More-Than-Human Design in Practice by Rosén, Anton Poikolainen; Salovaara, Antti; Botero, Andrea;

Short description:

This book provides an overview of the diverse multidisciplinary field of more-than-human design, offering a philosophical grounding of more-than-human design in posthumanism while putting practical design examples and methods to the forefront.

Long description:

This book provides an overview of the diverse multidisciplinary field of more-than-human design, offering a philosophical grounding of more-than-human design in posthumanism while putting practical design examples and methods to the forefront.

There is an urgent need to radically re-imagine design, as its current processes are contributing to global warming, pollution, deforestation, ocean acidification, ozone layer depletion, loss of biodiversity and species extinction. Given this need, ‘more-than-human design’ has emerged as a perspective that widens our thinking beyond solely human-oriented considerations and needs, such as animals, plants and microbes. The book explores the relationship between sustainability and design, touching on topics such as AI, systems thinking, futures studies and pedagogy, and discusses a range of case study projects that are grounded in more-than-human thinking, demonstrating how this can be incorporated into practice.

This easily accessible and theoretically grounded book will provide design researchers and educators an excellent introduction to more-than-human thinking. It will also be of interest to students and scholars studying design more broadly, sustainability, environmental studies and service design, as well as to practicing designers interested in sustainability.

Chapters Introduction, 6, 7, 10 and 15 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

"This book represents an important shift in design. As we face global challenges, we need to shift our focus from a human-centred design approach to more-than-human perspectives and values. From using design to serve human needs, we now reconsider this in favour of other species, plants, and other lifeforms - including AI systems. This book is important for anyone approaching sustainability through design, or for anyone who wants to understand or design otherwise - for alternative ways of relating to nature, and alternative futures."

Mikael Wiberg, Professor of Informatics and co-editor-in-chief for ACM Interactions

Table of Contents:

Prologue: A perspective on posthumanism from outside design  Part 1: Focus Areas  1. Design by/for/with/about/without Animals: Tactics for Animal Liberation  2. Being with Plants through Collective Fabulation, Critical Companionship and Cohabitation  3. Biomenstrual: Designing with the More-than-Human Body  4. Trying out Shit: Experimental Approaches for Relating with Microbes  5. Designing with Bodies of Water in the Hydrocene  6. Weathering with storms and grounds as a more-than-human design practice: encountering winds, soils, and rocks  7. Designing with Planetary Artificial Intelligence  8. Creative AI as More-than-Human – Design Practices, Aesthetics and Cultural Imaginaries  Part 2: Methods and Pedagogy  9. Multispecies Ethnography in Design Research and Practice  10. Four Questions for Systemic More-Than-Human Design in Practice  11. Staying with Complexity through Multispecies Companionship at the I.N.S.E.C.T. Summercamp 2023  12. How can we design with a multi-species mindset towards regenerative practices?  13. Temporalities of Care in More-than-Human Design  14.  Envisioning Multispecies Futures in Multispecies Environments: Methods, Outcomes and Learnings From A Future Scenario Workshop  15. Peering through Time: Harnessing Anticipation in More-than-Human Design  16. Teaching for More-than-human Values and Perspectives in Technology Design  17. Stepping out of the Classroom and Into the Worlds of Other Species  Epilogue: Towards Creaturely Ways of Designing