained and steady tactile paradigm to inform the design of wellbeing-oriented shape-changing social robots for older adult care.