Artificial intelligence is entering biological laboratories not only as a computational tool but as a co-experimenter that proposes, selects, and learns from interactions with living matter. As models increasingly steer protein engineering, material morphogenesis, and bioart, design decisions and feedback loops become distributed across humans, algorithms, and organisms. This panel stages a focused debate around three questions for HCI: Who designs these hybrid workflows? Where does responsibility lie when outcomes emerge from coupled human-algorithm-organism systems? What counts as interaction when learning unfolds simultaneously in code, cells, and infrastructures? Panelists from design research, computational biology, ethics, and art offer contrasting provocations grounded in cases from automated wet labs, living interfaces, and critical biodesign. Through case-based debate and moderated audience discussion, the session introduces the algorithmic wet lab as a new locus of interaction, offering attendees an expanded vocabulary of material intelligence and contested directions for AI × Biodesign within HCI.

We make sense of the world around us through our bodies; however, this somatic dimension of meaning-making is often overlooked in the development of AI systems. This workshop (re-)positions the body as central to the design of human-AI interactions by critically exploring the frictions and possibilities that emerge when attempting to incorporate our somatic dimension into the design of predominantly disembodied AI systems. By using self-knowledge as a point of departure to explore the potential of soma-aligned AI as a research territory, our workshop hosts (1) participant-driven discussion on tensions and opportunities between AI design and soma-centric approaches and (2) practical exercises where we together experiment with designing forms of such interactions that are more embodied, sensuous and poetic. We aim to extend these activities beyond the workshop, both by establishing a long-term community of design researchers and through a public Poetry Jam event.

This paper introduces reflective journaling as a tool for advancing biodesign practices, merging documentation methods from biology and design while integrating more-than-human sensibilities into laboratory practices. It highlights the need for tools that can flexibly support record-keeping across biology and design, balancing precision and accountability with iteration, creativity, and collaboration. Furthermore, it critically addresses calls to support care ethics and nurturing multispecies interactions within biodesign. Through an explorative review of diverse documentation formats, including laboratory notebooks and annotated portfolios, and informed by our own biodesign experiences, we introduce the Reflective Biodesign Lab Journal as a potential approach to address these needs. This innovative format is designed to support rigorous experimentation, creative design processes, and interdisciplinary reflections. This proposal lays the groundwork for addressing the unique nature of biodesign experiments, unlocking new possibilities that transcend the limitations of traditional disciplinary approaches.

Regenerative thinking is gaining momentum in HCI, shifting the focus from merely mitigating environmental harm to actively fostering cohabitation within more-than-human ecosystems. This shift challenges HCI researchers to develop new methodologies that engage with both material and cultural regeneration—harnessing the regenerative capacities of ecologies while preserving valuable knowledge systems. It also underscores the need for a fundamental onto-epistemological shift beyond anthropocentric notions of sustainability. To support HCI researchers in adopting regenerative approaches while addressing these challenges, this panel brings together a diverse group of design researchers working hands-on with materials ranging from biological to algorithmic. Through concrete examples and actionable insights, the panelists provide practical guidance on engaging with regenerative material ecologies. By interweaving multiple perspectives through a diffractive approach, the panel also explores the opportunities this emerging perspective offers for HCI, particularly at the intersection of sustainability, posthumanism, and decoloniality.

Given the current ecological crisis, the HCI and design community is showing a growing interest in the adoption of more-than-human perspectives, challenging human-centric approaches. While this has sparked numerous research initiatives, many of them are still a far cry from providing practical solutions or transforming the industry. This also presents a hurdle for teaching more-than-human perspectives to design students, as they may feel powerless to practice those teachings in real-life industrial settings. To bring forth concrete examples of how more-than-human design practice can matter, we believe that it is now time to move beyond theorising about and advocating for the adoption of such perspectives and start a more-than-human design practice that transforms the industry. This workshop therefore aims to bring together educators, researchers, and designers to discuss and co-develop strategies for transitioning more-than-human perspectives from niche/speculation to mainstream/practice in HCI and design. The workshop also aims to develop ways to empower students to work with these perspectives to bring about this transformation of the industry.

Human activities have drastically altered the planet, with design playing a significant role. While design may intend to do good, its consequences are not always positive: from climate change to resource depletion to unforeseen social dynamics. These transformations also include ourselves, as our relationships with new technologies blur and complicate previous human and machine agency distinctions. Increasingly, design has become a matter of defining what it means to be human. This special issue explores the proposition that conventional human-centered design approaches may not adequately address the complex challenges we face, and that there is instead a need to ground design in more-than-human perspectives. This introduction outlines the evolving landscape of more-than-human design in the context of HCI. Articulating a series of emerging research trajectories, we aim to illuminate the transformative potential of more-than-human orientations to design, including how they both extend and depart from familiar lines of inquiry in HCI – for example, how designers are redefining data, interfaces, and responsibility, and reshaping posthuman knowledge through design. Ultimately, this special issue aims to explore new pathways for designing in the era of the more-than-human, challenging the perceived divide between practice and theory to imagine alternative futures for HCI.

As cities worldwide adopt data-driven approaches to optimize urban forests, computational tools like agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly popular to simulate forest growth and inform planting decisions. However, ABMs often focus on individual metrics, neglecting forests as interdependent ecosystems. Rooted in anthropocentric ideals, these models risk reducing forests to infrastructures for human benefit, undermining their long-term resilience. This pictorial challenges these limitations by exploring how interface design can transcend reductive, agent-centric representations to foster relational understandings of forest ecosystems as more-than-human bodies. Drawing on feminist theorist Karen Barad's concepts of "diffraction"and "agential cuts,"we craft a repertoire of diffractive interfaces that engage with forest simulation data, revealing how more-than-human bodies can be encountered across diverse temporal, spatial, and agential scales. Through this design exploration, we operationalize more-than- human perspectives in data practices, deepening our understanding of the performative dimensions of interfaces and advancing nuanced, practical approaches to more-than-human design.

This workshop explores the transformative potential of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in design research. GenAI, capable of creating new content such as images, text, music, video, and code, raises important questions about authorship, agency, and design practice. Inspired by Roland Barthes’ "The Death of the Author," this workshop examines how GenAI reshapes design research roles and methods. Key topics include best practices, ethical considerations, knowledge generation, and collaboration patterns between human and AI creatives.

Building on themes identified in the successful DIS 2023 workshop, this 2-day event invites designers and researchers to present completed projects, works-in-progress, and theoretical provocations. The structure allows time for both presentations and in-depth discussions, aiming to develop an online resource library and a collaborative publication. The workshop seeks to advance the discourse on GenAI, addressing its challenges and opportunities in design research.

This article explores the intersections and resonances between unmaking and more-than-human design. We begin by aligning unmaking with decentering, a fundamental practice in more-than-human design, through their shared movement and materiality. Using Lindström and Ståhl’s notion of the double movement in un/making, we analyze a series of workshops focused on designing with AI, annotating what was un/made and de/centered during the workshops’ activities. Through this analysis, we introduce two key contributions that highlight some opportunities in the diffractive alignment between unmaking and more-than-human design: firstly, the notion of “unmaking-with” as an emergent concept to describe a posthumanist unmaking practice, and secondly, three decentering tactics—situating, materializing, and enacting—that instantiate this practice through design. Finally, we discuss how unmaking can enrich more-than-human design and, conversely, how more-than-human design can help define the epistemological scope of unmaking.

This dissertation explores the shift from human-centered to more-than-human design within the context of artificial intelligence (AI). Through a series of design research experiments—spanning performance art, podcasting, kite-making, and designing interactive prototypes—it highlights anthropocentric biases in conversational AI and proposes more inclusive designs that can listen to and respond to more-than-human voices. Grounded in the critical posthumanities and developing a practice of designing-with, this research offers practical tools for designers and HCI researchers who aim to decenter the human in AI: It develops tactics and techniques for situating AI interactions, exposing entanglements within AI systems, and enacting alternative relations with AI agents. Additionally, the dissertation introduces emergent concepts to assist more-than-human designers in articulating their practices. Ultimately, it emphasizes the unique role of designers in generating posthuman knowledge rather than merely translating theory into practice.

Conversation Starters is a series of interactive prototypes that probe how to design explainable interactions with AI in everyday life. Taking a more-than-human approach, we explore how 'failures' could be transformed into opportunities for situated understandings of AI. We describe the process of designing fictional artifacts and scenarios about conversational agents that can grow at home. While overall the project suggests that misunderstandings could help people develop sensitivities for knowing when to trust AI systems, the metaphor of 'growing an AI' (which positions training as a matter of care), highlights that practices of sharing and experimenting could be valuable starting points for designing explainable and trustworthy interactions with of AI.

While decentering the human has been a key approach in posthumanist HCI, there are still questions and tensions around it. To address them, we outline emergent notions of decentering, tracing it back from HCI to critical posthumanism and connecting epistemological developments in the humanities to design scholarship. Then, reviewing how decentering is understood and practiced in HCI, we distill five emerging dimensions for articulating more-than-human practices. We conclude by unpacking “decentering through design” as an ongoing material practice through which more-than-human designers not only materialize (apply) posthuman theory but also “make” posthuman knowledge in their own unique ways.

This one day workshop will explore the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in design research and practice. Generative technologies are developing rapidly and many designers are using them. Yet, there remains little published work on the use of GenAI in design. Our goal is to not only showcase the potential of GenAI for design, but to engage in discussions of its shortcomings and opportunities as they have been already articulated by scholars. By synthesizing both published and unpublished works, we will develop best practices, ethical considerations, and future research directions for the use of GenAI in design. We will explore a range of topics and themes, including leveraging the characteristics of GenAI for design, mapping the diverse applications of GenAI in design, envisioning a framework for design, and guiding future work on GenAI in design research. Ultimately, we hope to provide a roadmap for the integration of GenAI into the design research process and to encourage designers and researchers to explore the potential of GenAI in a thoughtful and deliberate way.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are increasingly integrated into the functioning of physical and digital products, creating unprecedented opportunities for interaction and functionality. However, there is a challenge for designers to ideate within this creative landscape, balancing the possibilities of technology with human interactional concerns. We investigate techniques for exploring and reflecting on the interactional affordances, the unique relational possibilities, and the wider social implications of AI systems. We introduced into an interaction design course (n = 100) nine ‘AI exercises’ that draw on more than human design, responsible AI, and speculative enactment to create experiential engagements around AI interaction design. We find that exercises around metaphors and enactments make questions of training and learning, privacy and consent, autonomy and agency more tangible, and thereby help students be more reflective and responsible on how to design with AI and its complex properties in both their design process and outcomes.

In the HCI community, there is more openness and interest toward different forms of research outcomes beyond written academic publications. These include pictorial papers, video/audio documentaries, public exhibitions, posters and brochures, design fiction, comics, podcasts and many more. These alternative research outcomes play a critical role in explaining, disseminating, and translating valuable insights and knowledge from HCI research to people outside academic communities. We propose this workshop to initiate the conversation among researchers in the DIS community in generating alternative forms of research outcomes. What inspirations, motivations and critical factors influence the creation of alternative research outcomes? Who is the main audience, and what are the barriers and limitations of making them? The outcome of the workshop will be an enhanced understanding related to how HCI knowledge can be translated to or created for different audiences outside of academia, and a guide for HCI researchers towards creating alternate research outcomes.

In this paper, we explore the use of metaphors for people working with artificial intelligence, in particular those that support designers in thinking about the creation of AI systems. Metaphors both illuminate and hide, simplifying and connecting to existing knowledge, centring particular ideas, marginalising others, and shaping fields of practice. The practices of machine learning and artificial intelligence draw heavily on metaphors, whether black boxes, or the idea of learn-ing and training, but at the edges of the field, as design engages with computational practices, it is not always apparent which terms are used metaphorically, and which associations can be safely drawn on. In this paper, we look at some of the ways metaphors are deployed around machine learning and ask about where they might lead us astray. We then develop some qualities of useful metaphors, and finally explore a small collection of helpful metaphors and practices that illuminate different aspects of machine learning in a way that can support design thinking.

The last decade has witnessed the expansion of design space to include the epistemologies and methodologies of more-than-human design (MTHD). Design researchers and practitioners have been increasingly studying, designing for, and designing with nonhumans. This panel will bring together HCI experts who work on MTHD with different nonhumans as their subjects. Panelists will engage the audience through discussion of their shared and diverging visions, perspectives, and experiences, and through suggestions for opportunities and challenges for the future of MTHD. The panel will provoke the audience into reflecting on how the emergence of MTHD signals a paradigm shift in HCI and human-centered design, what benefits this shift might bring and whether MTH should become the mainstream approach, as well as how to involve nonhumans in design and research.

What if things had a voice? What if we could talk directly to things instead of using a mediating voice interface such as an Alexa or a Google Assistant? In this paper, we share our insights from talking to a pair of boots, a tampon, a perfume bottle, and toilet paper among other everyday things to explore their conversational capabilities. We conducted Thing Interviews using a more-than-human design approach to discover a thing’s perspectives, worldviews and its relations to other humans and nonhumans. Based on our analysis of the speculative conversations, we identified some themes characterizing the emergent qualities of people’s relationships with everyday things. We believe the themes presented in the paper may inspire future research on designing everyday things with conversational capabilities at home.

What if we began to speculate that intelligent things have an ethical agenda? Could we then imagine ways to move past the moral divide ‘human vs. nonhuman’ in those contexts, where things act on our behalf? Would this help us better address matters of agency and responsibility in the design and use of intelligent systems? In this article, we argue that if we fail to address intelligent things as objects that deserve moral consideration by their relations within a broad social context, we will lack a grip on the distinct ethical rules governing our interaction with intelligent things, and how to design for it. We report insights from a workshop, where we take seriously the perspectives offered by intelligent things, by allowing unforeseen ethical situations to emerge in an improvisatory manner. By giving intelligent things an active role in interaction, our participants seemed to be activated by the artifacts, provoked to act and respond to things beyond the artifact itself—its direct functionality and user experience. The workshop helped to consider autonomous behavior not as a simplistic exercise of anthropomorphization, but within the more significant ecosystems of relations, practices and values of which intelligent things are a part.

This one-day workshop brings together HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to explore how to study and design (with) AI agents from a more-than-human design perspective. We invite participants to experiment with thing ethnography and material speculations, as a starting point to map and possibly integrate emergent frameworks and methodologies for more-than-human design. By using conversational agents as a case, participants will discuss what a more-than-human approach can offer to the understanding and design of AI systems, and how this aligns with third-wave HCI concerns of networks, infrastructures, and ecologies.