The More-than-Human Talking Stick: Design Principles for Multispecies Entanglement and Agency

This paper explores how multispecies agency and relations can be brought to the foreground in a situated design process through utilising design principles. Based on an analysis of fieldwork at a permaculture garden community, our three design principles – consideration, connectedness, dynamics – proved to be useful both as a way to guide the design process towards a designed artefact and to inform continued awareness of multispecies agency and entanglements. The resulting design, The MtH Talking Stick, is an attempt to create an artefact that intervenes with a more-than-human voice in mostly-human conversations. The paper contributes situated insights into how design principles can strengthen human awareness of multispecies entanglements as a response to calls for stronger empirical foundations in the more-than-human design field.