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More than Human Participation

This note prepares materials for the review of more-than-human participation.

Cf.

Definitions

Agents

Who and how can participate. Human or nonhuman, living or nonliving, individual or collective.

Design

Participation

More-than-human participation

  • environmental sustainability and justice
  • relational and agential characteristics of technical objects

Aspirations

  • evidence driven
  • real-world impact
  • justice
  • thriving

Inclusions and Exclusions

Refer to the ladder and only include the rungs with the direct path towards commoning. Include approaches that aim to empower the decision-making by nonhuman beings. Mention and briefly discus but exclude artistic, evocative, metaphorical, critical and other approaches that fail to produce impact or do not empower nonhuman participants.

  • evidence-based approaches
  • practice and action
  • ethical, justice-related and political considerations

Mention but exclude for the purposes of this review:

  • nonliving things as agents, unless relevant in terms of distributed hybrid systems such as ecosystems
  • Indigenous and traditional knowledge
  • French and continental philosophy
  • metaphorical and symbolic determinations such as social relationships between inanimate objects, etc.

Benefits

  • fairness
  • access to nonhuman expertise and innovation
  • sustainability, biodiversity, health, resilience

Challenges

  • communication
  • expensiveness
  • time-consuming
  • knowledge and skills
  • ethics
  • power dynamics
  • cultural acceptance

Practical examples

Create a grouping or a table of examples of more-than-human participation in design.

  • by place
  • by agents
  • by degree of participation
  • by impact

Approaches and Methods of More-than-Human Participatory Design

  • personas

Review Methods

Scoping or narrative review.

Precedents and Fields

  • HIC, animal-computer interaction
  • geography, more-than-human geography, animal geography
  • more-than-human anthropology, multispecies ethnography
  • new materialism, posthumanism, object-oriented ontology
  • Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous design

The understanding of the need to move beyond human-centred design.

Coulton, Paul, and Joseph Galen Lindley. “More-Than Human Centred Design: Considering Other Things.” The Design Journal 22, no. 4 (2019): 463–81. https://doi.org/10/ggkjk4.

Giaccardi, Elisa, and Johan Redström. “Technology and More-Than-Human Design.” Design Issues 36, no. 4 (2020): 33–44. https://doi.org/10/gh6rvm.

References

Agenda and Research Questions

Sheikh, Hira, Peta Mitchell, and Marcus Foth. “More-Than-Human Smart Urban Governance: A Research Agenda.” Digital Geography and Society 4 (2023): 100045. https://doi.org/10/gscb6b.

Existing Reviews on the Topic

Eriksson, Eva, Daisy Yoo, Tilde Bekker, and Elisabet M. Nilsson. “More-than-Human Perspectives in Human-Computer Interaction Research: A Scoping Review.” In Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, 1–18. NordiCHI ’24. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2024. https://doi.org/10/g8kv92.

Hernandez-Santin, Cristina, Marco Amati, Sarah Bekessy, and Cheryl Desha. “A Review of Existing Ecological Design Frameworks Enabling Biodiversity Inclusive Design.” Urban Science 6, no. 4 (2022): 95. https://doi.org/10/jsxw.

Matthews, Ben, Skye Doherty, Jane Johnston, and Marcus Foth. “The Publics of Design: Challenges for Design Research and Practice.” Design Studies 80 (2022): 101106. https://doi.org/10/g8r8zk.

Prebble, Sarah, Jessica McLean, and Donna Houston. “Smart Urban Forests: An Overview of More-Than-Human and More-Than-Real Urban Forest Management in Australian Cities.” Digital Geography and Society 2 (2021): 100013. https://doi.org/10/gj4mrj.

Shachat, Madeleine Eve. “Nonhumans as Stakeholders: A Literature Review.” Master Thesis, Jyväskylä University, 2024.

Vacanti, Annapaola, Francesco Burlando, Isabella Nevoso, and Massimo Menichinelli. “The More-Than-Human Trend in Design Research: A Literature Review.” In Disrupting Geographies in the Design World: Proceedings of the 8th International Forum of Design as a Process, edited by Erik Ciravenga, Elena Formia, Valentina Giafrate, Andreas Sicklinger, and Michele Zannoni, 80–89. Bologna: Università di Bologna, 2023. https://doi.org/10/g8r87w.

Akama, Yoko, Ann Light, and Takahito Kamihira. “Expanding Participation to Design with More-Than-Human Concerns.” In Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020 - Participation(s) Otherwise, 1–11. PDC ’20. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. https://doi.org/10/gjzcwz.

Grobman, Yasha J., Wolfgang Weisser, Assaf Shwartz, Ferdinand Ludwig, Roy Kozlovsky, Avigail Ferdman, Katia Perini, et al. “Architectural Multispecies Building Design: Concepts, Challenges, and Design Process.” Sustainability 15, no. 21 (2023): 15480. https://doi.org/10/gv4c3f.

Clarke, Rachel, Sara Heitlinger, Ann Light, Laura Forlano, Marcus Foth, and Carl DiSalvo. “More-Than-Human Participation: Design for Sustainable Smart City Futures.” Interactions 26, no. 3 (2019): 60–63. https://doi.org/10/gf35h5.

Haldrup, Michael, Kristine Samson, and Thomas Laurien. “Designing for Multispecies Commons: Ecologies and Collaborations in Participatory Design.” In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2022, edited by Vasilis Vlachokyriakos, Joyce Yee, Christopher Frauenberger, Melisa Duque Hurtado, Nicolai Hansen, Angelika Strohmayer, Izak Van Zyl, et al., 2:14–19. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2022. https://doi.org/10/gq6sfx.

Heitlinger, Sara, Marcus Foth, and Rachel Clarke, eds. Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities: Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024. Westerlaken, Michelle, Jennifer Gabrys, Danilo Urzedo, and Max Ritts. “Unsettling Participation by Foregrounding More-Than-Human Relations in Digital Forests.” Environmental Humanities, 2022. https://doi.org/10/gqzpm2.

Hupkes, Tisha, and Anders Hedman. “Shifting Towards Non-Anthropocentrism: In Dialogue with Speculative Design Futures.” Futures 140 (2022): 102950. https://doi.org/10/gqbkmq.

Rice, Louis. “Nonhumans in Participatory Design.” CoDesign 14, no. 3 (2018): 238–57. https://doi.org/10/gfvpfx.

Romani, Alessia, Francesca Casnati, and Alessandro Ianniello. “Codesign with More-Than-Humans: Toward a Meta Co-Design Tool for Human-Non-Human Collaborations.” European Journal of Futures Research 10, no. 1 (2022): 17. https://doi.org/10/gqvdsm.

Veselova, Emīlija, and İdil Gaziulusoy. “Bioinclusive Collaborative and Participatory Design: A Conceptual Framework and a Research Agenda.” Design and Culture, 2022, 1–35. https://doi.org/10/gn8psk.