Life Centered Design: Unpacking a Post-humanistic Biodesign Process

Ooms, Daniëlle; Barati, Bahareh; Winters, Amy; Bruns, Miguel

doi:10.1007/978-981-19-4472-7_109

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…While design is a driving force of sustainability and is rapidly developing in the material and business aspects (e.g., eco-design, circular design, design of KPIs, goals, and requirements) and the human aspects (e.g., communication design, design for behavior change for a circular economy) [11][12][13][14], the focus is on the human and the man-made, and the relationship with the Planet, especially the affective aspects, is only slowly getting considered. Emerging nature-inclusive design approaches driven by posthumanism and systemic thinking-e.g., bio-inclusive design, life-centered design, planet-centered design-call for an involvement of a larger set of stakeholders, human and nonhuman [8,[15][16][17][18][19][20] and drive the development of new design frameworks including the nonhuman, or 'more-than-human' [7,8,15,21,22]. These frameworks express new relationships between humans, nonhumans, technology, and spaces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Invoking ‘Empathy for the Planet’ through Participatory Ecological Storytelling: From Human-Centered to Planet-Centered Design

Talgorn

Ullerup

2023

Sustainability

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In sustainable design and innovation, appreciation of the Planet as an equal stakeholder with humans and businesses continues to rise. Yet a consistent challenge arises in that people have difficulties relating to the nonhuman and interpret the world in terms of human values and experiences. We need more practical tools to stimulate a connection, especially in its affective dimension, to the Planet and to include nonhuman stakeholders in sustainability developments. To anchor Planetary understanding and considerations, we investigate the role of participatory storytelling to stimulate a reappraisal of the needs of nonhuman stakeholders through empathy building. To posit this, we defined empathy for the Planet as a holistic relationship with human and nonhuman stakeholders. We facilitated workshops where design students, design professionals, and business stakeholders could co-create environmental stories using human and nonhuman character personas. We analyzed the personas, stories, and participants’ feedback on the process experience and impact and observed that story creators experienced empathy for the Planet through projecting and blending their own emotions and intents onto the characters. We discuss, therefore, how ecological story co-creation can be a tool for self-reflection, collective sense-making, and the inclusion of the voice of Planetary stakeholders relevant for sustainable design and to drive sustainability engagement in general. This research confirms the role of stories and imagination in creating a bridge to the natural world through new, human and nonhuman, perspectives.

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