I have a strong interest in the natural world and how we layer our human environments, both physical and digital, upon the world. This has led my design thinking while working with technologies such as virtual and mixed reality devices but also through more traditional visual communication formats such as printmaking and photography. 

Over the past decade my lectures and studio teaching on post and undergraduate design courses focussed on human centred design research methods, but it is an increased interest in a ‘more than human design’ model that excites my current area of design research and practice.

The term umwelt is discussed as meaning the self-centred world, how any creature experiences their world dependent on what they can perceive and detect. In the design world a move to human centred design asked designers to consider the umwelt of other humans. When I was teaching design and a student asked whether I thought their concept would work, I would respond with “Have you put yourself in the shoes of your target audience, do you know their world and how your concept works within it?” If they showed me they had, then I could say I had confidence in both them and their concept.

But our world is not actually a human centred world, nor is it one that contains simply humans and nature side by side, as might perceived by the way we discuss nature. Our world is created by a multitude of umwelts, human, animal and other organisms, overlapping and colliding in ways we are only just beginning to comprehend.

Part of who I am as a person is my knowledge and experience of the ‘natural’ world; observing, learning and interacting with nature wherever possible. But this has often felt distant to my design practice, and to my teaching that involved digital technologies and human centred design processes.

I consider it to time for me to move from ‘human centred design thinking’ to ‘more than human design thinking’. Developing an understanding of how to create design concepts that fit not only into a human umwelt but also those of the creatures and organisms we cohabit with. How my teaching experience, knowledge of digital technologies and other creative processes will come together to do this, as yet, I have no idea.

With no immediate answer on to how to turn ‘more than human’ design theory into practice I will begin a creative process looking outside of my own umwelt, and consider how to communicate this to others. Perhaps discovering, and sharing, possible design approaches along the way.