Mapping tangible and embodied interactions in more-than-human design: a review of research tools

Abstract

This article reviews existing literature on human-animal entanglements to explore how justice-oriented designers utilize tangible artifacts as tools and mediators to rethink multispecies relationships. By analyzing the use of tools in the existing literature through a relationality lens, our research introduces pathways to rethink research tools and ways of doing that foreground justice-oriented multispecies interaction. Our findings illustrate how previous work that follows human-centric knowledge and interaction design modes for human-animal entanglements implicitly supports unjust interspecies power relations. By identifying emergent modes of research tools, this article offers a set of takeaways for designers to consider such tools as participants within entangled, reciprocal, and longer-term relational practices in non-human-controlled environments.