Robots do not have inherent value. Rather, they become valuable in use. This talk explores how value emerges in human–robot interaction through a series of field studies in care settings and everyday life. Across these cases, users adapt robots to their needs, develop new practices around them, and reinterpret what the robots are for, sometimes going beyond the imaginations of the original designers. These use cases suggest a shift in how we approach design and evaluation: from optimizing robot capabilities to understanding how robots can create space for human activity and meaning making. With this in mind, I close by discussing a project in which we co-designed a robot to support older adults’ sense of meaning and purpose in life,  and show how the co-design process also required rethinking our own values and roles as researchers.

Selma Šabanović is a prominent scholar best known for her contributions to human–robot interaction (HRI) and social robotics. Trained in computer science and deeply informed by anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), her work examines how robots are designed, deployed, and interpreted within real-world social, cultural, and institutional contexts. She has been especially influential in advocating for ethnographic and qualitative methods alongside technical approaches, showing how social values, power relations, and everyday practices shape human–robot relationships.