Designing the first minute with a robot

The first minute with a robot begins before it moves. Someone takes it out of a box, decides which way it faces, looks for a control, and wonders what will happen if they touch it. A team that starts its onboarding plan with a phone screen can miss those first physical questions. Start with the object as a stranger would encounter it, with the packaging, cable, and room included.

A useful goal for the first minute is modest: the person understands what this device is for, successfully tries one action, and can stop or repeat it. That is enough to establish a foundation for the next interaction. A long tour of every planned feature can compete with the basic work of discovering which surface is safe to touch and which signal means the device is ready.

The example below is an illustrative tabletop robot with a large top button, a tilting head, and a visible status display. It can respond to a button press with a short greeting motion. These details are chosen to make the storyboard concrete; they are not specifications for a product offered on this website.

Begin with the state before power

Draw the device exactly as it appears when someone first places it on a table. Include the base, the cable, and any covers that remain attached. Ask whether the front is obvious from the shape alone. If an arrow on a printed card is doing all the work, consider whether a small physical cue could help when the card is no longer nearby.

Then write what the person needs to do to supply power. A charging port hidden beneath the object might be acceptable in daily use but awkward during first setup. A cable that exits toward the viewer may encourage the person to turn the robot backward. These are testable details. A paper model and a loose cable can reveal an orientation problem before the electronics are ready.

Give the device a recognizable starting state. The example robot begins upright, with a small readable message indicating that it is ready for a press. Nothing moves while the person is positioning it. If a production device must calibrate or move during startup, the team needs to design and explain that behavior with the actual mechanism and appropriate safety review.

Choose the one action worth teaching

List the possible first actions, then select the one that best explains the product's promise. For a timer, setting and finishing a short interval may be more useful than a greeting. For a creative robot, a touch response may introduce the relationship between action and expression. The right choice depends on what the customer bought the device to do.

For the example, the instruction is “Press the top once.” The person presses, the head tilts, and the display confirms the response. There is no hidden requirement to hold the button for several seconds or wait for a network account. The interaction is deliberately short so the owner can connect the control to the result.

Microsoft's guidance on setting initial AI expectations distinguishes explaining capability from explaining performance limitations. If the robot uses AI, both belong in the onboarding plan. A greeting animation alone cannot explain the scope or reliability of a conversational feature. Introduce those expectations when that feature becomes relevant, with language the customer can act on.

Storyboard six observable beats

Use a sequence that describes actions rather than emotional goals. “The user feels delighted” is an intention. “The user presses the button again without prompting” is something an observer can record. For this prototype, a six-frame storyboard could read:

1. The person places the powered-off device facing them and finds the cable connection.
2. They connect power and notice the ready state.
3. They read or hear a brief invitation to press the top.
4. They press once and observe the complete greeting.
5. They see that the device has returned to ready.
6. They repeat the action or use the visible stop control.

For each frame, add a second line describing what might interrupt it. The person may overlook the display, press twice, hold the button, or begin moving the device mid-response. Those branches are part of onboarding, even if they never appear in a promotional film. Decide which ones the prototype can handle and which ones require a facilitator to stop the session.

Make feedback useful from different positions

Sit beside the prototype, then stand and look at it from an angle. Check which parts of the display and controls remain visible. An expressive head tilt may be easy to notice from the front but ambiguous from the side. The ready state should be understandable without requiring the owner to assume the exact pose used in the product photography.

NC State's universal-design principles include redundant ways to present essential information and clear prompting around task completion. Applied here, that means a physical response can be paired with a readable status message rather than carrying the entire instruction. The team still needs to test the actual combination with people who have different sensory and motor needs.

Sound deserves a separate pass. Listen at the volume a person is likely to use, with ordinary room noise present. Make sure the interaction can be understood if the sound is muted. If spoken instructions are necessary for a feature, provide another accessible route to that information. Avoid using a pleasant audio cue as a substitute for an explanation of what happened.

Rehearse a recoverable mistake

A good first-use storyboard includes a mistaken action the person can recover from. In this example, imagine a double press during the greeting. One design might ignore the second press. Another might cancel the motion. Both are possible, but the behavior should be consistent and observable. Do not let the same input sometimes queue another greeting and sometimes stop the current one without a reason the user can understand.

Write the recovery instruction before polishing the success animation. If the instruction is hard to explain, the interaction may need simplification. A visible stop control is also worth testing as its own task. Ask the participant to make the device quiet, then observe where they look. Knowing how to dismiss a behavior is part of being comfortable trying it.

Test the sequence without narrating it

Set up the object and give the participant the same materials a buyer would receive. Ask them to get it ready and try its first activity. Resist the urge to point at the control as they begin. Keep a simple observation sheet with a row for each storyboard beat, a place for the first action taken, and a place for any help supplied.

After the attempt, ask what they thought the robot could do next. This question can expose expectations the demonstration accidentally created. A person who assumes the object can see everything in the room may have drawn that conclusion from a head movement, even if the prototype has no camera. Revise the wording or behavior where the implied capability exceeds the actual one.

The next iteration should address the earliest consequential confusion. If people cannot orient the object, adding more personality to the greeting is premature. If they understand the first action but cannot tell when it has ended, change the completion signal. Keep the storyboard beside the prototype until someone unfamiliar with the work can move through the whole sequence with the intended amount of help.