Coming Soon:
A Nourishing Toolkit to the More-Than-Human: 22 Ways to Design Differently
What would it look like if we designed with the natural world, not just for people? What might change if plants, animals, and ecosystems were treated as true participants in our decisions?
This book is a living, growing guide for designers who are curious about expanding their perspective beyond the human. It invites us to rethink how we design — by considering the needs, voices, and relationships of the more-than-human world alongside our own.
At its heart, the toolkit explores two big questions:
How might we include plants, animals, and ecosystems in our design process?
How can we shift human systems and mindsets to take the multispecies approach more seriously?
In “A Nourishing Toolkit to the More -Than-Human: 22 Ways to Design Differently,” Sim invites readers to step sideways – shifting from human-centred thinking into a more entangled way of designing with the world. Moving through theory, reflection, and practice, it introduces more-than-human design as both mindset and method: a way of noticing interdependence, questioning inherited habits, and learning to work with animals, plants, ecosystems, and unseen systems as active participants rather than passive backdrops. Along the way, it traces the limits of traditional design approaches, explores behavioural and multispecies perspectives, and gently unsettles the idea that humans are the sole authors of change.
Structured as a practical yet poetic toolkit, the book offers 22 ways to design differently—through observation, embodiment, storytelling, speculative practice, and collective accountability. From proxy interviews and adaptive prototyping to behavioural nudges and communal commitments to multispecies justice, each tool supports designers, researchers, and changemakers in reshaping not just outcomes, but belief systems themselves. This is not a guide to perfect solutions, but a companion for practicing attention, care, and responsibility over time—helping readers move from intention to action, and from awareness to adaptation.
Written by Ariel Sim, foreword by Shawn Fleek
Published by Set Margins’