Designing Caregiving Robots for Aging in Place: A Care-Centered Value Sensitive Design Study with Multi-Stakeholder Expert Interviews

Abstract

Caregiving robots are widely proposed to support Aging in Place, yet assistive devices are systematically abandoned in practice. Prior research attributes this abandonment to individual factors such as motivation or cognitive decline, overlooking structural mismatches between device design and caregiving realities. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 multi-stakeholder experts across four domains (clinical, engineering, field caregiving, and policy) to investigate structural barriers to assistive robot adoption in South Korean home care. Using Care-Centered Value Sensitive Design (CCVSD) as an analytical lens, we performed thematic analysis, constructed a Caregiving Journey Map, and prioritized design requirements. Our analysis yielded five themes and 14 sub-themes, revealing three key findings: (1) a “faster bare-handed” pattern, where caregivers systematically abandon assistive devices because setup time exceeds manual task time; (2) the bathroom as a convergence point where physical, emotional, and cognitive burdens simultaneously peak; and (3) a post-discharge deterioration cycle of isolation, inactivity, physical decline, and frustration emerging within one week. We derived eight design requirements prioritized by cross-stakeholder consensus and proposed that CCVSD be extended with a temporal efficiency dimension to account for the time-critical nature of caregiving practice. We discuss implications for reframing assistive technology abandonment from individual failure to structural design misalignment.