Can your pet rabbit read your email? A critical analysis of the Nabaztag Rabbit Chung-Ching Huang Informatics and Computing Indiana University 919 E 10 th Street Bloomington, IN 47408 United States huang21@indiana.edu Jeffrey Bardzell Informatics and Computing Indiana University 919 E 10 th Street Bloomington, IN 47408 United States jbardzel@indiana.edu Jennifer Terrell Informatics and Computing Indiana University 919 E 10 th Street Bloomington, IN 47408 United States jennterr@indiana.edu ABSTRACT The Nabaztag rabbit is an ambient digital device with customized functions. It was advertised as an ambient display, using strong product images suggesting that it is a pet alternative. However, after early interest, the popularity of this product did not last long. In this paper, we demonstrate interaction criticism as an approach to design research, exploring and proposing reasons for the product’s decline. Specifically, we argue that the rabbit is difficult to connect with emotionally and explore several reasons this might be true. Our approach is phenomenological and hermeneutic in nature: we engaged in product usage for over twelve months, and practice a theoretically informed interpretive analysis. Using a combination of critical theories and affect research from robotics, we argue the Nabaztag product identity is confusing, which might be related to the manufactures’ multiple intentions, and the gap between ideal and real users. We continue with an account of two genres of functions in the Nabaztag, revealing how they polarize of interpretation; moments when Nabaztag acted in unexpected ways; and the increased, rather than decreased, difficulty in interpreting Nabaztag the longer we used it. Interpretively understanding Nabaztag’s experiential failures helps cultivate relevant design sensitivities and even implications for future designs. Categories and Subject Descriptors A.0 [GENERAL]: Conference Proceedings H.5.2: User interfaces, User-Centered design. General Terms Design Keywords Nabaztag, Ambient information display, Interaction Criticism, HCI, HRI, 1. INTRODUCTION Our experience with interactive systems that demand our attention—from word processors to video games, ambient devices deliver information in a way that places little to no demands on our attention. As the movement of shadows in our peripheral vision informs us when we are indoors that the sun has broken through the clouds, or that the wind has picked up, so an ambient device can deliver information without users’ full concentration. Today, ambient devices typically appeal to peripheral vision or sound, though appealing to our sense of touch, smell, or even taste may also be possible. The Nabaztag robot rabbit, a wireless ambient electric device manufactured by Violet [27], has received a lot of attention from researchers and developers of ubiquitous computing and internet applications. Both academia and business are excited and expect that this new breed of digital artifact can be a pioneer of information delivery infrastructure, innovative interaction and product experience. Unfortunately, the Nabaztag was not as successful as some had expected. Several speculations have been made to explain this situation. These include Violet’s failure to materialize the promised product functionality, server failures brought on by intense demand in 2006, and Violet’s recent financial difficulties [15]. Rather than focusing on technical failures, in this paper we will critique the Nabaztag’s user experience, seeking to find in that possible explanations for the product’s medium- and long-term failures. Our critique is constructive, in the sense that we are hoping to generate design sensitivities and implications, rather than offer any sort of technical or implementation-related explanation; specifically, we argue that the product fails to maintain the promised pet-like emotional attachments with the user. To study user experience, previous research in HCI has already achieved fruitful results by embracing a combination of empirical or measurement-based research methodologies (e.g., [13]) as well as more interpretative-oriented approaches (e.g., [14]). Here we are practicing an alternative approach, interaction criticism [4], which is a theoretically engaged interpretation of a given technology. Within that tradition, we are specifically taking a phenomenological and hermeneutic approach. This approach stresses the role of the designer as a user and an interpreting subject [3]. In that spirit, this paper reflects our own direct experience with the Nabaztag as users for over a year, an experience that was informed by our previous design experience Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. DPPI '11, Jun 22-25 2011, Milano, IT Copyright (c) 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1280-6/11/06... $10.00