Introduction

Abstract

The topic of sustainability needs no motivation. It is widely recognised that several human activities are causing global warming, pollution, deforestation, ocean acidification, ozone layer depletion, loss of biodiversity and species extinction. In many cases, the way we have designed everyday objects, products, services, systems and technologies is strongly contributing to this unsustainability. There is thus a need to radically re-imagine how we design. Given this need, an increased interest has emerged across several disciplines to widen the perspective of Western material-oriented thinking beyond solely human-oriented considerations and needs (Akama et al., 2020; Bastian, 2017; Clarke et al., 2018; Coulton & Lindley, 2019; Foth & Caldwell, 2018; Giaccardi & Redström, 2020; Heitlinger et al., 2018; Laurien et al., 2020; Poikolainen Rosén et al., 2022; Veselova, 2023; Wakkary, 2021). This design approach has become referred to as “more-than-human design”, and it entails designing for the interdependent relationships between humans, technologies and other organisms (such as animals, plants and microbes). This focus on interdependence forefronts that many organisms, including humans, benefit from considering design spaces as holistic and relational and implies that designers need to expand who or what counts as a user or stakeholder, who is included in design processes, and what is considered as design or designable. This perspective is both radical and generative and requires that design practice, methods and theories are augmented, hybridised and remade.