Mapping Technology: tamagotchi

For mapping technology, I decided to add a digital pet – namely a tamagotchi – to my life for a week. I wanted to see if a digital pet was a viable substitute for a living pet, such as a dog or cat.

I began by keeping a log of notes on everything the tamagotchi did…but this became tedious by the third day, as the tamagotchi demands attention on a half hour basis (or close to). I can understand why they were banned from school back in the 90s.

My tamagotchi was causing me a lot of irritation. It died 2 days after it started, but the second go (for the rest of the 7 days) it survived until the end of my testing. I did keep it alive a few more days just to see how long I could keep it going, but it died within 3 hours of not caring for it (I was doing driving test to get my licence, so I couldn’t take it with me, and it didn’t even survive that).

I decided from the experience, it made sense to do a comparison of looking after the tamagotchi against the experience of owning a pet dog. The well-loved family Rottwheiler, Ruby, was the subject for comparison.

I then put the information into a visual presentation, based off the cartoon-like world of the tamagotchi. The pdf has clickable links at the bottom to ease navigation. I used quotes in talking bubbles from the dog and tamagotchi to give context to each piece of information.

The presentation shows the comparisons so others have the information presented to make their own decision on which is the more appropriate pet. I personally think digital pets have quite a way to go until they could take over our furry friends however.

You can download the final PDF presentation here: Tamagotchi vs Dog.pdf