Teaching for more-than-human values in design in higher education (MOVA)

About the project

The majority of the design methodologies taught in technology design programmes are geared towards humans. We teach human-centred design, user research, participatory design, etc., but what about more-than-human stakeholders and their values? What if the mountains or rivers were treated as stakeholders, or forests and trees, birds, and bees, or even a virus, which is probably one of the most prominent stakeholders in the years 2020-2022. How can we learn to listen to the voices and values of our more-than-human companions?

As stated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, to achieve sustainable development we need to address the three levels: people, planet, and profit since they are all intertwined. A more-than-human design approach also encompasses planetary perspectives, and our shared planet and all the living organisms and communities that depend on it are put at the centre of the design process.

The MOVA project aims to develop educational resources that create conditions for students to grow into responsible designers by taking more-than-human values into account throughout the design process.

More specifically, the project aims to:

• Build an understanding of the current state of innovative and best practices in designing for more-than-human values.
• Provide teachers at technology design programmes in higher education with innovative educational resources for teaching students and future practitioners how to design for more-than-human values.
• Share the educational resources on teaching for more-than-human values in design as an open educational resource (OER).
• Disseminate the results of the project to professional networks to foster cross-cultural dialogues and increase the capacity to teach more-than-human values in technology design education to achieve sustainable development.

The main result of the project is a set of innovative and validated educational resources published as an OER on teaching for more-than-human values in design. The direct target group of the OER is teachers – heads of programmes at technology design programmes in higher education, such as interaction design, computer science, technology-enhanced learning, educational technology, and industrial and product design. The indirect target group is students that through the teachers' adoption and use of the educational resources will obtain the skills and competencies for how to design for more-than-human values and through that become responsible designers of tomorrow's technologies.

MOVA is a continuation of the VASE project and builds on the OER “Teaching for values in design: Creating conditions for students to grow into responsible designers and developers of future technologies”, which will be taken to the next level by adding approaches for addressing more-than-human values.

• The VASE-project
• OER: Teaching for Values in Design