Interaction Design in the Wild - Sonia Zhang's Portfolio

I am an anthropology student trying to make sense of interaction design for animals.

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28 January 2019

Week 2 - Reading Response

by Sonia

Reading Response

Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial: Consistency in Our Thinking about Humans and Other Animals

de Waal 1999

De Waal puts our desire for understanding animals into two extremities, anthropodenial and anthropomorphism. While the former makes interspecies comprehension an impossible inquiry, the later is commonly accused of generating false understandings. As interaction designers for animals, it is crucial to seek a space in between and to think about how we can recognise and work with differences between humans and animals.

Whereas animal studies are approached in various ways, this course derives its design principles from animal behavioural science. For example, we talk about capturing animals’ instincts, something innate and universal among the multitude of behaviours that we observe. This narrows down the kinds of behaviour we need to attend to since the matter becomes recognising a pattern rather than recording everything. Similarly, when we define behaviour as responses to particular stimuli, we permit ourselves to focus on what happens with the release of stimuli that we ourselves recognise and keep track of. These commitments offer a sense of directionality and certainty in the design process, however, it runs in tandem with the potential for us to simply extract information from animal’s experience, at the same time profoundly detaching ourselves from it.

Thus I would argue that, while our working definition of behaviour and our decision to use ethograms are powerful tools to get started with, we need to be extremely reflexive of their consequences, and be mindful that the fluidity and uncertainty of experience and interactions themselves are never just a matter of noise.

Towards the end of his essay, de Waal argues for a wider appreciation of anthropomorphism, since the human comprehension of the animal kingdom essentially starts from humans themselves. He states that animalcentric anthropomorphism can be generative because it stresses the bonds we have with animals and leaves room for sophisticated engagements. Nagel explains this by claiming

“what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves” is unimportant; what matters is “what is it like for a bat to be a bat” (p.439).

The distinctions of the two are crucial, though thinking in the latter manner requires us to imagine what is beyond imagination.

For a moment let’s turn away from hard science and attend to how the literature world deals with animals. In “The Peregrine”, J.A. Baker depicts an extreme devotion to faithful observation:

“To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine you must…Be alone. Shun the furtive oddity of man, cringe from the hostile eyes of farms. Learn to fear. To share fear is the greatest bond of all” (p.13).

By doing this, he observes his hawks with astounding details, capturing what exceeds the limits of human understanding:

“Like the seafarer, the peregrine lives in a pouring away world of no attachment, a world of wakes and tilting, of sinking planes of land and water. We who are anchored and earthbound cannot envisage this freedom of the eye.” (p.35).

Such commitment to understanding the animal from their own point of view translates into a masterpiece of naturalistic wonder. To me, this goes beyond empathy, but exemplifies an attempt to deeply connect with the entirety of another worldview.

While in literature, the mode of understanding translates into the aesthetics of written language, how about interaction design? What are we trying to achieve and express through our products? Can we turn our ethograms into a language, and thus combine the rigour of behavioural science and the unique textures of other forms of observation?

This returns to the central question of my response: what does it mean to do interaction design when we are faced with interspecies difference and communication barrier? I do not expect to generate an answer from this thinking exercise, but there is certainly value in being extremely reflexive of the differences we perceive between us and them. We need to be aware of our judgements on differences, recognise the assumptions we make in the process, and think about how to work with these assumptions. I believe this is the only way to make interaction possible.

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