Implications of the Bioinclusive Ethic on Collaborative and Participatory Design

To address the current unsustainability of socio-technical-ecological systems, humanity and design should increasingly consider the needs of natural entities. This paper outlines initial considerations for nature-inclusive Collaborative and Participatory Design (C&PD) by critically questioning the approach through the perspective of bioinclusive ethic, one of the nature-inclusive ethical frameworks. It suggests that bioinclusive C&PD and its sub-approaches would explicitly acknowledge nonhumans as non-designers and would, to a varying extent, involve them in the design processes. They would explicitly outline the benefits of involvement of human and nonhuman non-designers and grant goal-setting and decision-making power to the latter. Bioinclusive participatory design would explicitly acknowledge humans and nonhumans in its core principles and directly or indirectly involve the nonhumans. Bioinclusive collaborative design before use would ensure that nonhumans can impact the goals of the project. Finally, bioinclusive collaborative design-in-use might embrace nonhuman-made adjustments to designs during the use time.