Designing with forest stories to explore what it might mean for forest-related technologies to “get it right”

This workshop invites researchers, designers, and practitioners from across HCI to explore how interactive technologies might contribute positively to human-forest interactions, and what it might mean for such technologies to plurally “get it right”. We begin from the premise that technology can both enrich and harm forest ecologies: it may help us notice, sense, and connect in new ways, but it may also foster alienation or commodification if designed uncritically. Through research-through-design, workshop participants will share forest stories via boundary objects, co-create a metaphorical “shared forest” exhibition, draw on diverse HCI knowledges to speculatively prototype technologies responding to these stories, and reflect on the promising design directions that emerge. Our aim is not to identify a single “right way”, but to surface plural, situated directions that feel worth pursuing. Outcomes will include a digital archive of stories and artefacts and an annotated portfolio of speculative prototypes to inspire future design/research.