Designing-with More-than-Human Through Human Augmentation

TL;DR

This paper addresses the epistemic gap in experiencing nonhuman lifeworlds by proposing More-than-Human Through Human Augmentation (MtHtHA), a design approach that repurposes human augmentation to cultivate eco-phenomenological awareness and care across species. It articulates seven design principles and demonstrates them through five case studies—EchoVision, FeltSight, FungiSync, TentacUs, and City of Sparkles—showing how embodied, multisensory augmentations can expand the cognitive light cone toward multispecies empathy. The contributions include a coherent framework for designing-with nonhumans, a taxonomy of principled design strategies, and practical case-driven insights into how defamiliarization and eco-soma literacy can be fostered in HCI practice and education. The work argues that such experiential, embodied approaches can generate lasting awareness and obligations of care, with implications for ecology, urban design, and cross-species ethics while recognizing limitations in representation and risk of anthropomorphism. Overall, MtHtHA offers a pathway to more responsible, multispecies futures by shifting augmentation from optimization of humans to attunement with a broader, interconnected biosphere.

Abstract

The recent more-than-human turn in design calls for "designing-with" other species and ecologies beyond humans. Yet-as Thomas Nagel's famous "What is it like to be a bat?" thought experiment highlights-human experience is constrained by our own sensorium and an irreducible gap in phenomenal access to nonhuman lifeworlds. This paper proposes More-than-Human through Human Augmentation (MtHtHA, denoted ">HtH+") as a design approach that repurposes human augmentation technologies-typically aimed at enhancing human capabilities-away from human optimization and exceptionalism but toward eco-phenomenological awareness. Grounded in somaesthetic design and eco-somatics, MtHtHA entails creating temporary, embodied experiences that modulate the human Umwelt to re-sensitize us to pluriversal more-than-human perceptions. We articulate seven design principles and report five design cases-EchoVision (bat-like echolocation), FeltSight (star-nosed-mole tactile navigation), FungiSync (fungal network attunement), TentacUs (octopus-like distributed agency), and City of Sparkles (urban data from AI's perspective). We demonstrate that such experiential "designing-with" can cultivate ecological awareness, empathy and obligations of care across species boundaries.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: EchoVision is an immersive art experience using a mixed reality handheld mask to simulate bat echolocation.
• Figure 2: FeltSight is a star-nosed-mole-inspired system combines custom haptic gloves with a mixed reality headset to extend tactile perception beyond the skin, allowing users to "feel" material textures of surrounding objects without physical contact.
• Figure 3: FungiSync is a somaesthetic mixed reality participatory ritual performance that embodies participants to experience fungal entanglement through merging mixed reality perspectives upon bodily contact.
• Figure 4: TentacUs is an artistic movement ritual inspired by the octopus's decentralized intelligence to explore collective embodiment. Each participant becomes a tentacle by wearing soft-textile gloves with embedded smartphones that function as sensors, relaying proximity readings to their neighbors' left arms. Participants negotiate movement through a shared circular ring, becoming a collective, fluid tentacular being.
• Figure 5: "City of Sparkles" is an interactive VR data visualization where participants embody an artificial life form to explore a cityscape of spatialized human memory fragments collected from social media X (Previously Twitter) of New York City.