
Ask HN: Do you work remotely? Would you use a robot? - avr
Hey HN, I&#x27;m doing a little market research on a project I&#x27;ve been kicking around: using telepresence robots for working remotely in office environments. I put together a short survey that should take 2 mins to complete:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.surveymonkey.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;P2V5V5Q<p>I&#x27;m hoping to learn about your pain points and get some high-level feedback on the concept to decide whether or not to pursue this project.<p>Appreciate your candid feedback, cheers!
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saluki
Using slack, skype and live video/screen sharing sessions are more than enough
for me to feel connected with the remote teams I work with. I think the
problem is already solved. (So there is no pain point)

A robot roaming the office is cool, but if I interact with the office it's
faster initiating a chat or video call than roaming around the office with a
robot to get to the person I need to talk to.

(waves hand) This isn't the project you're looking for.

Move along, move along.

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avr
Thanks for your response. Do you work in software? Perhaps all the digital
tools and lack of verbal communication makes this not an ideal target market
for the issues the robot would try and solve.

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jon-wood
No, at least not without them being drastically cheaper. I don't really see
what they offer that I can't get with Slack and Google Hangouts, other than
very occasionally not having to ask someone to move the laptop I'm on in a
meeting.

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mod
I think you really softballed the 1 question you care about, which will lead
to more favorable responses.

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sharemywin
who would pay? that's probably the person you should asking first. Would an
office pay extra for a tele-presense robot?

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avr
At least initially, I'm thinking it would be the offices. The value
proposition would be, 'Hey here is a tool to make your remote workers more
productive, which is better for their experience and your bottom-line. Plus
with better remote work options you open up a larger applicant pool of
employees.'

The purpose of this survey to figure out from the employee-side where the
value prop is exactly, and how beneficial it could be.

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hobolord
these things? [http://www.doublerobotics.com/](http://www.doublerobotics.com/)

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solomatov
This thing is quite hard to use. We had one in office but after some time
everybody stopped using it.

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avr
Interesting - do you have any ideas why people stopped using them?

