Ethics and Power Dynamics in Playful Technology for Animals Using speculative design to provoke reflection Fiona French, F, French Sch. Comp & Digital Media, London Metropolitan University, London, UK f.french@londonmet.ac.uk Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, I, Hirsky-Douglas School of Computer Science, University of Glasgow, UK ilyena.hirskyj- douglas@glasgow.ac.uk Heli Väätäjä, H, Väätäjä Master School, Lapland University of Applied Sciences, Rovaniemi, Finland heli.vaataja@lapinamk.f Yoram Chisik, Y, Chisik Independent Scholar, Haifa, Israel ychisik@gmail.com Sabrina Karl, S, Karl Comparative Cognition, Messerli Research Institute, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria sabrina.karl@vetmeduni.ac.at Haruka Kasuga, H, Kasuga School Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan felisfelis@eis.hokudai.ac.jp Mandeep Mangat, M, Mangat Independent Scholar, Greater Toronto Area, Canada mandeep.mangat.s@gmail.com Eleonora Nannoni, E, Nannoni Dept. Veterinary Medicine Sciences, University of Bologna, Ozano Emilia (BO), Italy eleonora.nannoni2@unibo.it Patrizia Paci, P, Paci Computing & Communications, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England, UK patrizia.paci@open.ac.uk Patricia Pons Tomas, P, Pons Tomas Instituto Tecnológico de Informática, Valencia, Spain ppons@iti.es Dana Vilker, D, Vilker Dept of Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel dana.vilker@protonmail.com Anna Zamansky, A, Zamansky Information Systems Department, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel annazam@is.haifa.ac.il ABSTRACT Technology (digital or otherwise) is a great enabler; it bridges gaps and opens doors and, in the process, alters the reality within which it and its users exist. As technology aimed at non-human animals is becoming commonplace, questions about its efcacy and the ethical implications of its use are becoming ever more pertinent. To explore these issues, we conducted a workshop in which speculative design was used as a means of debating ways through which play, a widespread phenomenon across animal species, can be used as a tool for enabling interspecies communication. We describe the context for this discussion, the methods used, and present a set of speculative designs that illustrate aspects of ethics, equality, and appropriate play in order to provoke further refection and discussion. 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 proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specifc permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. Mindtrek ’21, June 01ś03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8514-5/21/06. . . $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3464327.3464366 CCS CONCEPTS · Social and professional topics - User characteristics; · Human-centered computing - Interaction design ś Interac- tion design theory, concepts and paradigms; KEYWORDS Animal-Computer Interaction, ethics, power dynamics, speculative design, co-design, participatory speculation ACM Reference Format: Fiona French, F, French, Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, I, Hirsky-Douglas, Heli Väätäjä, H, Väätäjä, Yoram Chisik, Y, Chisik, Sabrina Karl, S, Karl, Haruka Kasuga, H, Kasuga, Mandeep Mangat, M, Mangat, Eleonora Nannoni, E, Nannoni, Patrizia Paci, P, Paci, Patricia Pons Tomas, P, Pons Tomas, Dana Vilker, D, Vilker, and Anna Zamansky, A, Zamansky. 2021. Ethics and Power Dynamics in Playful Technology for Animals: Using speculative design to provoke refection. In Academic Mindtrek 2021 (Mindtrek ’21), June 01ś03, 2021, Tampere/Virtual, Finland. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 11 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3464327.3464366 1 INTRODUCTION Technology aimed at non-human animals is becoming common- place, heightening the discussion around the ethics and other im- plications of designing such systems. In this paper, we focus on the design of playful systems because play, in all its contexts and across species, is widely recognised as a voluntary behaviour with intrinsic