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Exploring pet video chat: the remote awareness and interaction needs of families with dogs and cats

Published: 23 February 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Many people have pets such as dogs and cats that they would consider to be family. Along with this comes a need to stay aware of one's pet and, possibly, interact with it when away from home. There has even been a recent push by companies to create video-mediated communication (VMC) systems to connect pet owners and pets over distance. Yet the problem is that we do not know how such systems should be designed to meet the real needs of pet owners. To investigate this, we conducted a survey with dog and cat owners that explores their needs for remotely monitoring and interacting with their pets. Our results show that many family members would value being able to maintain an awareness of their pets and interact with them over distance using VMC systems. Such systems would be particularly valuable when pet owners are away from home for extended time periods. However, VMC systems for pets must be designed cautiously to avoid issues of owner disembodiment and other ethical challenges.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Rosetta Bone - Bridging the Language Gap Between Dogs and Humans with a QR Code-Enabled Communication SystemProceedings of the International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction10.1145/3702336.3702348(1-7)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2024
  • (2023)Technology for Staying in Touch with Pets: The Future or Future Not to ComeProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3631790(505-508)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CSCW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
    February 2013
    1594 pages
    ISBN:9781450313315
    DOI:10.1145/2441776
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for 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 ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 23 February 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. awareness
    2. cats
    3. dogs
    4. interaction
    5. pets
    6. video-mediated communication

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    CSCW '13: Computer Supported Cooperative Work
    February 23 - 27, 2013
    Texas, San Antonio, USA

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Rosetta Bone - Bridging the Language Gap Between Dogs and Humans with a QR Code-Enabled Communication SystemProceedings of the International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction10.1145/3702336.3702348(1-7)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2024
    • (2023)Technology for Staying in Touch with Pets: The Future or Future Not to ComeProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia10.1145/3626705.3631790(505-508)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2023
    • (2022)A Scoping Review of Ethics Across SIGCHIProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533511(137-154)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
    • (2022)A Critical Literature Review for Equal Participation in Human-Animal Interactions in DesignCompanion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3500868.3559467(45-49)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2022
    • (2021)Forming the Dog InternetProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34885395:ISS(1-20)Online publication date: 5-Nov-2021
    • (2021)“It’s About Missing Much More Than the People”: How Students use Digital Technologies to Alleviate HomesicknessProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445362(1-17)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
    • (2020)Examining The Animal-Human Bond Through The Lens Of TelepresenceProceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction10.1145/3446002.3446050(1-5)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2020
    • (2017)Utilising dog-computer interactions to provide mental stimulation in dogs especially during ageingProceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction10.1145/3152130.3152146(1-12)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2017
    • (2017)CompanionViz : Mediated platform for gauging canine health and enhancing human–pet interactionsInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2016.04.00298(169-178)Online publication date: Mar-2017
    • (2017)Designing for the exceptional userComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.06270:C(222-233)Online publication date: 1-May-2017
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