Animal-Computer Interaction: Animal-Centred, Participatory, and Playful Design

In recent years there has been growing interest in developing technology to improve animal's wellbeing and to support the interaction of animals within the digital world. The field of Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) considers animals as the end-users of the technology being developed, orienting this process by the needs and characteristics of its non-human stakeholders. Although animals have interacted with technology long before the emergence of the ACI field, usually their behaviors were typically anthropomorphized with their needs not being fully understood. Instead, ACI research adopts an animal-centred approach and aims to understand technologically mediated interaction of animals from their perspective. In this way, the technology and systems being developed could be adapted properly towards the non-human animal user. This is similar to what Human Computer Interaction (HCI) has done with human-being users