Understanding Guide Dog Team Interactions: Design Opportunities to Support Work and Play Sabrina Hauser, Ron Wakkary, and Carman Neustaedter Simon Fraser University 250 – 13450 102nd Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia, V3T 0A3, Canada {shauser; rwakkary; carman_neustaedter}@sfu.ca ABSTRACT independence while traveling. Different mobility aids have The visually impaired have been a longstanding and well- been developed to enhance their travel abilities. The most recognized user group addressed in the field of Human- popular travel aid is the long cane; a mobility tool that users Computer Interaction (HCI). Recently, the study of sighted sweep back and forth in an arc on the ground in front of dog owners and their pets has gained interest in HCI. them to detect obstacles in their pathway. Nevertheless, Despite this, there is a noticeable gap in the field with research has shown that guide dogs are the most beneficial regards to research on visually impaired owners and their and appropriate travel aid because they provide safe dogs (guide dog teams). This paper presents a study that guidance when traveling [22,42] and increased mobility and explores the interactions of guide dog teams revealing a independence, while offering the additional benefit of rich, holistic understanding of their everyday lives and companionship. needs, across both work and leisure activities. Our findings inform and inspire future research and practices suggesting Studies from a range of disciplines outside of HCI have three opportunity areas: supporting working guide dog looked at what we refer to as guide dog teams: visually teams, enhancing play-interaction through accessible dog impaired guide dog users and their dogs. This body of work toys utilizing sensor technologies, and speculative and concerns itself primarily with the impact on identities of exploratory opportunities. This work contributes to the guide dog owners [34], the benefits of guide dogs [22,42], growing research on designing for human-canine teams and and the experience of their usage [43]. However, relatively motivates future research with guide dog teams. little is known about how technology could be designed to enhance guide dog team interactions, and little work has Author Keywords investigated this issue in or outside of HCI. Importantly, Human-Canine Interaction; Human-Animal-Interaction, technologies currently designed for people with vision Animal-Computer Interaction; Guide Dogs; Visually impairment do not necessarily fit the needs of guide dog Impaired; Interactive Systems Design; Team Interaction. users and guide dog teams. On a more general level, the ACM Classification Keywords study of sighted dog owners and their pets has gained H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI).. interest in HCI. Many studies have looked at computer- mediated human-pet interaction [e.g.,6,15,27,31,47] mainly INTRODUCTION focusing on connecting humans and their pets when apart. According to the World Health Organization [46], 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide. An To advance a deeper understanding of guide dog teams and estimated 25.2 million adults (people over 18 years of age), the role technology might play in better supporting them, nearly half a million children (people under 18) in the US we conducted a two-part study involving an in depth expert and more than 836,000 Canadians have significant vision interview and participant observations of twelve guide dog loss or vision difficulty [1,7]. users. Findings revealed major opportunities for HCI and design research in developing this emerging design space. Research and practice in Human-Computer Interaction This includes 1) supporting working guide dog teams; 2) (HCI) and design communities have recognized the visually supporting play interactions of guide dog teams; and 3) impaired as a user group for decades [e.g.,4,14,18,20,28]. speculative and exploratory opportunities. This paper Accessible technology developments such as tools, makes two contributions. First, it advances the HCI applications and gadgets have been improving the lives of community’s understanding of guide dog teams, describing people challenged with visual impairment, enabling them to their experiences and challenges, and how digital and non- be more independent. One of the most common challenges digital artifacts mediate their interactions. Second, it details experienced by people who are blind is their lack of several design opportunities and challenges for both Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or interventions aimed at better supporting work and play classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for situations of guide dog teams to help critically frame future profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must HCI work in this emerging area. In this, we also illustrate be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on how this work applies more broadly to other fields in HCI. servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. DIS 2014, June 7–11, 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-2902-6/14/06...$15.00. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598531 - 1 - GUIDE DOGS search and rescue (SAR) dogs, and attempt to provide Guide dogs are highly trained animals that provide better useful procedures for the analysis of dog trials and mobility and more independent travel abilities to their missions. Studies conducted by Tran et al. [38,39] provide visually impaired users than the cane [22,42]. They respond more detail on the topic of CAT by analyzing current tools to verbal commands such as “Forward”, “Left”, “Right”, available to urban SAR teams, informing the design of their “Straight on”, “Find the stairs”, and “Find the door”, and own CAT prototypes. disregard commands when they could lead to a dangerous Focusing on human-canine interactions between people and situation (e.g. a car backing up out of a driveway or an their pet dogs, Paasovaara et al. [31] developed the ‘paw unsupervised construction site). When traveling together, tracker concept’, which combines sensor-based dog created the human is responsible for orientation and safety issues content with social media to connect a dog that stays home monitoring traffic and traffic lights; the dog is the guide to with a human who is working, enabling the human to check staying on track, avoiding obstacles, finding destinations on the pet on an automatically updated blog. Similarly, Hu (doors, stairs, chairs), and watching out for dangerous et al. [15] and Yonezawa et al. [47] introduce prototypes for situations. remote pet control (or human-computer-animal interfaces), There are different guide dog schools that train and provide in one case combined with social media [47]. Neustaedter dogs for the visually impaired. They differ in terms of and Golbeck [30] investigate the design of systems for pet philosophy, training methods, size and, how well they video chat for human-dog interactions. Wingrave et al. [44] support the dog-human partnership after initial training is introduced game-prototypes for strengthening the human- complete [13]. There are currently 15 guide dog schools in animal bond of dog owners and their dogs. Mancini et al. the US and Canada accredited by the International Guide [26] explored how tracking technologies can reconfigure Dog Federation [17]. the relationships between humans and canines. Moreover, Weilenmann and Juhlin [41] conducted a study observing A guide dog owner, like any other dog owner has to provide hunters using GPS devices to monitor their dogs, aiming to for the physical and emotional needs of a dog. Dogs need find out how technology assists the interactions of those food, several opportunities each day to relieve themselves, human-canine teams. grooming, veterinarian visits, playtime and affection [13]. A new field with an interesting overlap has recently been RELATED WORK recognized in the HCI community: Animal-Computer When looking at the interactions of guide dog teams, works Interaction (ACI). Mancini [24] provided an overview of from different research fields can be considered. This ACI discussing key issues such as ethics and benefits. encompasses research within and beyond HCI. When talking about the benefits, Mancini points out that In Human-Computer Interaction ACI could inform, “the design of technology that enables Designing technology for the visually impaired has been the animals we live and sometimes work with to effectively addressed by HCI-research for decades. For example, communicate with us, increase their participation in our computers were made accessible through screen-reader interactions, and constructively influence our programs such as JAWS [18] and VoiceOver [4]. Efforts environments” [24 p.72]. This can be related to human-dog have been made to make the web accessible [28], and many interaction between the visually impaired and their guide assistive technologies have been developed [14] including dogs, since those dogs are animals that partly work for their haptic technologies [20]. owners. It also points out, that considering the inclusion of A few visually impaired rely on geographical information animals into design processes can have beneficial effects. It systems (GIS) that combine GPS with a digital assistant is clear, the emerging field of animal- and pet-focused such as Trekker Breeze [16]. These technologies are research offers much potential and will increasingly developed to help orientation while traveling. However, become a part of discussions within the HCI and design technology gadgets are often too expensive for many people communities (see Mancini [24,25]). and they are not specifically designed to be used with a Beyond Human-Computer Interaction guide dog.