The objectives of MOVA are: 1. Build an understanding of the current state of innovative and best practices on more-than-human design. 2. Provide teachers at technology design programmes in higher education with innovative educational resources for teaching students and future practitioners on more-than-human design. 3. Share the educational resources on teaching more-than-human perspectives in technology design as an open educational resource (OER). 4. Disseminate the results of the project to professional networks to foster cross-cultural dialogues and increased capacity to teach more-than-human perspectives in technology design in higher education to achieve sustainable development. The OER supports technology design teachers (and potential others) to create conditions for students to grow into responsible designers of future technologies. The overarching learning objective of the teaching activities offered by the OER, is to develop students’ knowledge and skills to think, perform, and act as technology designers with sensitivity to more-than-human perspectives. We particularly address the SDGs 13, 14, 15, which all concern the planetary conditions, boundaries that we must learn to pay closer attention to.
The ecological crisis facing our planet has prompted the technology design research community to explore how incorporating more-than-human perspectives in technology design could contribute to a more sustainable development. This has led to myriad initiatives aimed at moving beyond human-centrism towards a post-anthropocentric view. As stated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to achieve sustainable development we need to address the three levels: people (society), planet (biosphere), and profit (economy). Up to now, people and profit seem to have been the main priority. Less effort has been spent on addressing the planetary level including more-than-human stakeholders. However, things have started to change. Since 2022, when this project was initiated, we have seen a growing body of work in theories, methodologies, and practices to design for and with more-than-human beings (e.g., animals, plants, ecosystems) and more-than-human things (e.g. data, IoT, and AI). Alongside this development, we also see an increasing number of universities offering courses on more-than-human design. Still, addressing more-than-human perspectives in technology design education is still rather rare.