Week 1 — Conceive
Before you touch a single component, you need to understand the person your robot will serve. Week 1 is about listening, asking, and imagining — turning a vague idea into a focused concept.
Learning Objectives
By the end of Week 1 you will be able to:
- Conduct basic user research interviews and synthesize findings
- Define a target user and a genuine unmet need
- Articulate the personality and purpose of your robot in a one-page concept brief
- Sketch interaction scenarios and rough form factors
- Present your concept for peer critique and iteration
Sessions
→ View period-by-period schedule
Session 1 — Monday · Kick-off, Character Design & Concept Brief
The course begins. Guest lecturer JunJun Shi leads the afternoon — students leave with a team, a concept direction, and a clear sense of what robot personality means.
Agenda: - Course overview and grading (Pass / No Pass) · 梁俊睿 - Embedded systems & IoT fundamentals · meet the ESP32 · 梁俊睿 - Guest lecture: JunJun Shi — “Empathy as the starting point for designing robot personality” · character design workshop with sketching & LLM generative tools (2 periods) - Brief poster session — all teams present their robot concept (3 min each) - Industrial design intro: form follows function · sketching · Daniel
Session 2 — Wednesday · ESP32, Firmware & Ideation
Hands-on from the start. By the end of the session your board is talking to an LLM.
The goal of user research is not to confirm your assumptions — it’s to break them. The most interesting insights come from unexpected answers.
Agenda: - LLMs & conversational AI fundamentals · 梁俊睿 - ESP-Claw framework overview · 梁俊睿 - ESP32 first contact: hardware setup, GPIO, breadboard wiring · Shimon + Daniel - Firmware lab: Hello World — display output & LED blink · Shimon + Daniel - Robot concept ideation workshop: user persona, target need · Shimon + Daniel - Open studio: form exploration & sketching · Daniel
The Robot Personality Brief
This is the key output of Week 1. It answers these questions in one page:
| Question | What to define |
|---|---|
| Who is it for? | Specific user + context |
| What problem does it solve? | The core unmet need |
| What does it feel like to interact with? | Personality adjectives (3–5) |
| What does it say / how does it speak? | Tone, language, style |
| What does it look like? | Sketch or moodboard |
| What does it not do? | Explicit non-goals |
The constraint is intentional. If you can’t summarize your concept in one page, you don’t have a concept yet — you have a wish list.
✓ Week 1 Deliverables
Resources for Week 1
Design Thinking & User Research
- Stanford d.school Design Thinking Bootcamp Bootleg — the canonical guide to empathy and concept work
- Interview for Empathy — Stanford d.school method card — one-page field-ready guide for empathy interviews
- User Interviews 101 — Nielsen Norman Group — planning, conducting, and extracting insight from user interviews
- IDEO Human-Centered Design toolkit — broader design research methods
Robot Character & Personality
- Almost Human: How to Write Robot and AI Characters — personality traits, speech patterns, and belief systems for AI characters
- Designing Personas for Expressive Robots — ACM THRI — peer-reviewed research on building robot personas through speech, color, and movement
Getting Started with ESP32
- Getting Started — Arduino ESP32 (Espressif official) — easiest on-ramp for students new to ESP32
- Getting Started with ESP32 — Random Nerd Tutorials — step-by-step setup, pinout, and first sketch
- ESP-Claw documentation — start getting familiar early
Next: Week 2 — Design →