Steve North

Animal-Computer Interaction (ACI) is a new and quickly developing discipline, which is closely related to HCI and is making reference to some of its theoretical frameworks and research methodologies. The first edition of the Workshop on Research Methods in ACI (RM4ACI) was co-located with the Third International Conference on Animal-Computer Interaction, which took place in Milton-Keynes, UK in November 2016. This paper presents an overview of the workshop, including insights from discussions on some of the challenges faced by the ACI community as it works to develop ACI as a discipline, and on important opportunities for cross-fertilization between HCI and ACI that the HCI community could consider.

Animal-computer interaction (ACI) [1] is an emerging discipline concerned with studying the relationship between animals and technology, designing interactive technology to support animals, and developing methodologies that can enable animals to participate in the design process as legitimate stakeholders. By welcoming animals to the design table, ACI is delineating new frontiers for interaction design. However, if co-designing HCI artifacts is already fraught with misunderstanding, how might ACI researchers hope to design for and with other species? It is this key question that the contributions to this Special Topic on ACI address from different perspectives. Steve North and Clara Mancini , Special Topic Editors

Networked public displays are a new medium, and as such they can improve the quality and experience of urban spaces by providing new means to engage members of place-based communities. As they are located in different public spaces understanding commonalities and differences between their users helps in building a solid foundation for knowledge on how networked public displays operate. In this paper, we describe findings from a 12 weeks deployment of the Moment Machine application that allows posting and viewing situated snapshots across 4 displays placed in urban settings of the Screens in the Wild Network (UK). We describe similarities/differences between the four user communities in terms of the photos taken, returning users behavior, interaction session properties etc. Overall, our findings contribute to the buildup of knowledge on general engagement patterns of networked public displays. We suggest that situated snapshots and their analysis as described in this paper can be used as a research tool and methodology for capturing and uncovering the part of a place-based community interested in interacting with public displays.

Urban screens are becoming a common element of our city landscape. As such they offer new ways of connecting people that occupy public space, e.g., by taking situated snapshots through a display-attached camera. In this paper we present a first longitudinal case study of 12 weeks of such an application -- Moment Machine -- deployed "in the wild" on an urban screen facing the street. We report findings from 1189 photos taken, 13 interviews, and 3 weeks of observations that show engagement stimulated by situated snapshots within a place-based community where the screen is located. We also analyze interaction log files to describe how often users interacted, what type of interactions they had and how long they lasted, and overall engagement on a weekly basis and throughout the week. Based on our experience, we provide three take-away snippets for designers of similar urban screen experiences.