Agora é a vez do meu gato jogar: avaliação de recomendações de interação animal-computador para felinos em dispositivos móveis

Abstract

The domestication of animals by humans is happening since prehistory, although their relationship focused on companionship is more recent. With technologies’ development and with interaction events (on purpose or accidentally) of domestic animal and these technologies, it is imperative to ask: what is the impact of such technologies on animal well-being? The Animal-Computer Interaction came to support the building of those technologies, aiming to improve the animal well-being and the way animals interact with technology. However, the research area focused on digital games for animals lacks studies on recommendations for specific species, once games should be adapted based on specific features for each group of target users. In this context, this work aims to identify interaction features for entertainment of cats in mobile devices. To achieve this goal, a mobile application was developed to evaluate those interface and interaction features. User testing (with cats) was performed in order to evaluate hypotheses, and interviews (with cat owners) were applied to support new guidelines. So, the counting of interactions of cats with the mobile device was logged and the cat owners’ impressions were recorded. By analysing the results, we were unable to find meaningful statistical differences among the configurations of the game. However, the perspective of the owners in interviews and the observations of the author during tests support insights for new recommendations as, for instance, having more than one element on screen and having sound help to keep the cat’s attention.