North S. and Mancini C, 2016. Introduction: frameworks for ACI: animals as
stakeholders in the design process. ACM Interactions 23, 4, 34-36
In this short introduction North and Mancini contrast 3 separate methods for undertaking ACI; Speculative Design, Quantitative Data Analysis and Animal Ethnography. This is a short survey piece that lays out 3 approaches and compares them to propose a mixed method.
Useful Quotes
“speculating outside the pressures of real product development can enable designers to more freely attend to what might truly matter to the species we aim to design for and with. If we cannot speak “animal” and animals cannot speak “human,” then reckoning with our own biases is the fundamental starting point of any interspecies design journey.”
“In HCI, we have learned how it is only through shared practice and iteration that we can incrementally achieve a common ground and positive outcomes.”
“we can do this by recognizing our own biases, by measuring what we can as accurately as possible, and by aiming to construct models to orient our interpretation of what we observe. Maybe, to begin with, what we do just has to be good enough.”
“f we want to truly co-design with non-humans, accepting that our design will never be perfect is key. Perhaps we need to value the dissonances in the process, and pay attention to what falls between the cracks”