Encountering Human-Plant Relations: a Discussion of How Interaction Design Can Encourage Human Sensibility to More-than-human Plants

In this paper we discuss how interaction design experiments and interventions can play a role in sensitising humans to the more-than-human—specifically to plants and their significance to our lifeworld. Our work is rooted in two ideas (1) that deepening the understanding of human-plant relations is important for navigating the multiple planetary crises that we are currently facing, and (2) that interaction design allows for exploring the posthuman ontological model that rejects human exceptionalism and regards all entities as entangled and mutually constitutive. In discussing how design on several levels makes possible more-than-human reflections, the paper presents qualitative data gathered from interviews, diary entries, and observations from deploying two of our plant-electronics designs. Through identifying and organising surprises and recurring patterns in how people responded into three types of sensibilities (hermeneutic, existential, and socio-cultural), we discuss what happens when interaction design mediates entanglements between humans, plants, and other more-than-human actors.