Madelyn Duer

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Madelyn Duer is a researcher at the intersection of human-robot interaction and cognitive science, best known for her foundational work on how people form mental models of autonomous systems. Her most-cited paper, "Mental Models of a Mobile Shoe Rack" (2021, 13 citations), is a landmark qualitative study that challenges assumptions about how non-experts understand robots. Through a long-term, in-the-wild investigation, Duer revealed that users develop surprisingly rich and often inaccurate mental models of even simple robots—insights that have profound implications for robot design, trust, and safety. Her work is notable for its rigorous, hypothesis-generating approach in real-world settings, a methodological contribution that has influenced subsequent HRI studies. Duer’s research bridges cognitive psychology and robotics, showing that effective human-robot collaboration depends not just on technical capability, but on aligning a robot’s behavior with users’ evolving mental representations. Her findings are essential reading for anyone designing robots for homes, hospitals, or public spaces, and her work continues to shape how the field thinks about transparency, explainability, and user-centered autonomy.