Learning Session 2: More-than-Human Design in Practice
Online learning sessions using dialogue to explore the workings, developments, (im)possibilities, and emerging insights of diverse approaches and praxes for Co-creation with the More-than-Human world
This 2nd learning session of the Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox on More-than-Human Design in Practice with Anton Poikolainen Rosén (Stockholm University) in April 2025 focused on what it means to bring more-than-human design into practice, moving beyond concept into concrete ways of working.
Rather than approaching design as a human-centered activity, the conversation explored how design processes can begin to include, respond to, and be shaped by more-than-human actors. This raised both practical questions—how to do this in real projects—and deeper tensions around representation, legitimacy, and the limits of current design paradigms.
What follows is a synthesis of key questions, insights, and cross-cutting threads from the dialogue.
🌿Learning Session 2 (April 2025) — Synthesis
More-than-Human Design in Practice, with Anton Poikolainen Rosén (Stockholm University)
What does it actually mean to design with the more-than-human—and how do we do this in ways that are not merely symbolic, extractive, or representational?
1. What is more-than-human design in practice?
A shift in what design is accountable to
More-than-human design moves beyond designing for human users or stakeholders, and instead engages a wider field of living systems as relevant to the design process. This is not simply an expansion of the user group, but a shift in what the process is accountable to.
Not an added layer, but a repositioning
Rather than adding ecological considerations onto existing workflows, it challenges the underlying assumptions of design—what counts as input, what defines success, and who or what has standing in decision-making.
Implications for practice
This shift has direct consequences: it changes how problems are framed, what options are considered viable, and how outcomes are evaluated.
🌱 Seed:
More-than-human design is not about designing for more—it is about designing from a different starting point.
2. How do you listen to the more-than-human in a design context?
Expanded notion of listening
Designing with the more-than-human always involves forms of interpretation, translation, and mediation. Listening thereby moves beyond verbal exchange and includes observing patterns, cycles, behaviours, and ecological signals.
Slowing down
Meaningful engagement with more-than-human actors often requires slowing down design processes in order to attune to these dynamics. It requires moving beyond designing solutions for nature toward designing with ecological systems as active participants. This requires new methods for sensing, interpreting, and responding to non-human inputs.
Design constraint
This can create friction with conventional timelines and deliverables within design practice. Moreover, in practice, designers often rely on proxies to stand in for non-human perspectives. These proxies are always partial, raising questions about how faithfully non-human perspectives are represented.
🌱 Seed:
Listening to the more-than-human is less about extracting input and more about attuning to patterns over time.
3. What has it taken to develop this field in practice?
Working against dominant paradigms
Practitioners have had to operate within systems that are fundamentally oriented toward human needs, economic value, and short-term outcomes. In more-than-human design however, the role of the designer shifts from authoring solutions toward facilitating relationships between human and non-human actors.
Lack of established pathways
There are few established methods or institutional supports, meaning that much of the work has involved developing approaches while simultaneously applying them. The shift from creator to facilitator also implies a partial relinquishing of control, where outcomes are not fully determined in advance.
Learning through situated experimentation
Progress has largely been made through projects and experiments, where approaches are tested, adapted, and refined in context. Within this, designers are required to work with greater humility, uncertainty, and responsiveness.
📌 Practitioner takeaway:
The designer becomes a participant within a system, rather than its primary orchestrator.
4. What has been learned along the way?
Inclusion alone does not change outcomes
Simply adding more-than-human perspectives into existing processes does not necessarily shift decisions if those perspectives remain peripheral.
Positioning determines influence
Whether more-than-human considerations are treated as input, constraint, or shaping force directly affects whether they have any real impact.
Depth of engagement has consequences
The more seriously ecological systems are taken within the process, the more likely it is that design options will be restricted, altered, or abandoned.
🌱 Seed:
What matters is not whether the more-than-human is included, but whether it is allowed to change the outcome.
5. How do different approaches differ in their engagement of the more-than-human?
A spectrum rather than a single method
Approaches range from indirect representation—through data, models, or expert input—to more explicit forms of inclusion, and in some cases to deeper integration where ecosystems actively shape the design process.
Movement along the spectrum is consequential
At one end, more-than-human considerations inform decisions without fundamentally altering them; further along, they begin to constrain what is possible and reshape outcomes.
The distinction is often left implicit
Different more-than-human design projects operate at different points on this spectrum, but this is not always made explicit, which can obscure what level of change is actually being pursued.
🌱 Seed:
More-than-human design is not one approach—it is a range, and where you stand on that range determines what can change.
6. What does current practice still struggle to do?
Influence decisions early enough
More-than-human considerations are often introduced after key parameters have already been set, limiting their ability to shape outcomes.
Move beyond project-based application
Approaches tend to remain tied to individual projects rather than being embedded structurally within organisations or systems.
Operate within existing constraints
Design timelines, incentives, and delivery models often conflict with the requirements of deeper ecological engagement.
More-than-human design moves beyond designing solutions for nature toward designing with ecological systems as active participants. This requires new methods for sensing, interpreting, and responding to non-human inputs.
In practice, this often involves proxies, data, and interpretation—raising questions about how faithfully non-human perspectives are represented.
7. What would need to change to deepen application?
Earlier and stronger integration
More-than-human perspectives need to be present from the outset and positioned in ways that allow them to shape the direction of the process.
From input to constraint
For these approaches to have real impact, they need to define what is not possible—not just inform what is chosen.
Alignment with structures and incentives
Without changes in how projects are commissioned, evaluated, and governed, the scope for deeper application remains limited.
📌 Practitioner takeaway:
The challenge is not only methodological—it is structural, requiring shifts in how design processes are set up and what they are accountable to.
8. Where is this field heading?
Continued development through practice
The field is evolving through experimentation across different contexts rather than through a single unified approach.
Greater clarity on modes of engagement
Distinctions between levels of engagement—from representation to deeper integration—are becoming more visible.
Pressure toward more consequential approaches
As the limits of superficial inclusion become clearer, there is increasing focus on approaches that materially affect decisions.
Cross-cutting insight threads
Across the session, several deeper shifts became visible.
Stakeholder → System
Design moves from focusing on individual users or stakeholders to engaging with broader ecological systems.
Control → Facilitation
The role of the designer shifts from directing outcomes to facilitating relationships and conditions.
Application → Structure
The focus moves from applying new methods within existing systems to questioning how those systems are structured in the first place.
Speed → Attunement
Fast, efficiency-driven processes are challenged by the need to slow down and engage with ecological rhythms.
Inclusion → Consequence (unresolved)
Including more-than-human perspectives is increasingly possible; ensuring they materially affect outcomes remains the key challenge.
Closing
These sessions are not designed to arrive at fixed answers, but to surface how different approaches work in practice. Each conversation reveals not only how and where they hold, but also the tensions and questions that remain unresolved—and that continue to invite further inquiry.
Over time, these syntheses form a growing body of insights into what co-creation with the more-than-human world might require, across contexts and practices.
The Co-creation with the More-than-Human sandbox is a collaboration between The Repatterning Collective and Kincentric Leadership.
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Could you share some examples about more explicit forms of inclusion and deeper integration with the more-than-human? I am very curious about how has this been implemented in practice