Assemblage-based stakeholder analysis in design: a conceptual framework through the lenses of post–anthropocentrism

In design, stakeholders have been confined to humans and human organisations. Amid growing attention to post-anthropocentric design, there remains a lack of research on engaging non-humans in the design process. This study examines the legitimacy of non-humans as stakeholders and proposes assemblage-based stakeholder analysis, a new approach that views a stakeholder as an assemblage of human and non-human actors based on actor-network theory and object-oriented ontology. We apply this approach to an empirical study to reveal the non-human actors missing from conventional stakeholder analysis and discuss its implications for the design process. Our findings move forward the ongoing discussions on post-anthropocentric design and support the engagement of non-humans so that their voices are heard, and they become politically significant considerations.