My current thesis strategy is to reach out to my community of practice and gather their input about trauma to make a series of robots that exhibit different behavioral manifestations. Each robot’s behavior would represent a subtle manifestation of trauma. For example, according to the DSM-4, a defense mechanism could be disassociation which essentially means shutting yourself off from the trauma. A behavioral expression of that mechanism could be a workaholic attitude where one works to disassociate from the trauma. While this current approach may eventually answer some of my design questions and explorations, I worry whether it will communicate effectively and correctly to a wide range of people. I’m also concerned that it will be too superficial of a representation of interactions that can display themselves in many ways.