Co-Designing Educational Robotic Pet Concepts with Animal Welfare Educators and Children

Animal welfare education could greatly benefit from customised robots to help children learn about pets and their behaviour, and thereby promote positive, safe child-pet interactions. To this end, we ran co-design workshops with animal welfare educators and children to identify key requirements for robotic pets from their perspectives. Our findings encompass a zoomorphic robot’s appearance, behaviour, and features, as well as concepts for a narrative surrounding the robot. Through comparing and contrasting the two groups, we find the importance of: negative reactions to undesirable behaviour from children; using the facial features and tail to provide cues signalling an animal’s internal state; and a natural, furry appearance and texture. We also contribute some novel activities for co-design with children, including branching storyboards inspired by thematic apperception tests and interactive narratives, and reflect on some of the key design challenges of achieving consensus between the groups, despite much overlap in their design concepts.