Abstract
Design research increasingly engages with ecological complexity through the emerging bodies of More- than-Human design (MtHD) and biodesign. While these fields share topical concerns, they differ in their onto-epistemological orientations, particularly in how they employ data. Biodesign often harnesses data to engineer novel functions in living systems, whereas MtHD emphasizes relationality, care, and designing with other-than-humans. Despite growing interest in bridging these perspectives, data practices at their intersection remain predominantly representational or oriented towards instrumental control. This paper responds to calls for rethinking data by introducing Soil Habitability as both a conceptual and methodological lens, grounded in an exploratory research-through-design inquiry. We present a sensing system developed to track earthworm activity across varying soil conditions, foregrounding the interdependencies that constitute soil as a multispecies habitat. The study unfolded across three interlinked phases; acknowledge, embody, and fabulate, each involving cycles of making, reflection, and re-framing. Rather than reinforcing dominant and often extractivist notions of “soil health”, the design case shifts attention towards soil as a dynamic, negotiated space of co-habitation. Through this lens, we reposition data not as a tool of measurement or optimization, but as a relational medium which is responsive, speculative, and capable of mediating ambiguity and ecological negotiation. This work contributes to expanding the repertoire of data-enabled technologies within MtHD and biodesign, advocating for more open, situated, and multispecies modes of engagement.
Keywords
Multispecies Communication; More-than-Human Design; Speculation; Data-Driven Design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.749
Citation
Samit, D., Funk, M.,and Barati, B.(2025) Sensing Soil Habitability: Relational Data for Multispecies Attunement, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.749
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 1 - More Than Human-centered Design
Sensing Soil Habitability: Relational Data for Multispecies Attunement
Design research increasingly engages with ecological complexity through the emerging bodies of More- than-Human design (MtHD) and biodesign. While these fields share topical concerns, they differ in their onto-epistemological orientations, particularly in how they employ data. Biodesign often harnesses data to engineer novel functions in living systems, whereas MtHD emphasizes relationality, care, and designing with other-than-humans. Despite growing interest in bridging these perspectives, data practices at their intersection remain predominantly representational or oriented towards instrumental control. This paper responds to calls for rethinking data by introducing Soil Habitability as both a conceptual and methodological lens, grounded in an exploratory research-through-design inquiry. We present a sensing system developed to track earthworm activity across varying soil conditions, foregrounding the interdependencies that constitute soil as a multispecies habitat. The study unfolded across three interlinked phases; acknowledge, embody, and fabulate, each involving cycles of making, reflection, and re-framing. Rather than reinforcing dominant and often extractivist notions of “soil health”, the design case shifts attention towards soil as a dynamic, negotiated space of co-habitation. Through this lens, we reposition data not as a tool of measurement or optimization, but as a relational medium which is responsive, speculative, and capable of mediating ambiguity and ecological negotiation. This work contributes to expanding the repertoire of data-enabled technologies within MtHD and biodesign, advocating for more open, situated, and multispecies modes of engagement.