Patterns and Opportunities for the Design of Human-Plant Interaction
Michelle Chang, Chenyi Shen, Aditi Maheshwari, Andreea Danielescu, Lining Yao · Designing Interactive Systems Conference · 2022
The emergence of living organisms as entities in HCI presents an opportunity to collaborate with other beings through technology, align interspecies motives, and nurture greater empathy for the non-human. Plants are particularly interesting because of their natural ability to sense and respond to environmental stimuli and potential to enable more sustainable interaction design. However, due to the cross-disciplinary and emerging nature of this space, there is a need to identify overarching patterns and discern opportunities for unifying future research. This paper aims to systematically analyze existing Human-Plant Interaction (HPI) works by presenting a survey of projects across HCI, art/design, architecture, and bioengineering. We identify core design paradigms along the dimensions of HPI System Architecture, Plant I/O Coupling, Plant Interfacing and Manipulation Techniques, Application Context, and Scale. From these themes, we assemble a framework for HCI practitioners to approach HPI, and discuss opportunities and open questions for future exploration.