DESIGNING WITH TOGETHERNESS. EXPLORING THE INVOLVEMENT OF MORE-THAN-HUMAN ACTORS IN ECO-SOCIAL DESIGN ACTIONS

In light of climate change, biodiversity loss and the connected disproportionate impact of human activities on ecosystems, eco-social design is increasingly experimenting with how to overcome human-centeredness to consider more-than-humans – e.g. animals, plants, weather, soils, technology – in design processes and communities. As such, “eco” approaching the “social” states an ontological shift in design in seeing a strong interconnection between nature and society. Based on this, we propose a workshop inviting participants to share their experiences and perspectives on connections between humans and more-than-humans in their practices and discuss what methods and approaches could support considering and involving the latter in design processes, the related opportunities and challenges. Participants will map the more-than-human actors that are involved in their eco-social design practices (e.g. from technology to weather, from materials to the soil on which we are standing and many more). The resulting map will appear as a systemic atlas of experiences and practices with more-than-human actors onto which participants will add methodologies for further including more-than-human beings and entities in design. As a true community of practice, everybody will share reflections and insights on the mapped experiences and methodologies to involve more-than-human actors in their design and research practices.