Designing Technologies for Playful Interspecies Communication

Abstract

This one-day workshop examines how we might use technologies to support design for playful interspecies communication and considers some of the potential implications. Here we explore aspects of playful technology and reflect on what opportunities computers can provide for facilitating communication between species. The workshop's focal activity will be the co-creation of some theoretical systems designed for specific multi-species scenarios. Through our activities, we aim to pave the way for designing technology that promotes interspecies communication, drawing input not only from ACI practitioners but also from those of the broader HCI and animal science community, who may be stakeholders in facilitating, expanding, and/or redefining playful technology.

Ethics and Power Dynamics in Playful Technology for Animals

“…To explore interspecies communication further from an ethical perspective required an imaginative leap into an impersonal future, rather than a critique of established practice. Prior work has suggested that speculative design is useful both to ACI [61,45,32] and within the context of playful systems [23]. We therefore concluded that playful systems would be the most suitable vehicles for a speculative design challenge since play offers a universal open gateway for engagement and interaction.…”

“…Play also occurs between humans and other domesticated species, such as cats [55]and horses [65], while playful experiences have been observed between various nonhuman species, including primates [74], dogs with horses [46] and dolphins with whales [16]. As noted in our earlier work [23]:…”

“…Technology aimed at non-human animals is becoming commonplace, heightening the discussion around the ethics and other implications of designing such systems. In this paper, we focus on the design of playful systems because play, in all its contexts and across species, is widely recognised as a voluntary behaviour with intrinsic reward [27,67,23]. Between participants, play becomes a vehicle for expression.…”

“…The Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) community deeply invests in design work that enriches the lives of animals, as well as enlightening the humans who do the ideation and associated craft. To this end, we ran a one-day workshop during the ACI'2020 conference [23] to explore how ethics and power dynamics are manifest in the technological systems we design for non-human animals, particularly in regard to playful concepts that enable or facilitate interspecies communication. Ultimately, our goal was to investigate the challenges and opportunities associated with designing such technology, thereby revealing the underlying ethical questions.…”

Prototyping with Monkeys: Uncovering What Buttons for Monkeys Look Like

“…Using such methods for primates in zoo contexts is incredibly complex because multiple stakeholders are involved [18], including zoo visitors, the animals, the keepers, the research directors and so on. Regarding design with animals in zoos, researchers have employed methods such as participatory design and co-design with elephants [10] and orangutans [59]. While primates worldwide are the key users of computer systems in zoos, much attention has been focused on great apes species [59] and little on monkeys.…”