Multispecies Response-ability in More-than-human Design Practice : Fabulation with Tides

Zhou, Jiwei and Kim, Raphael and Nicenboim, Iohanna and Rosén, Anton Poikolainen and Soares da Costa, Fernanda and Ofer, Netta and Pollastri, Serena and Biggs, Heidi and Oogjes, Doenja and Barati, Bahareh (2026) Multispecies Response-ability in More-than-human Design Practice : Fabulation with Tides. In: DIS '26 Companion : Companion Publication of the 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. Companion Publication of the 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference . ACM, SGP, pp. 72-77. ISBN 9798400726323

Abstract

This workshop invites participants with diverse backgrounds to imagine stories with tides, to explore response‑ability - a notion used by Donna Haraway to cultivate the capacity to respond with other species. As more HCI communities begin to engage with living entities, we seek to move beyond “responsibility” as a solely human moral property towards relational and reciprocal ways of designing-with them. When the entities we "study" begin to respond to one another, their interactions evolve in ways we cannot fully predict, inviting design practice to stay open and caring for these shifting relations. Using tides as a spatial‑temporal site of inquiry, we will use speculative fabulation to imagine what multispecies response‑ability might look like in place and collectively develop practical guides for examining and incorporating it into design practice.