In this thesis project, the aim is to explore displacements beyond the familiar usage in migration studies associated with ’human’ by using a new materialist/s understanding ofontology and agency. This approach opens the possibility to move beyond the understanding of displacements as referring only to human agency. The fictionalised story, Parable of theSower, is used in the thesis as the real-world ontological world-building storytelling and the questions that flow from the aim of this thesis is used as a guiding navigator within the mainstory to see what other stories emerges; The Earthseed Story, The More-Than-Human Storiesand The Human Stories. Displacement(s) beyond human agency from a new materialist outlook show the complexity and challenges of being interconnected and codependent in a world containing multiple stories that move in and out of spacetime refuturing. This occursboth as dystopia and utopia, as agency is in-the-making and ongoing reshaping of territorialization and deterritorialization making all-the-flesh moving boundaries of being displaced and in-place in a belongings-non-belongings continuum. For future research,multispecies displacement(s) is discussed as ongoing processes of both; dystopian and utopian storytelling, and the possibilities for refuturing shared worlds.

This diploma thesis traces the changing human, animal and technology assemblage after the recent emergence of wolf packs in Broumov region. As the return of wolves coincides with ecological transformations gaining in strength, the central research focus are the possibilities - and impossibilities - of local multispecies coexistence in the conditions of Anthropocene. The research draws upon methods of multispecies ethnography, building on the literature that examines the ontological aspects of multispecies coexistence, including primarily the work of Donna Haraway, Eduardo Kohn, Annemarie Mol, Anna Tsing and Rane Willerslev. The thesis analyzes several modes of situated multispecies coexistence which have been reconfigured or made possible by the return of wolves: administrative and sensual practice of shepherds, methods of mimetic empathy of wolf trackers, emergence of new actors interfering with local events (satellites, subsidy programmes, drought) and the translation of processes on pastures into politically engaged activities of local farmers. The thesis develops the employed concepts in such a way that they enable analyzing the situation in Broumov region as situated making of more-than-human sociality. Key words: multispecies ethnography, wolfs, pastoralism, trackers, more-than-human sociality

This project explores co-being and interdependencies between human and more-than-human, the microbes, through the medium of fermentation and the (hidden) communities this practice embodies. Therewith not only resisting commodification and alienation from our food but facing our very own identity, and the human-made construct of human exceptionalism and detachment of nature and culture. The cells in ’our’ human body are outnumbered by the cells of other microorganisms. They even actively influence many of the bodily functions associated with the concept of ’self‘ (our brain, immune system and genome).1 Considering this, what does it even mean to be human? What does it mean to be me, If not cherishing and embracing the more-than-human, more-than-one-culture collective? The Korean word 손맛 ’son-mat’/ ’hand-taste’ refers to the inherited quality, love and care that went into preparing the (often associated with mother‘s) dish, something uniquely connected to the cook. While the microbes in sourdough can be linked to the baker‘s hand microbes, the baker‘s microbes have also shown to beaffected by the interaction with sourdough (Herman‘s (see picture to the right) microbial culture) with the scientific findings exposing our mutual interaction. This son-mat within fermentation I see as a symbolized touching point where our human realm and the microbial invisible microcosmos meet and become tangible. To emphasize this co-being, I work with our bodily senses, using design to bridge, making the insensible sensible, tangible, and audible. Staying curious and sprawling with my design approaches of creating narratives with the more-than-human, aimed to evoke questions and reflections of us and our culture. What happens when we share culture (human and microbial)? Through our hands, eating and digesting parts of others and becoming-with. To share culture means to see that humans and ’non-humans‘ are one. To taste that our culture is shared. And to feel that nature and culture are not two but one. Can you taste it?

The ubiquitous yet opaque logic of machine learning complicates both the design process and end-use. Because of this, much of Interaction Design and HCI now focus on making this logic transparent through human-like explanations and tight control while disregarding other, non-normative human-AI interactions as technical failures. In this thesis I re-frame such interactions as generative for both material exploration and user experience in non-purpose-driven applications. By expanding on the notion of machine learning uncertainty with play, queering, and more-than human design, I try to understand them in a designerly way. This re-framing is followed by a material-centred Research through Design process that concludes with Object Detection Radio: a ludic device that sonifies Tensorflow.js Object Detection API’s prediction probabilities. The design process suggests ways of making machine learning uncertainty explicit in human-AI interaction. In addition, I propose play as an alternative way of relating to and understanding the agency of machine learning technology.

SHIFTING PERSPEKTIVES – EXPLORING THE UNKOWN:1 Introduction: a multispecies turn in design 2 Practice-based perspectives of multispecies approaches 2.1 Rivers as personhood and democratic rights for nature 2.2 From «Waggle dance» to behavior biology and interspecies communication 2.3 Practice-based avenues for multispecies approaches 3 Multispecies ways of knowing: design as knowledge production 3.1 From nature-inspired design to multispecies design 3.2 Multispecies design: a lesson about collaboration Multispecies Playbook Multispecies design playbook: an invitation to explore practical plwygrounds To conclude References / With the urgent issues of biodiversity loss, invasive species, and climate change, it’s clear we need a «more-than-human-centered» design approach. This idea is gaining traction with new research and terms like Multispecies or Interspecies Design. This paper highlights the importance of moving beyond theory to show real-world applications in design. To make a real difference, we need practical methods that turn these concepts into action. It’s crucial to think about how to measure the long-term impact of these approaches. This paper aims to provide a hands-on guide, offering designers and non-designers clear steps to use Multispecies Approaches effectively.:1 Introduction: a multispecies turn in design 2 Practice-based perspectives of multispecies approaches 2.1 Rivers as personhood and democratic rights for nature 2.2 From «Waggle dance» to behavior biology and interspecies communication 2.3 Practice-based avenues for multispecies approaches 3 Multispecies ways of knowing: design as knowledge production 3.1 From nature-inspired design to multispecies design 3.2 Multispecies design: a lesson about collaboration Multispecies Playbook Multispecies design playbook: an invitation to explore practical plwygrounds To conclude References

Designing for societal engagement and benefit, aiming for the inclusion of humans, has been largely implemented within interaction design research. However, recent studies on entanglements and more-than-human worlds in interaction design, participatory and speculative design, in combination with Science & Technology Studies (STS) and ANT (Actor-network theories), revealed new opportunities for designers for the development of methods and practices, particularly about designing new forms of engagement with and through design artefacts for the benefit of the natural environment in the city. Through an RtD process, this thesis explores current relations between humans and nonhumans by establishing a more-than-human design space that embraces participatory and speculative methods. The aim is to implement more-than-human theories into the design practice to contribute to Posthuman Interaction design and Non-anthropocentric design. Therefore, this thesis presents Internet of Beings, a series of speculative design artefacts that aim to rebalance power structures and enable collaborative more-than-human interactions in the city. Internet of Beings stems from the desire of speculating on possible more-than-human futures, where cohabitation and care are at the base for the future of urban species. While humans are asked to reattune, be curious, notice again and collaborate with nature, nonhuman species start to have agency in the decision-making to thrive in a collaborative, sustainable more-than-human city. Thus, Internet of Beings represents a way of "staying with the trouble" (Haraway, 2016) for a collaborative future (Tsing, 2015) in the urban environment.

This research paper delves into the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in the process of user experience (UX) design resulting in more-than-human-made designs. Specifically, the study focuses on the utilization of the text-to-image AI tool, Midjourney. The primary research questions addressed in this paper are twofold: 1) How do AI tools influence the current UX design process of a high-fidelity prototype? and 2) How do more-than-human-made high-fidelity prototypes compare with human-made high-fidelity prototypes in terms of UX? To answer these research questions, a two-method study design was employed. Firstly, two focus groups with in total of 8 designers as participants were formed, with one group utilizing Midjourney to investigate its influence on the design process and to compare the two groups regarding their workwise. The aim was to create two comparable prototypes within a specific e-commerce setting. Secondly, a between-subjects design user study with 32 participants was conducted to test the high-fidelity prototypes and to assess any potential disparities in UX quality between them. The findings regarding the first research question indicate that Midjourney primarily serves as an inspirational tool. Designers were able to harness the AI tool to generate dark mode images, with the final chosen dark mode exemplifying the impact of Midjourney. Additionally, designers attempted to utilize the tool for creating icons. Regarding the second research question, the user study revealed that, despite similar and comparable use cases, there were only minor significant differences in terms of UX quality. The overall scores in System Usability Scale (SUS) and User Experience Questionnaire Plus (UEQ+) did not exhibit any significant disparity. This study suggests that while Midjourney proves to be a useful tool within the design process, its current influence on designers' UX design process and the ultimate performance of the final prototype remains relatively modest. Further research and development may be required to enhance its impact in the field of UX design and the study design should be used to test other AI tools in comparable settings.

More-than-human design represents a paradigm shift that decentralises the human in relation to the rest of the living world. As part of this movement, scholars call for a new worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness between human and non-human beings. Prior studies have focused on the experience of human-human connections, leaving the more- than-human largely unexplored. Addressing this gap, this study explores design strategies for fostering feelings and reflections of interconnectedness towards the more-than-human world and associated emotions. With a research-through-design methodology, two workshops were conducted, resulting in six key design strategies and an "interconnectedness experience framework". The strategies were evaluated through a prototype in partnership with AquaPrint, a Swedish company that up-cycles fishing nets into designer furniture. Future research should evaluate the strategies individually and in combinations as well as in a field setting. The presented framework and strategies are intended for practitioners as inspiration in design projects to promote noticing the more-than-human world, and encouraging a posthuman perspective.

The promise of smart cities to deliver new urban efficiencies and optimizations for sustainability is increasingly being questioned for its anthropocentric, universal, and top-down perspectives. Framingcities as computers has been critiqued for its limiting understanding of cities, as well as its lack of dealing with the complexities of real messy cities, with diverse knowledge and lived experiences. However, smart technologies have also been highlighted as having the potential to help us better understand more-than-human perspectives and to reconnect us to the world around us. Situated in thefield of design for social innovation, this thesis contributes to the emerging body of work that is exploring how digital urban environments can include local knowledge and more-than-human perspectives. In a co-design process with the urban agriculture community of Sjöbergen in the city of Gothenburg in Sweden, this thesis explores how local knowledge and values about- and in urban nature can help us think differently about the future of sustainable smart city concepts. With a design process guided by research through design and co-design, this thesis is imagining other smart city narratives that go away from the current top-down and universal perspectives and instead are inspired by values of Sjöbergen of reuse, maintenance, collectivity, and knowledge sharing. The design contribution of this work is a design proposal of a smart city service that reuses old smartphones of citizens into smart city technologies for individual and situated purposes. The design proposal aims to show an alternative view of smart cities grounded in local values and more-than-human perspectives.

DESIGNING GOVERNANCE – POWER AND COMPLICITY:1 Introduction 2 Natural History Museums as objects of investigation for design research. 2.1 Natural History Museums as interdisciplinary hubs and their meaning for design 2.2 Western understandings of nature & the environmental crisis 3 The value of design research for NHMS in transition 3.1 Design as Knowledge Production 3.2 Common grounds of design and NHMS 4 Bridging the GAP: Natural History Collections as know-ledge repositories for design 5 Conclusion: Future avenues of design at the intersection of NHMS Acknowledgements References / This exploratory paper presents a novel perspective on Natural History Museums (NHMs) through the lens of design research. It explores how recent advancements in design, including the emergence of Design Research Labs and the More-Than-Human Turn, can catalyse NHMs' transformation from static public spaces into vibrant centers for interdisciplinary biodiversity research, innovative collection practices, and knowledge dissemination crucial for addressing ecological crises. These museums are envisioned as pivotal arenas for democratic discourse, environmental conservation, and advocating for multispecies justice. Of particular interest are the historical intersections between industrial design, modern NHMs, and early ecological movements dating back to the First Industrial Revolution. Additionally, Natural History Collections narrate tales of resilience, adaptation, and life's failures on Earth. The specimens housed within these collections, conceived as «knowledge-things,» are intricately linked with social, political, ecological, and technological developments, offering untapped potential from a design perspective. This paper proposes four promising avenues for future research, positioning NHMs as fertile ground within the design discipline for further investigation.:1 Introduction 2 Natural History Museums as objects of investigation for design research. 2.1 Natural History Museums as interdisciplinary hubs and their meaning for design 2.2 Western understandings of nature & the environmental crisis 3 The value of design research for NHMS in transition 3.1 Design as Knowledge Production 3.2 Common grounds of design and NHMS 4 Bridging the GAP: Natural History Collections as know-ledge repositories for design 5 Conclusion: Future avenues of design at the intersection of NHMS Acknowledgements References