Conference Agenda

A growing body of more-than-human approaches in design reconsider and re-articulate design’s relationship to the natural world through relational frameworks. However, such endeavours do not come without difficulties and may even reproduce the very logics they seek to overcome. Despite the prolific efforts within the design community, overcoming the modern/colonial legacies of design and its anthropocentric paradigm remains a formidable challenge. Departing from the Quebracho Colorado tree as a guiding example, this paper delves into a gender and decolonial analysis of the notion of consent that underscores design’s role in reproducing extractive approaches to nature. It then goes on to propose the concept of more-than-human consent as an approach for design capable of articulating sustainable, less prescriptive, and more just ways of relating to and with nature that attend to the historical and ongoing power dynamics at play within these relations.

This article develops a synanthropic design approach. The Port of Rotterdam currently houses one of Europe’s largest colonies of the synanthropic species of Lesser Black-backed Gulls. The thriving of this particular colony is entangled with human interventions and economic activities in the larger Dutch Delta. We map the managerial, legal, political, and economic interrelations and dependencies that animate the human and more-than-human contact zone. By including a gull's perspective on the Dutch delta environment, this study aims to support the facilitated coexistence of humans and Lesser Black-backed Gulls in the Port of Rotterdam – now and in the future. The synanthropic design interventions and new governance model proposed in this study show how the Port of Rotterdam can be re-imagined as “Land of Gulls and Humans.”

Ongoing socio-ecological damages stem from dominant design practices rooted in modernist, capitalist ideologies that exploit nature. If we, designers, aim to contribute to healing the web of life, our practices also need healing. Seeking an alternative paradigm to problem-driven design, this article narrates my journey to embrace a paradigm of relation-caring that encompasses humans and more-than-humans. Drawing upon experiences with fellow embroiderers in Hermosillo, Mexico, I present two everyday design practices that explore women-plant relations in the desert: 1) cultivating relationships by embroidery of memories, presents, and futures with plants; and 2) infusing diálogo de saberes (wisdom dialogues) with embodied and affective encounters with plants. These practices advocate for a profound shift in design tendencies, urging designers to attend to relations as much, if not more, than our intent to make worlds.

Generosity in more-than-human design suggests an openness to change in grappling with human exceptionalism and nonhuman entanglements. Yet the risks of generosity in design practice are largely unarticulated, and it is unclear how designers might practically encounter and navigate them. In response, I first position generosity within feminist theory as an open dispossession and material exchange that is pre-reflective and asymmetrical. This articulation accounts for nonhuman organisms, objects, and agencies as inseparable from what it means to be a person. I then present three design cases that situate generosity in design practice. This includes specifying the relations explored, presence of openness, risks encountered, and applied findings. From these, I discuss the deliberate centering of the human designer and how practically engaging with generosity problematizes some more-than-human relations as more more-than-human than others.

Human-centred design has evolved to the point where much of what is considered optimal is projected as a result of the anthropocentric design process itself. To investigate what unexpected and beneficial outcomes might be produced by intentionally equating the needs of humans and nonhumans, a “Mutualistic Design” methodology was created. This paper discusses the process and results of an exhibition guided by this method, and how it encouraged a dialogue for professionals and academics regarding more-than-human and "suboptimal” design principles. Artefacts included in the exhibition were sitting furniture, coffee tables, walls, a piece of literature, and a card game. Each item was created to help designers and non-designers explore what sacrifices and benefits could come from escaping the threshold of “optimal” human-centred design. Additionally, this paper discusses a framework for translating similar methods to other contexts, as well as Mutualistic Design’s place among other related philosophies and practices.

In recent years, we have observed the emergence of a variety of video games that allow their players to temporarily exist entangled in more-than-human worlds, becoming with other species and things. Informed and inspired by posthuman philosophies, this article examines three video games: Everything (2017), Stray (2022), and Endling - Extinction is Forever (2022). This analysis focuses on three key questions: 1) How are these games enabling players to become with non-human characters representing real-life organisms? 2) What kinds of knowledge do players gain about these worlds? 3) How to define a more-than-human playful experience? The article concludes by introducing an initial draft of guidelines intended to facilitate the development of more-than-human games.