Designing temporal ecologies: reframing multispecies temporalities through design

In Western industrialised societies, the times of humans and of other species are often considered as belonging to different realms. While human life is regarded as progressive and accelerated, other species are seen as following cyclical, slow changing timescales. These narratives neglect the multiple interconnections between human and other-than-human times and contribute to increasing temporal mismatches across species, with consequences for environmental and biodiversity loss. In this paper, we use design examples generated through an interdisciplinary workshop to discuss opportunities for design to expand notions of time in more-than-human ecologies. Drawing from the Temporal Design framework and the notion of Designing for Temporal Cohabitation, we discuss how these examples incorporate a call for designers to a) draw attention to multiple ways human and other-than-human temporalities are intrinsically connected, b) expose temporal power asymmetries across ecologies, and c) design interventions that foster care-full ways of reducing impact and promoting temporal reattunements.