Hello, thank you for joining this presentation of our paper, Co-designing with Orangutans,
Enhancing the design of enrichment for animals I’m Sarah Webber from the University of
Melbourne in Australia. I’m presenting on behalf of my co-authors Marcus Carter, Wally
Smith and Frank Vetere. This paper responds to the challenge of adapting
interaction design methods to include animals as active participants in co-design. In this
work we reflect critically on the design activities we undertook in creating digital enrichment
for orangutans, and suggest some ways in which qualitative and quantitative methods from
the animal sciences could be combined with design based research when designing for animals.
In designing digital technologies for animals, a grand challenge is to include non-humans
as design partners. Animal-computer interaction researchers encounter substantial barriers
to eliciting and capturing the perspective of non-verbal users. In a parallel, of sorts
with the work of the Scandinavian participatory design movement of the 70s and 80s, animal
computer interaction researchers seek new models of participation for non-humans to
contribute meaningfully to design There is a long history of designing spaces
and devices for animals. For example, the design of zoo enclosures has through much
of history prioritised the public viewing of animals. Zoos are now giving increasing
attention to enabling captive animals to perform behaviours which are psychologically important
to the species, alongside the needs of human stakeholders and cultural expectations of
zoos. Some zoos are now regularly conducting animal welfare assessments to evaluate enclosure
design In addition, zoos often add environmental
enrichment which provide animals opportunities to “work”, encourage physical movement
and offer cognitive stimulation. These include puzzle feeders, food scatters, additional
physical structures, and visual, olfactory or tactile stimuli. Allowing animals to work
for food has been shown to improve welfare by allowing animals increased control over
their lives. However, constraints on time and resources often prevent zoo keepers from
providing enrichment which offers sufficient variety and ongoing challenge, particularly
for primates. Melbourne zoo, our partner in this research,
sought to investigate the role that digital technologies might play in providing animal
enrichment for the orangutans. In this collaborative project we set out to develop a digital installation
which could provide enhanced, varied enrichment for orangutans and also support zoos’ objectives
relating to conservation education by creating visitor experience which enhance engagement
with animals by fostering respect for, and interest in animals.
This project therefore had to address the needs of orangutans and of a wide variety
of stakeholders including animal welfare specialists, zoo keepers, conservation educators and visitors.
We adopted a co-design approach, with the aim of exploring how interaction design methods
could be adapted to co-design with animals in this complex zoo context.
I want to now describe the design activities we conducted at each stage of the project
and reflect on how they enabled us to address the challenge of co-designing with animals.
To develop a rich understanding of the context and needs, we interviewed zoo keepers and
an animal welfare specialist at the orangutan exhibit and back of house. We learned about
routine practices, and the the extensive effort that staff put into designing and creating
enrichment conducting activities such as training and painting. We noted that many enrichment
activities, including orangutans’ use of ipads, required that keepers be present and
fully engaged with an individual animal. We also examined the role that animal activities
play in zoos’ educational and conservation missions, by allowing visitors to see animal
behaviours which elicit a sense of connection. To explore the problem space and the scope
of possible solutions, we ran design workshops with HCI experts and with zoo personnel. with
HCI researchers we identified relevant technologies which might respond to the zoo’s goals.
Subsequently, we conducted a workshop with zoo stakeholders and a small number of HCI
researchers to explore in greater depth the aims and challenges associated with designing
for orangutans enrichment. From these workshops, designers weighed alternative technologies
for providing safe interaction, settling on a design which created a virtual ‘touchscreen’
through a projected interface and movement sensor.
After a long period of development and waiting for ethics approval, we deployed the projected
touchscreen system, Kinecting with orangutans, at Melbourne Zoo. Over the course of four
weeks, we introduced the system twice weekly to the orangutans on and observed it in use.
We conducted debriefings to gain zoo staff input into the iterative refinement of the
applications To evaluate the effects on animal behaviour
of the Kinecting with orangutans installation, the Melbourne zoo animal welfare team conducted
a randomised, quantitative study which compared behaviours of the animals on days when they
had access to enrichment to days when they did not. The aim of this type of study is
to make inferences about the potential effects of the installation on the population of zoo
housed orangutans, despite small sample size. The study revealed clear differences in animals’
responses with the young female orangutan interacting with the installation far more
than most. However, no statistically significant impacts on behaviour were detected.
From critical reflection on the limitations of the design activities, and discussion with
animal behaviour and welfare experts, we have identified several ways in which these methods
could be improved, and combined effectively with methods from the animal sciences. The
remainder of this presentation will explore these possible approaches.
For understanding orangutans’ behavioural needs, stakeholder perspectives, and contextual
constraints, contextual interviews were very fruitful. In the zoo setting we have been
able to obtain input from a range of disciplinary specialists. We found that our ability to
reconcile different perspectives has grown as we have acquired more knowledge about the
target species and about the perspectives of the animal disciplines involved.
When there are different perspectives on animals’ needs these could be reconciled by a technique
such as the Delphi-based method proposed by Veasey, that enrichment objectives should
be informed by a prioritised list of what is required for a species psychological welfare,
generated by a panel of experts, and a formal survey of the animals’ existing environment
and experiences. This provides a promising approach which could supplement carers’
existing knowledge about animals needs when determining design objectives for interventions
which target animal welfare. While design workshops were valuable, we found
that not all HCI workshop outputs were relevant to the challenges at hand.. Bringing together
animal specialists and HCI researchers ensures that ideation is guided by expertise about
animals’ motivations and capabilities, and enrichment goals.2
An important strategy in interaction design is to obtain early user feedback on conceptual
designs. This is challenging when working with animals: sketches and walkthroughs are
inaccessible to non-humans. Like many ACI projects, we sought input from animals by
deploying working prototypes. However, earlier input could be obtained from animals by developing
safe low-fidelity prototypes, and using Wizard of Oz techniques to bring these mock-ups to
life.
Zoo stakeholders’ observation and commentary on animals’ use of prototypes resulted in
feedback with considerable variance. We suggest that we could gain more consistent feedback
through the course of a design project by nominating specific project stakeholders to
review video footage of animals interacting with the prototypes.
More precise observations about animals’ preferences and interactions could be obtained
by decomposing prototypes. In our deployment we attempted to evaluate all at once, the
success of proposed mechanism of interaction, consequences (such as access to food, or photographs
or valued resources, cues (the stimuli which elicit interaction – such as moving dots
or flickering lights). Examining separately the proposed interaction mechanisms, consequences
and cues would allow researchers to disentangle animals responses to these different parts
of an interactive intervention. A formal approach to comparing alternative
solutions would be to conduct systematic preference tests and motivation tests: these are used
by animal behaviour scientists to determine to what an extent an animal is motivated to
access a resource, such as an enrichment or food, and whether it is preferred to an alternative
resource. The quantitative animal welfare evaluation
of the installation limited the ability to pursue iterative design because it required
that an intervention be ‘fixed’ for the duration of the study, and provided no information
about which aspects of the system were most successful. However, alternative approaches
exist for assessing enrichment and other animal welfare interventions. In particular, qualitative
assessments of animals’ wellbeing can be conducted with instruments which capture carers’
ratings (on a Likert scale) of animals’ mood, sociability, and ability to achieve
goals, or capture carers’ subjective knowledge of individual animals. Such tools have been
found to be reliable compared to objective, quantitative measures of welfare, and could
be deployed quite rapidly to evaluate a specific iteration of a prototype as part of formative
evaluation. In summary, In our collaboration to design
orangutan enrichment with Melbourne Zoo we encountered significant challenges in adapting
conventional co-design practices to working with animals in a complex setting with diverse
human stakeholders. We contend that ACI designers can benefit from combining multiple types
of data and techniques to understand the needs of human and animal stakeholders and evaluate
interventions. In this paper we suggest ways to expand techniques for including animals
as experts in their own experience, and humans as proxies, in designing for animals.