Attune: Reflective Play for More-than-Human Design Practice
What happens when we reconsider a design brief through the lives and relationships it affects beyond the human?
In this session, Beste Polatkal introduces Attune, a reflective serious game developed through her master’s research in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University. Attune invites designers to examine the assumptions embedded in their briefs, attend to more-than-human relationships, and reconsider whose needs and interests shape a desirable outcome.
We begin with the More-than-Human Design Compass, a tool for reflecting on the values that guide design practice. Participants use it to consider their starting assumptions before play.
Working with their own brief or a provided example, participants then move individually through selected cards from the digital version of the game: unsettling assumptions, exploring more-than-human perspectives, and reconsidering the brief. Beste introduces each phase and leaves time for independent play and reflection.
We return to the Compass afterwards to consider what changed, what remained unchanged, what became less certain, and what acting on those reflections might require. Attune’s playtests revealed a tension: designers developed different ways of perceiving more-than-human relationships without necessarily gaining more room to act. The closing discussion explores that tension and the organisational, material and social conditions that shape design agency. Sharing personal reflections is optional.
Participants are welcome to bring a short design brief from their practice, research or studies. Game materials and example briefs will be provided. Please have paper and a pen, or a preferred digital space for taking notes.
Beste Polatkal is a design researcher and practitioner based in Helsinki. Her work explores how more-than-human perspectives enter design practice, with particular attention to the organisational, material and social conditions that shape designers’ capacity to act. She works with research-through-design, serious games and participatory methods. She developed Attune during her MA in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from Middle East Technical University.