The Bunny in the Box - Designing a Digital Practice Pet for Children

Paper in proceeding, 2015

Testing young children’s ability to relate to and take care of an animal - before actually having a real one on hand - is a desirable idea, but is it possible? The concept of “the bunny in the box” relies on creating the feeling that there is an actual pet present, using current technology and electronics (a tablet, vibrations, sound, LED lights, etc.) without the children being able to see an actual animal. Children were involved throughout the whole process, from co-design to evaluation, and their behaviour towards the bunny were observed. They reacted positively to its requests, and were able to take care of it as well as remembering the encounter for a long time period afterwards. The paper presents and analyses the design process and the prototyping sessions.