Interactive Parrot Playgrounds

Abstract: It is a challenging interaction design task to design for and with animals, especially when it comes to parrots as users. Not only because working with parrots requires a lot of patience, but also because there is very few related work. Parrots are highly intelligent and that is often the problem when they are kept as companion animal. Parrots need a lot of stimuli to trigger their intelligence and to keep them busy, to avoid serious problems such as unwanted behaviour or self-mutilation.The body language and the needs of my parrot were the main input and formed the basis for the project. Through an iterative process of testing a variety of existing applications, small experiments and prototypes, a couple of interactive playgrounds have been developed for my parrot.