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This article presents practical guidelines for the design of interactive software for children with autism. Many existing software design techniques rely on social interaction and so are not appropriate for this group, and little practical guidance is available. The guidelines presented are based on research experiences during the development of an interactive software game called TouchStory, which was designed to promote an understanding of narrative structure while adapting to the learning needs of individual children with autism. Our results indicate that some children with autism were actively engaged in self‐directed, curiosity‐driven learning, and found TouchStory enjoyable, even after repeated exposures on as many as 20 occasions. The guidelines are not limited to the appearance and behaviour of the software system, and may be fundamental to the research questions asked and the approach adopted. They provide a useful basis for furthering our understanding of the provision of assistive technology for children with autism.

Memory deterioration is one of the most common cognitive issues associated with ageing. Not being able to remember daily routines (e.g. taking medicine) poses a serious threat to personal independence. Smart homes combined with assistive robots have been suggested as an acceptable solution to support the independent living of the older people. The purpose of this paper is to develop a memory visualisation tool in robots and smart houses following the hypothesis that the use of memory aids will have a positive effect on the cognitive capabilities of older people.

This paper describes the iterative development process and evaluation of a novel interface to visualise the episodic memory of a socially assistive robotic system which could help to improve the memory capabilities of older users. Two experimental studies were carried out to assess usability, usefulness and envisaged use of such a system.

Results show that users find a memory tool for the robot useful to help them remember daily routines and when trying to recall previous events. Usability results emphasise the need to tailor the memory tool to specific age ranges.

The research to date provides support that for assistive robots to be a truly useful tool, they must be able to deliver episodic memory visualisation tools that enhance day-to-day living (i.e. environmental information, data on the robot’s actions and human-robot interaction episodes). Equipping a robotic companion with a novel memory visualisation tool for episodic memory is an excellent opportunity to have a robot provide such a functionality (cognitive prosthetics).

In recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and especially in robotics we can observe a tendency towards building intelligent artefacts that are meant to be social, to have ‘human social’ characteristics like emotions, the ability to conduct dialogue, to learn, to develop personality, character traits, and social competencies. Care, entertainment, pet and educational robots are conceptualised as friendly, understanding partners and credible assistants which communicate ‘naturally’ with users, show emotions and support them in everyday life. Social robots are often designed to interact physically, affectively and socially with humans in order to learn from them. To achieve this goal, roboticists often model the human‐robot interaction on early caregiver‐infant interactions. In this paper I want to analyse prominent visions of these ‘socio‐emotional’ machines as well as early prototypes and commercial products with regard to the human‐machine interface. By means of this I will ask how feminist critiques of technology could be applied to the field of social robotics in which concepts like sociality or emotion are crucial elements while, at the same time, these concepts play an important role in feminist critiques of technology.