Participlant: Fostering Connectedness with Nature through the installation 'Onder de Schors'

Abstract

This thesis investigates how an interactive, public-park installation can strengthen Connectedness with Nature (CWN) by reducing Plant Awareness Disparity (PAD), the tendency to overlook plants as active, meaningful living beings. Building on literature and various research acitivites the project frames a core design hypothesis: Through experientialising systemic electrical signalling in plants, this installation will foster at tention towards plants and information gain about plants, lowering guest’s Plant Aware ness Disparity, which enhances their Connectedness with Nature. The work first maps drivers of Disconnection to Nature and then empirically selects PAD as the most effective driver to address to reduce CWN through 11 anecdote-based interviews. This also forms a designable framework that describes how reducing PAD fosters CWN, called the Designable Framework for Reducing PAD to improve CWN using Affective Mechanisms. Further research activities define design requirements to achieve the framework. This creates the final installation: Onder de Schors: a modular installation that physically frames a tree and translates real-time plant electrical signals into synchronised audio and whole-body haptic feedback, enabling visitors to feel and hear plant responsiveness and support fostering Connectedness with Nature. The final in-situ evaluation (n=18) demonstrated significant improvements on both tar get outcomes: CWN increased from 4.57/7.00 to 5.97/7.00 (p<.001) and PAD improved from 5.02/7.00 to 5.95/7.00 (p<.001). PAD change and CWN change were positively related (r≈.66), supporting PAD as a designable driver of reconnection. Mechanism analyses further refined the framework: Attention was the strongest contributor to PAD reduction (r≈.73), while Calmness (physiological restoration) and perceived Liveliness showed stronger relevance for CWN than attention or information alone, indicating that PAD reduction is necessary but not sufficient for deep connection. Based on these results, the thesis adapts Zylstra’s framework into a staged, designable hierarchy: calmness functions as a state-setting condition for receptivity; attention and experiential information gain reduce PAD by making plants noticeable and inter pretable; and liveliness functions as the affective bridge that transforms noticing into relational CWN. Theoretically, this research contributes a measurable path from “plant as static background” to “plant as living agent,” bridging botanical social science with affective interaction design. Practically, it offers a viable blueprint for repeatable, public-park deployments that enable visitors to re-experience plant liveliness over time.