On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog... Unless You're Another Dog

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of animal-to-animal internet interfaces, specifically for dogs, using design fiction and co-design workshops to identify key interaction concerns and potential designs.

Contribution

It introduces animal-animal connected interfaces in HCI, focusing on dogs, and demonstrates how design fiction can uncover unique interaction challenges.

Findings

Participants focused on asymmetries in interactions.

Objects familiar to dogs were preferred for interaction.

Notification systems were proposed for initiating and ending interactions.

Abstract

How humans use computers has evolved from human-machine interfaces to human-human computer mediated communication. Whilst the field of animal-computer interaction has roots in HCI, technology developed in this area currently only supports animal-computer communication. This design fiction paper presents animal-animal connected interfaces, using dogs as an instance. Through a co-design workshop, we created six proposals. The designs focused on what a dog internet could look like and how interactions might be presented. Analysis of the narratives and conceived designs indicated that participants' concerns focused around asymmetries within the interaction. This resulted in the use of objects seen as familiar to dogs. This was conjoined with interest in how to initiate and end interactions, which was often achieved through notification systems. This paper builds upon HCI methods for unconventional users, and applies a design fiction approach to uncover key questions towards the creation of animal-to-animal interfaces.