UDTR Global Rights of Nature Radar

Non-human Personas. Including Nature in the Participatory Design of Smart Cities

Identification

Public canonical key

doi:10.55612/s-5002-050-007

Authors

Martin Tomitsch · Joel Fredericks · Dan Vo · Jessica Frawley · Marcus Foth

Reported year

2021

Reported language

en

Source type

article

First detected

2026-11-09T19:14:03.270451+00:00

Last metadata observation

2026-11-09T19:14:03.270451+00:00

Last HTTP verification

Not checked

Institutions reported by the source

Queensland University of Technology · The University of Sydney

Documentary abstract — original language

For the past decades humans have been placed at the centre of designing information and communication technologies (ICT), leading to the rise in prominence of human-centred design. The field of smart cities has equally adopted notions of citizen participation as a way to ensure that technological solutions improve people’s livelihoods. However, these kinds of processes treat the urban environment as separate from nature, promoting human comfort and convenience over planetary health and wellbeing. Motivated by these growing concerns that highlight the urgency to reconsider how we define and practice participation in smart cities and in human-centred ICT solutions more broadly, this article assesses how the personas method can be adapted to include more-than-human perspectives in the design process. Based on a case study, which involved designing smart urban furniture for human and non-human use, we introduce a framework for developing and employing non-human personas. As a key element of the framework, we describe a middle-out approach for forming a coalition that can speak on behalf of the non-human species that are impacted by design decisions. We demonstrate how the framework can be used through its retrospective application on two research-led smart city projects. The article concludes with a discussion of key principles for creating and using non-human personas in design projects.

Identifiers

OPENALEX

W4226163606

DOI

10.55612/s-5002-050-007

Documentary context

Documentary family

Scholarship

Source-reported types

article

Natural entities mentioned

Species

Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.

Sources

OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2

• DOI · https://doi.org/10.55612/s-5002-050-007
• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W4226163606

Documented bibliographic relations

Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.

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• openalex:w2769035798 · CITES

4 incoming references within the detected corpus

Documentary status

Relevance pending

Library

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