CreatureConnect: Exploring Shared Control of Multimodal Displays Between People and Lemurs

While zoos deploy technologies for animals’ enrichment and visitors’ education, little research has investigated how technology can support joint computer use by animals and people working together. To bridge this gap, we developed CreatureConnect, a distributed device with which lemurs and zoo visitors alike can control the intensity of sounds, smells, and visuals on either side of the enclosure boundary. Over 20 days of subsequent observation, we recorded 541 lemur-system interactions, observed 16,139 zoo visitors, and collected 696 sets of questionnaire responses to examine the effects of distributing control on both species across baseline, visitor-control-only, lemur-control-only, shared-control, and no-control conditions. While lemurs used CreatureConnect significantly less when controlling it alone, humans exhibited significantly greater engagement, education, empathy, and overall-experience value under shared-control conditions, which outperformed all other conditions. In light of the results and the fundamental role of interaction and interfaces in animal–computer and human–computer interaction, the paper examines its vital implications for between-species collaboration and control.