More-than-human design: Toward a convivial community

More-than-human design (MTHD) is rapidly expanding across design research, bringing diverse theoretical lineages, practices, and communities into relation while generating new tensions around inclusion and legitimacy. This paper reports on a Conversation at DRS 2026 to consider how this emerging community might be sustained within and beyond the Design Research Society. Drawing on Illich’s notion of conviviality, we examine how MTHD might cultivate reciprocal, non-dominating relations among humans, practices, ways of knowing, and more-than-human participants (biotic and abiotic), without consolidating into a single definition or agenda. Parallel group discussions explored plurality and inclusion, community infrastructure, more-than-human governance, and cross-sector transformation. We identify four priorities: maintaining plurality without creating new boundaries; approaching community formation as ongoing infrastructuring; building legitimacy by working together and learning from each other; and extending more-than-human participation into institutional governance. We conclude by proposing an experimental, decentralised, and cooperative approach toward a future DRS Special Interest Group.