Marie Louise Juul Søndergaard

In this work, we introduce biodegradation as a process of more-than-human unmaking. We begin by positioning biodegradation amongst related works in design research before presenting a circular process of making and unmaking biomaterials and living organisms through biodegradation. To exemplify this process, we detail two existing works—ReClaym and Biomenstrual—that exemplify how biodegradability can be explored in design through different biomaterials, methods, and contexts. By diffractively reading these projects through one another, we identify six themes and corresponding suggestions for researchers engaging with biodegradation. Lastly, we discuss the broader design implications and limitations, as well as the more-than-human values that emerge from designing for biodegradation via biomaterials. Through this, we aim to provide design researchers with practical tools and insights for engaging with biodegradation to unmake anthropocentric hierarchies between humans, non-humans, and biomaterials, which in turn can promote environmental sustainability and support more-than-human collaboration and care.

This article explores the intersections and resonances between unmaking and more-than-human design. We begin by aligning unmaking with decentering, a fundamental practice in more-than-human design, through their shared movement and materiality. Using Lindström and Ståhl’s notion of the double movement in un/making, we analyze a series of workshops focused on designing with AI, annotating what was un/made and de/centered during the workshops’ activities. Through this analysis, we introduce two key contributions that highlight some opportunities in the diffractive alignment between unmaking and more-than-human design: firstly, the notion of “unmaking-with” as an emergent concept to describe a posthumanist unmaking practice, and secondly, three decentering tactics—situating, materializing, and enacting—that instantiate this practice through design. Finally, we discuss how unmaking can enrich more-than-human design and, conversely, how more-than-human design can help define the epistemological scope of unmaking.

Reproductive technologies encompass aspects of menstrual health, in/fertility, sexual health, pregnancy, contraception, abortion, or menopause, among many other things, thus entangling aspects of the everyday lives of people of all genders. As reproductive technologies have become—and will continue to be—complicit in enabling or challenging the oppressions enacted on our bodies, it is imperative that we critically reflect on the values and methods used when designing these technologies. Despite a growing body of critical work in HCI, we, a community of feminist scholars working on reproductive technologies, find that there is limited practical guidance on bringing together perspectives such that they can be distributed in easy-to-use, engaging, and collaborative ways. This critical visualization responds to these needs and presents a zine (a collaboratively made booklet) that speculates on reproductive technologies by providing examples from a previous design workshop that happened at NordiCHI 2022 and a guide with activities and reflections on how to organize this kind of workshop. We have also included instructions on how to print and assemble the zine. Some of the examples featured in the zine imagine utopian feminist futures, and some of them intentionally expose or ‘trouble’ the taken-for-granted dichotomies behind the design and use of reproductive technologies. For instance, several examples draw from the feminist value of embodiment and prioritize the qualitative and felt experiences of menstruating. Other projects highlight the risks of reproductive bodies being commodified and surveilled through technology. The projects are presented through a lens of ‘feminist values’, which are particularly useful for critically highlighting existing power structures and instead centering subjective experiences that are typically erased in (cis-)normative approaches to reproductive health. We intend the zine to act as a collaborative, accessible, low-tech, and open-ended feminist tool and to use it as a stepping-stone for bringing together an already flourishing community of designers and researchers. Since the zine itself allows for reassembling and reconfiguring, we envision an impromptu zine-assembling activity at the conference presentation, where we invite the audience to add their own feminist values and experiences of designing (and using) reproductive technologies. The zine is free and accessible online, ready to be used in future workshops, offering it as a guide, but also as an easy way to get acquainted with feminist vocabulary in general. We hope this work is one step towards formalizing an (open) community of people working with designing and researching reproductive technologies in the Nordics.

This one-day workshop seeks to bring together design researchers that have different orientations and practices for futures and futuring to unpack the role of futuring across design, design artefacts, and designers. Our goal in this workshop is to use examples of established futures to engage with and reflect on questions around the role of futures in HCI/design. We believe that there is a common thread between work from many different researchers, but that the people doing that work are spread across different disciplines and geographical locations. To that end, this workshop will assemble researchers working with different methods and approaches to futures in design and will aim to identify core challenges and opportunities for futures in HCI.

Background: People in Western countries are increasingly rejecting hormone-based birth control and expressing a preference for hormone-free methods. Digital contraceptives have emerged as nonhormonal medical devices that make use of self-tracked data and algorithms to find a user’s fertile window. However, there is little knowledge about how people experience this seemingly new form of contraception, whose failure may result in unwanted pregnancies, high health risks, and life-changing consequences. As digital contraception becomes more widely adopted, examining its user experience is crucial to inform the design of technologies that not only are medically effective but also meet users’ preferences and needs. Objective: We examined the user experience offered by Natural Cycles—the first digital contraceptive—through an analysis of app reviews written by its users worldwide. Methods: We conducted a mixed methods analysis of 3265 publicly available reviews written in English by users of Natural Cycles on the Google Play Store. We combined computational and human techniques, namely, topic modeling and reflexive thematic analysis. Results: For some users of digital contraception, the hormone-free aspect of the experience can be more salient than its digital aspect. Cultivating self-knowledge through the use of the technology can, in turn, feel empowering. Users also pointed to an algorithmic component that allows for increased accuracy over time as long as user diligence is applied. The interactivity of the digital contraceptive supports mutual learning and is experienced as agential and rewarding. Finally, a digital contraceptive can facilitate sharing the burden of contraceptive practices or highlight single-sided responsibilities while creating points of friction in the required daily routines. Conclusions: Digital contraception is experienced by users as a tamed natural approach—a natural method contained and regulated by science and technology. This means that users can experience a method based on a digital product as “natural,” which positions digital contraceptives as a suitable option for people looking for evidence-based nonhormonal contraceptive methods. We point to interactivity as core to the user experience and highlight that a digital contraceptive might allow for collaboration between partners around contraceptive practices and responsibilities. We note that the user diligence required for the digital contraceptive to provide accurate and frequent data is sometimes not enough. Future research could look at designing (and redesigning) digital contraceptives with primary users and intimate partners, enhancing the experience of tamed naturalness; exploring how trust fluctuates among involved actors and in interactions with the technology; and, ultimately, designing more inclusive approaches to digital contraception.

Envisioning alternative futures and desirable worlds is a core element of design that must be cultivated, especially when a deep transition of practices, values, and power is necessary for vibrant and just future lifeworlds. In this paper, we contribute towards fabulation as an approach for design futuring that foregrounds feminist commitments and more-than-human concerns. Analyzing two fabulation case studies around biodata and bodily fluids, we offer three themes based on our process of developing these fabulations: how they engage materials, how they work to trouble temporalities, and how they cultivate imagination. We argue for the emerging potential of fabulation as an approach for open-ended, joyful design futuring, mobilizing speculative storytelling to foreground absent or neglected relations when imagining alternative lifeworlds.

Social stigma and human exceptionalism have contributed to unsustainable menstrual products and a neglect for the nutrients in menstrual blood that can enrich soil. In a Research-through-Design project, we explored how menstrual care can extend to caring for non-human species and the environment. We describe our design process and insights from three workshops with 20 participants, where we designed tools and technologies and worked with biomaterials to create biodegradable menstrual artifacts that can be composted and bring the nutrients in menstrual blood into soil. By drawing on feminist HCI’s quality of ecology and bringing more-than-human design into the domain of intimate care, our research affirms the fertile relations between feminist HCI and posthumanist HCI through the concept of more-than-human bodies. We discuss how our work contributes to inclusive understandings of technology, and to a feminist posthumanist design methodology that centers more-than-human bodies in intimate care.