Critter Connect, wearable design for place-based & multisensory species encounters.

This study presents Critter Connect, a wearable device fostering multispecies relationships in natural ecosystems. Grounded in posthuman theory and More-than-Human geography, the work responds to human-centred design limitations, which often overlook non-visual and non-linguistic modes of interaction. It also highlights the need for practical tools fostering direct, place-specific, and non-hierarchical sensory-rich engagements with other beings. This pictorial shows the device’s potential to enable spontaneous and embodied interactions between users and three species in a biodiversity-rich ecosystem through geolocation-based tactile and auditory feedback. We present a design process building on multispecies ethics and speculative methods to address ecological care, as well as a pilot study demonstrating Critter Connect’s capacity to amplify the wearer’s awareness of unseen multispecies presences and sense of connection to nature. This research contributes to HCI by offering a framework for designing ethically considerate, sensory-rich interactions with other beings, thus challenging human-centric engagement and promoting ecological cohabitation.