[CS] Alex Zhang Candidacy Exam/Nov 17, 2025

[via cs]

This is an announcement of Alex Zhang's Candidacy Exam.
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Candidate: Alex Zhang

Date: Monday, November 17, 2025

Time:  9 am CST

Location: JCL 298

Title: How User Control Over Robot Behavior Shapes Perceptions of Social Agency and Overall User Experience

Abstract: Robots are increasingly being deployed in everyday settings, yet a fundamental tension exists between enabling users to customize robot behavior and maintaining the robot's perceived social agency, the perception of a robot as an autonomous and intelligent social agent. While customization enhances usability and acceptance, excessive control may undermine the social presence that makes robots engaging partners. Prior work has treated customization and social agency as independent factors, but their interplay and joint impact on user experience remains understudied. In this talk, we present research investigating how different approaches to user control shape perceptions of robots as social agents. In our first work, we examine trade-offs between customization granularity and perceived social agency, finding that lower-granularity interfaces better preserve social agency while still improving preference adherence. Next, we investigate how robot form factor mediates user customization of robot personality, revealing that humanoid robots are particularly vulnerable to agency  reduction from customization, while non-humanoid robots show stronger rapport improvements. These findings demonstrate that customization fundamentally alters social perceptions of robots in form-dependent ways. Finally, we present ongoing work comparing voice-based and visual interface modalities for robot personalization, examining whether voice programming enables seamless customization without traditional interface context-switching costs, while investigating potential trade-offs in user confidence and mental model development. Together, these projects provide foundational insights into designing customization mechanisms that enhance user control without sacrificing social agency, with implications for commercial robot acceptance and long-term engagement.



Advisor: Sarah Sebo

Committee: Sarah Sebo, Marshini Chetty, Ken Nakagaki