Dog Computer Interaction – Methods and Findings for Understanding How Dogs’ Interact with Screens and Media
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Dog Computer Interaction – Methods and Findings for Understanding how Dogs’ Interact with Screens and Media by Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire March 2017 You can tell your story with the dog. Or you can tell the story the dog told you. As part of this research, the coding for Chapter Six in MATTLAB on dissecting dog images for image processing software was conducted by Huilan Luo. The coding for the DoggyVision Java program in Chapter Eight was done by Brendan Cassidy. Cartoons included within this thesis are by © Randy Glasbergen, used with special permission from www.glasbergen.com. i Abstract The ubiquity of technology has resulted in machinery occupying our homes, increasing the exposure and use of screen devices to dogs. Dogs have long viewed computer screens, yet the usability of, and the dog’s attention to, these screen devices remains under-researched. This research focuses on investigating a dog’s attention to screens and the human’s and researcher’s evaluation of this. The specific aim was to determine how to capture this attention through both technology devices and coded methods. The research contributes to the knowledge area of dogs’ screen interactions and dog-computer interaction (DCI) methods within animal-computer interaction (ACI). It adds literature in the novel field on dogs’ use of screens to watch media and explores method transference from human-computer interaction (HCI). This helps lay down the foundation for the DCI community and gives indications on the future directions of DCI research with screen interfaces. The research is explored through four research questions: Can methods be developed that can capture a dog’s attention to single, multiple and dog-activated screens in a dog-centric manner? When different media are presented to dogs, do they show preferences, and do they follow preferred media as they move from one screen to another? In what ways can a dog’s attention to screens be quantified in a useful way from an owner, computer and researcher standpoint? and What effect does taking a dog-centric philosophy have on the study of dog-computer interaction? This thesis is heavily embedded within the ethical philosophical stance of dog-centric research. This shapes the methods used and the technology created. It focuses on dog user requirements that allow for untrained interaction allowing the dog to explore the technology in a natural way. In this light, the role that dogs take within the method and evaluation process and the interaction between the modalities of human, dogs and computers are examined. This thesis shows that it is possible to capture a dog’s attention to screen interfaces from the researcher, the dog owner and the dog itself within the dog-centric philosophical approach. These findings are derived from three empirical studies and two research tools. The two research tools presented deliver DCI enhanced interpretive feedback for DCI research in tool 1 and provide a way of modelling the dog user in tool 2. Tool 1 enhances, from a human standpoint, the analysis of a dog’s attention by facilitating the owner to be an informed observer through providing a Dog Information Sheet (DISH) on dog behaviour. Tool 2 uses information from the owners of 196 dogs to craft six role-based personas across different breeds, ages and home situations to aid researchers during the initial stages of research and design in DCI. This also provided a data storehouse of dog information. The three empirical studies narrate a story across finding ways of automating the detection of a dog’s attention to TV like screens, to detecting a dog’s attention to media across multiple screens and then allowing the dog to trigger its own media on a screen. Study one used MATLAB to classify where a dog’s head is facing within three variables (left/centre and right) within a high accuracy of above 82%. The second study investigated a dog’s attention across multiple screens using video evidence, analysed by a researcher, to classify a dog’s attention. This indicated that dogs did not follow media content from one screen to another and showed that they preferred a favoured screen. In this study, it was found dogs prefer dog-based media and had short (under 3 seconds) attentive glances. The third study concluded the thesis using a ii specially designed screen device that was triggered by the dog’s proximity, to investigate a dog’s attention, over a two-week period, to a dog-activated screen system that plays media. This study demonstrated that dogs would attend to a screen device playing media and that proximity can be used as an activator of media content. The work concluded by listing contributions regarding the design, methods and principles of screen systems for dogs. Initial findings are provided for the DCI field of low attention times with dogs and screens (approximately 3 seconds) and that the videos attended to by dogs were mainly of dog context. In this regard, short media clips should be used with dogs. Dogs throughout this thesis did not seem to attend much to screens preferring to watch nothing and often maintaining or keeping the same level of attention towards dog imitated machines. One of the main contributions this thesis provides are empirical methods to provide some insight into how dog-centric methods can be used in DCI. These methods indicate the importance of the data gathered from the time spent on task with a device is as valuable as the time spent without the device. The tools provided form a contribution of ways to model the dog user and enhancing the feedback from the owner leading to the conclusion that the optimal dog-centric environment is with high dog autonomy and low human involvement during data collection. Within this, discussion is given on the tension within the dog-centric philosophy method approach between the dog and the data where the research philosophy reflected in the principles given were found to hindered data collection but do ensure the dogs welfare. For the ACI field in DCI this thesis suggests that the researcher determines the pool of dogs that the researcher is considering before choosing the method and system advocating for getting to know your end user. This narrative is followed by an exploration of potential growth areas of interactive media technology for dogs, identifying regions of DCI that could be further studied such as multiuser systems, further exploring how the human impacts DCI research, the ACI to HCI transference, investing further into what is interactivity in ACI and dog-driven devices and lastly the continue to develop dog-centric methods for DCI research. iii Contents Chapter 1 ...................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Structure .................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Animal-Computer Interaction ......................................................................................... 2 1.3 Dog-Computer Interaction .............................................................................................. 3 1.3.1 What Is a Dog within DCI ......................................................................................... 4 1.3.2 What Is Interaction in Dog-Computer Interaction ................................................... 5 1.4 Dog-Centred Approach ................................................................................................... 6 1.5 Synopsis of Thesis Document .......................................................................................... 7 1.5.1 Structure of the Thesis ............................................................................................. 8 1.5.2 Literature Review and Research Methodology...................................................... 10 1.5.3 Theories and Tools to Centre DCI Media Technology ............................................ 10 1.5.4 Studies to Investigate Dogs’ Media Choices and Tracking Watching Behaviour ... 10 1.5.5 Studies to Investigate Dogs’ Screen Choice ........................................................... 10 1.5.6 Studies to Investigate Dog-Driven Media Technology in DCI ................................ 10 1.5.7 Concluding Work and Research Contributions ...................................................... 11 1.6 Research Questions....................................................................................................... 11 1.7 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 11 Chapter 2 .................................................................................................................................... 12 Literature Review in Animal Computer Interaction ......................................................... 12 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 13 2.2 What is ACI ...................................................................................................................