Animal-Technology Interaction: The Tail Tells the Tale

A MobilityDog Service Dog Team

Given that technology is ubiquitous (perhaps you’re even reading this on a hand-held device), it’s hardly surprising that chip-based devices have become common in human-animal interaction. For example, we have electronic toys for animals, fitness trackers and interactive video cameras for our dogs and cats, sensors to monitor livestock health and movement, and control access to food and living space.

Can’t Do Focus Groups with Cats

As the entities developing these technologies, we are tempted to use our own experience with electronic devices and tools to guide the development of the innovations with which our pets and other animals will interact. But how well do we really understand what animals experience when they encounter technology?

When we develop devices for human use, we conduct focus groups, do interviews, and engage our fellow humans in hands-on testing to explore the user experience and employ that information in interface design. But we can’t do focus groups with cats, interviews with dogs, or device tests with cows. We must find other ways to understand how animals react to specific technology and use that information to develop devices that perform useful functions without stressing or harming the animal subjects. In other words, how can human designers engage animals to improve our understanding of their needs and preferences?

Understanding Dogs’ Technology User Experience

Over our many millennia of living with our canine companions, we have learned at least one thing: when dogs wag their tails, it means something. Tail-wagging is one way they signal their levels of:

• Happiness and stress.

• Comfort with their surroundings; and

• Anticipation of a reward or punishment.

What if we could use what we observe about different tail wags to understand dogs’ experience with computerized devices?

A British research group set about studying tail wagging and trying to interpret its significance for dogs’ user experience with specific forms of technology. They observed the behavior of a group of mobility assistance dogs as they learned to push a button that would call an elevator for their disabled handlers. During their research, they confirmed different dogs wag their tails differently in reaction to the same stimuli. They also learned that tail-wagging behavior differs by dog breed and by individual K9 personalities.

A Tail-Wagging Typology

To many of us, tail-wagging is a simple behavior: It moves or it doesn’t, up, down or sideways. The researchers discovered it’s much more complicated than that. Tail position and movements can be classified by:

• Position (high, horizontal, low)

• Direction (left, center, right)

• Angle of the tail (90 percent, relative to the dog’s body, 45 percent, or less that 45 percent)

• Angle of the tip of the tail (again, 90 percent, 45 percent, or less than 45 percent).

Scientists also asked the handlers to evaluate the personalities of the dogs, using a questionnaire covering many of the personality traits that are also studied in humans. These included:

• Extraversion – Is the dog affiliative with people and outgoing?

• Motivation – Does the dog appear to want to learn and perform?

• Training and focus – Does the animal pay attention and improve performance?

• Amicability – Is the dog friendly?

• Neuroticism – Does dog display signs of high stress?

White Poodle MobilityDog Service-Dog-in-Training with his Tail Held High

The researchers made videos of the dogs learning and performing the button-pushing task and studied the videos frame-by-frame. Take the case of a dog named Odin, a black lab/golden retriever cross. Odin scored high on extraversion, motivation, training and focus and amicability. He also scored significantly lower than the other dogs tested on neuroticism (such a lab!). His tail wagging showed a tendency to be high and horizontal and tended toward the right side. The researchers interpreted this as engagement of the left hemisphere of the brain, which controls learning. Odin was investing significant brains cells in mastering the task and the direction and vigor of his tail movement demonstrated how and how much he was engaged in the effort. Trainers could use these cues to design the technology learning sequence to conform to what interested Odin and what stressed him.

Ensuring Animal Well-Being

The goal of the animal-technology interface should be to benefit both animals and humans. This means doing all we can to treat animals as partners in the development process and avoid overlaying our assumptions about human experience onto our non-human subjects. The more deeply we understand how our pets, companion animals, service dogs, and others, experience our efforts to digitize our interactions with them, the better job we can do of ensuring the technology produces favorable outcomes without stress and harm to them or us.

Service Dog in Training, Theo, Practicing Paws Up in a Park

All Images Courtesy: MobilityDog.org