The study on companionship scale of electronic pet

In recent years, electronic pets have been accepted and popular gradually, related industries are booming, as one important area to the design industry. Because of some people cannot have a real pet for the limit of living environment, the electronic pet with part of real pet function, and don´t need so much time to take caring, become the most popular game now. The electronic pets even not only just be a game, but emphasize the “company”. To establish the companionship is a design trend in electronic pet, but there isn´t an appropriate measure tool for the electronic pet´s companionship, also failed to provide designers a criterion for good and bad design. Lawson and Chesney (2007) proposed a scale which is only measured for the “real pets and people” part. The purpose of this study was modified the companionship scale of electronic pet of Lawson and Chesney (2007). The structures of the scale include three parts, the relations between “real pet and people”, “human companionship” and the “company features of electronic pet”. The scale subjects were designed by the professional experts. A total of 158 subjects joined the pretest, after item analysis, the new scale reliability Cronbach´s α values is up to 0.95, with high reliability. The new scale could provide designers and users test the companionship of electronic pet, also can be used to analyze the companionship features of the existing electronic pets, so that designers and related industries can understand the current trends and the electronic pet shortcomings for improving the future design.