Coming Soon:
A Nourishing Toolkit to the More-Than-Human: 22 Ways to Design Differently
Human-centred design has long-grappled within a complex web of design practices–learning, unlearning, and relearning how to not only design for people, but with people. At the depths of inclusive design practices, we ask: “How might we design with and for people at the margins–and in so doing,–create products, services, and city scapes that are better for everyone?”
Acknowledging the lifetimes of effort & practice that can be easily devoted to the effort of designing inclusively with people, what happens when we expand participation in design to listen to the voices of our more-than-human kin?
More-than-human design emerges in a constellation of sister practices–planetary design, regenerative design, transition design, and pluriversal design to name a few–and asks us to attune design methods to listen with the agencies, rights, and well-being of more-than-human communities.
Rejecting the foundational assumption that humans are the primary subjects of design, it reframes design as participation within a living field of agencies.
The toolkit is a compilation of tools from personal practice, a living and evolving guide for designers and the curious, centered around two big questions:
How might we include plants, animals, and ecosystems as active participants in 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.
Written by Ariel Sim, foreword by Shawn Fleek
Published by Set Margins’