Editors Note: Everyone designs. While not all design work is compensated, DIY Design strives to promote awareness of design processes in everyday life. Each week, Tatum Lindquist explores a new field or theory in the design world and relates it to the UW community as a way to live with intentionality and agency.

TikToker @justinbieberthecat_ showcases Justin, a cat, using extensive vocabulary via talking buttons to communicate with his owner. Some videos show Justin using the buttons beyond basic care requests to express discontent by pressing love you and no repetitively after his owner stopped playing with him to work. While adorable, the videos receive a range of responses, including skeptics who criticize Justins cognitive comprehension of the words hes trained to use.

However, humans may not yet possess the capabilities to even fully understand the extent of animals cognitive abilities, especially given that Justin and other animals can communicate beyond human perception. Limited in perception, humans may fail to fully understand the complex experiences of animals altogether. And in the design world, where the ethics of animal participation are muddled and gray, these limitations need consideration.

Posthumanism is a collection of theories, philosophies, and worldviews, or epistemologies, having to do with understanding the more-than-human inhabitants of our world, Kristin Dew, an assistant teaching professor of human centered design & engineering, said.

More-than-human encompasses both environmental and technological inhabitants and, as with any theory applied to design, posthumanism starts with questions and reflection. For me, it means deconstructing the human from human-centered design processes and opening up space for animal experiences, especially those captive in human society.

When people think about sites of captivity with animals, they almost never think of companion animals, Karen Emmerman, a philosophy lecturer, said. People forget that we're in this sort of relationship with them where we have made a lot of choices for them.

While zoos, laboratories, or aquariums may associate more closely with captivity, pet owners decide their animals diets, living conditions, reproductive abilities, and so on. Im not here advocating for you to stop making choices for your pet, because thats neither practical nor productive. The point that posthumanist design makes is to acknowledge the reality of our relationship with animals and the greater world.

The current age we live in, known as the Anthropocene, describes the ecological time where human activity irreversibly and significantly impacts the environment. Humans and our constructs and systems impact the nonhuman world, and for pets or other captive animals, it means trading some agency for survival.

I work in a theory thats called ecofeminist theory, which is basically looking at animals and ecological issues through the lens of feminist theory, Emmerman said. And in particular, what this means for animals is that the domination and exploitation of animals [are] connected to other forms of domination and exploitation.

That joke about how some pampered pets live in better conditions than people in lower socioeconomic statuses? That inequality directly ties into the inequality of wealth created by human constructs of wealth and capitalism. That trend asking people to show who lives in their home rent-free, and creators show their pet? Thats animals living under the same economic and social contexts as humans.

The ethics of how designs participate in systems of oppression extend beyond the humans impacted; these designs impact and can impose these same constructs on nonhumans. A valid critique arises when considering if humans should never use or keep animals, given that we cant even uphold the collective rights of historically marginalized communities.

However, this critique asks for perfection, a toxic ideal rooted in white supremacy. Posthumanism, instead, asks for the willingness to be wrong and make mistakes and to be held accountable in our personal relationships with companion animals.

Something like grief and regret, that we have to be in this kind of relationship with our animals, Emmerman said. Where can we find ways to really promote their agency and give them back control in any possible way that we can give it back to them?

As the owner of an emotional support animal, I hold a breadth of complex grief, gratitude, love, and care in how I benefit emotionally from my relationship with my cat. Given the constraints of society, the answer is not simply to never keep companion animals. For me, posthumanist design means promoting the agency of my cat and designing our habitat our home with her needs and desires in mind.

It means poking at the silliness of rearranging furniture and rooms so my cat can have her own personal space. It means pushing back against the cr-zy cat person stereotype, swallowing my pride, and taking my cat out for walks in a pet stroller because she wants to go outside. In its simplest form, this do-it-yourself posthumanist design asks: How can I respect the lived experiences of captive companion animals?

Reach writer Tatum Lindquist at opinion@dailyuw.edu. Twitter: @TatumLindquist

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Captive animals include pets | Opinion | dailyuw.com