Design With All Beings (DWAB)

Design beyond the Human-centric

This DESIS Cluster focuses on design that is widely inclusive of all beings, with the understanding that all beings, tree frogs, cedars, whales and eagles have voice and agency — and we need different skills to hear and collaborate with them. Design for Social Innovation has a longstanding goal of empowering communities, enhancing quality of life, promoting social justice, and amplifying sustainable lifestyles. This cluster asks how social innovation changes when our understanding of ‘community’ expands to include other agents – such as plants, animals and rivers – agents that don’t have a “voice” on human terms, and tend to be excluded from social innovation? We believe that if we are authentically seeking a more habitable Ecosphere, we should be reaching out to include voices of all beings, including more-than-humans.

Design With All Beings expands concepts of care and inclusion. It can help to uncover novel collective structures and coalitions that acknowledge the intricacies of living collaboratively on Gaia – Mother Earth – by integrating and responding to all its di erent ways of being. In this light, this cluster aims to bring together di erent sensitivities and perspectives within the network by sharing experiences and projects that engage with more-than-human representation and multispecies cohabitation.

This research raises many questions:

  • How can we do research with more-than-humans?
  • What kind of social structures can be envisioned in order to promote and support morethan-human cohabitation and thriving?
  • What are the challenges and criticalities in recognizing, engaging, and a irming an active role in design for more-than-human agents?
  • How can we ensure the representativeness of more-than-humans in collaboration?
  • How does inclusion of more-than-humans impact our work in social innovation for sustainability?

In this light, this cluster aims to bring together different sensitivities and perspectives within the network by sharing experiences and ongoing projects that help us to build understandings and connection among the human and more-than-human. We hope to:

  • Share visions and goals
  • Share techniques, strategies, readings, approaches and mindsets for new forms of collaboration with all beings
  • Foster design education that embraces a mindset that de-centers the human.
  • Foster new forms of attentiveness to the world around us and support contemplative practices as ways of relating with more than humans
  • Encourage collaboration and knowledge exchange among DESIS Labs working with designing with more-than-humans.
  • Organize exhibitions
  • Publish a special issue or book that would make our shared insights widely available.

Cluster activities include:

  • Sharing of participatory design practices, such as workshops, observations, deep listening, new forms of interviews, cultural probes, Earthbond prototyping (Camozzi 2019), user testing, etc.
  • Research-informed teaching, where educational projects generate both pedagogical and research outputs.
  • Case study collection of DWAB DESIS projects meeting key criteria: being led by a DESIS Lab, involving students, engaging more-than-humans, and co-creating communities that include all beings.
  • Development of curated exhibitions and publications showcasing processes and diverse project outputs.

The Cluster highlights the transformative power of design education to foster mutual learning and social innovation for sustainability. More-than-humans play a crucial role in the experience of being human, exerting influence, constraints, and impacts across social, physical, psychological, cognitive, environmental, and spiritual dimensions on a daily basis. In a sense, they act and “design us back”, prompting us to ponder the true extent of their influence and the true meaning of relating.

This cluster is organized by a collective of four DESIS labs that have been doing research with more-than-humans over the past decade. Our Design With All Beings cluster website is in progress, and in the meantime you may like to contact:

Francesco Vergani (Polimi DESIS Lab, Milano) – francesco.vergani@polimi.it

Louise St. Pierre (Emily Carr Desis Lab) – lsp@ecuad.ca

Tokushu Inamura (Desis-Q (Kyushu University /Fukuoka, Japan)- inamura@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp

Francesca Valsecchi (Tongji Desis lab)– francesca@tongji.edu.cn