# Towards a critical posthumanist perspective on participatory design

## TL;DR

This paper discusses how posthumanism can enhance participatory design by emphasizing interconnectedness in technology and society.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel posthumanist perspective to participatory design, challenging traditional humanist assumptions.

## Key findings

- Posthumanism highlights the entangled nature of human and technological experiences.
- Participatory design can benefit from acknowledging interconnectedness in technologised lives.
- Humanist ideals may limit understanding of evolving lived experiences in design processes.

## Abstract

Participatory design places a strong emphasis on human agency, user perspectives and democratic ideals of inclusivity and empowerment, and is therefore often associated with humanist principles and values. In contrast, critical posthumanism questions key humanist assumptions about the centred and singular nature of the ‘human condition’. Instead, posthumanism points to the evolving and diverse lived experiences of people and how these are transformed by (and are transforming of) culture, environment and technology. In this commentary, we explore how participatory design could benefit from a posthumanist perspective that more explicitly acknowledges the entangled and interconnected nature of our technologised lives.