
Show HN: DIY robot to physically replay the mobile motions of users - lazyjeff
https://remotion.cs.brown.edu
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filleokus
The robot is really cool, I would like to have one just for random
shenanigans! But I guess showing the 3D model would suffice for understanding
what the user is doing, or is it easier to understand when actually observing
the phone being manipulated in space by the robot?

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lazyjeff
Great question, we tested how people interpreted the motions on both, and the
hardware version was a bit easier to understand (but nothing statistically
significant). The paper has a figure with the comparison results.

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jacquesm
Neat! Any plans on adding a 'finger'?

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msadowski
That's interesting! Would you mind if I share it on
[https://weeklyrobotics.com/](https://weeklyrobotics.com/) ?

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lazyjeff
Yes, please do.

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piocho
Colf stuff ! What will be next in your project ? Is it just a side-project or
do you want to get more involved into it and, for example, try to sell it as a
product to companies ?

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lazyjeff
Thanks! For this project, we had a lot of ideas how to improve the build that
we learned while doing it. We'll try to make those changes. But more exciting
for us, is we've used some of the techniques here to build an augmented
reality system that runs on smartphones. I'll try to post a video in the next
couple of weeks.

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aldoushuxley001
That's amazing actually. Cool stuff! Looking forward to the data that comes
from this

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tobr
I was going to write a sarcastic comment about how great this is for me as a
user, but I can’t do it.

How is this not a total violation of users’ expectation of privacy? Why
doesn’t the page even mention the ethics of subjecting people to total
surveillance to sell them more crap?

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lazyjeff
Hi tobr, thanks for your thoughtful comment and for not writing a sarcastic
reply.

This platform is for remote usability testing [[https://www.usability.gov/how-
to-and-tools/methods/remote-te...](https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-
tools/methods/remote-testing.html)], so all parties are usually aware of
what's going on. It requires the user to install client software on their
phone.

The current alternative is video recordings, which is more invasive. This is
mentioned on the website, and described in detail in the paper on the website.

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tobr
Thank you for clarifying this, and sorry for jumping to conclusions. To be
honest, the website is written more like you're targeting users in general:

> Remotion is a new way of replaying behavior of people visiting your website
> or application.

If it is done with informed consent in a research situation, that's not a
problem, but this read to me like a way to play back web analytics.

