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Short abstract:

In the context of a newly started research project, called DSooE (Dialoguing Species: Designing Common Worlds through Ethnography) we are entering a dialogue between design and social science, supported by STS research practices, aiming developing a protocol for more-than-human inclusive design.

Long abstract:

This contribution aims to report some initial results of a newly started research project, titled DSooE (Dialoguing Species: Designing Common Worlds through Ethnography), in which we are involved as social scientists and designers. Through the dialogue between design and social sciences, fostered by STS research practices, DSooE aims at developing a protocol for more-than-human inclusive design, i. e. the design of technologies enabling various species to share habitats in non-competitive ways, thus allowing ecosystem preservation and restoration. A multi-sited and multi-species ethnographic fieldwork, aimed at understanding how fish and wolves relate, adapt to or reject technologies designed to allow them thriving, is combined with a case studies analysis of cutting-edge more-than-human design projects around Europe from engineering to service design. The fieldwork looks at a fluvial laboratory and alpine pasture livestock protection in two Italian areas. The design of technologies aiming at the animals’ thriving is based on knowledge gained by engineers and biologists through their technological equipment. We will analyze the techno-scientific devices used by engineers for their experiments while studying how small fish swim in North-West Italian rivers, as well as the technical devices used by wildlife biologist in monitoring wolves’ population in the Eastern Alps. We are interested in analyzing how engineers and biologists, with and through their – high or low tech – equipment and experimental methods, actually produce specific versions of wolves and fish and how, in turn, these react to – or resist – these specific ways of questioning them.