Caring for the Furry Friends in the Smart Home: An Initial Exploration of a Child-Centered Approach to Designing for Pets
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Smart home technologies are often designed to meet the needs of adults, yet children and pets also live with these systems without being meaningfully considered in their design. Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) researchers have shown the value of studying children's experiences and ideation of technologies used in the domestic space. In this pictorial, we explore experiences at the intersection of children, pets, and smart home technologies by analyzing data from an in-home study with 6-to-11-year-olds. Our analysis identifies five themes in how children perceive smart home technologies in the context of pet care: convenience, presence, physical comfort, emotional wellbeing, and responsibility. Grounded in children's everyday routines of playing with and looking after their pets, this work offers design directions for domestic technologies that account for non-human household members.
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7165379995