More-Than Human Centred Design: Considering Other Things

Abstract

This paper responds to contemporary design contexts that frequently contain complex interdependencies of human and non-human actants. To adequately represent these perspectives requires a shift towards More-Than Human Centred Design. The Internet of Things is one context that demonstrates this need. The 'things' within such networks transcend their physical forms and extend to include algorithms, humans, data, business models, etc., and each imports independent-but-interdependent motivations and perspectives. Therefore, we use the Internet of Things to clarify our proposition and to convey our three contributions. First, we review the expanding corpus of contemporary Human-Computer Interaction research that seeks to expand the notion of Human Centred Design by moving beyond the dominant anthropocentric perspective. Second, we introduce a novel design metaphor, 'constellations', which allows both the interdependencies and independent perspectives to be considered. Third, we provide an account of a speculative design to demonstrate how it may be put into practice.

Sketching & Drawing as Future Inquiry in HCI

“…These 'shifting sands' of our socio-technical reality demand new ways of looking at it and researching it. Recently, responding to an increasing interest in 'post-anthropocentric' perspectives such as Object-Oriented Ontology [48], Thing Ethnography [27], and Postphenomenology [72], proposals to augment the traditions of Human-Centred Design to become a More-Than Human Centred Design approach, have taken shape [16]. The sketch-based approaches outlined and reviewed in this paper are apt and timely approaches ways to respond to these needs.…”

Entangled Ethnography: Towards a collective future understanding

“…Coulton and Lindley [13] argue that HCD approaches are limited by their focus on the immediate user and that third wave HCI approaches need to address challenges around this increasing complexity where "the notion of human centred ceases to be useful", they call this new approach more-than human centred design. In order to untangle some of this complexity researchers have developed the use of metaphors as a design thinking tool [13,31], in a similar fashion to Ian Bogost's alien phenomenology metaphors [7]. These metaphors often take on the form of visual speculative designs that focus on the behaviors of IoT devices and how they connect, communicate and act as part of a network [31].…”

“…Pierce and DiSalvo [31] use metaphors to address network anxieties by making dataflows and abstract notions explicit and visible, Pschetz et al [33] use speculative devices to embody ideas of autonomy and control. Meanwhile, Coulton and Lindley [13] have developed the metaphor of constellations to describe the independent-but-interdependent perspectives of objects. They ground their work within OOO philosophy in order to extend human-centered design thinking [13].…”

“…Meanwhile, Coulton and Lindley [13] have developed the metaphor of constellations to describe the independent-but-interdependent perspectives of objects. They ground their work within OOO philosophy in order to extend human-centered design thinking [13].…”

“…2. Objects and situations are as useful as modelling individuals: where surveillance uses things to record the actions of people, we can turn this so that people's biographies of objects carry equal weight, shifting the weight of surveillance from humans to constellations [13]. Having those directly engaging with objects in the wild involved in collaborative sensemaking with researchers about understanding situations -rather than behavioural models of people -gives them more power, pushing back against surveillance.…”