Hapta
Hapta emphasizes collaboration between humans, plants, fungi, and technology, encouraging stewardship over dominance. It empowers small, self-sufficient communities to produce their own food and water, fostering resilience, solidarity, and local agency.
Exhibition of More-than-human design approach:
Vibration, a new form of human-decentered communication
Politecnico di Milano
Milan, Italy
2025
More-than-human design
Core-than-human approach challenges the traditional human-centered design (HCD) perspective by expanding the focus beyond just human needs, behaviors, and experiences. Instead, it encourages designers to consider how their work impacts and interacts with non-human entities like animals, plants, environments, and even digital or artificial systems.
Hapta
In a future where communication transcends words, what if a vibrational language emerged, enabling natural, human and technological entities to communicate, fostering true multispecies collaboration?
The exhibition metaphorically shows a more-than-human design system where, by 2100, the Po River has dried up, and the underground aquifer is the only water source. Humans, plants, fungi, bacteria, and technology collaborate to preserve water and sustain the ecosystem, promoting resilience, local self-sufficiency, and new governance models that include non-human actors.
Prototyping
The process
The prototype was built using Arduino to enable interaction between the user and the exhibition’s entities. When the user touched the digital device, it triggered a multisensory response: the interconnected elements — like the plant, fungi, and microbial systems — lit up, while sound and vibrations activated, symbolizing the flow of energy and the collaborative dynamics within the system.
