What Comes After Noticing?: Reflections on Noticing Solar Energy and What Came Next

Many design researchers have been exploring what it means to take a more-than-human design approach in their practice. In particular, the technique of “noticing” has been explored as a way of intentionally opening a designer's awareness to more-than-human worlds. In this paper we present autoethnographic accounts of our own efforts to notice solar energy. Through two studies we reflect on the transformative potential of noticing the more-than-human, and the difficulties in trying to sustain this change in oneself and one's practice. We propose that noticing can lead to activating exiled capacities within the noticer, relational abilities that lie dormant in each of us. We also propose that emphasising sense-fullness in and through design can be helpful in the face of broader psychological or societal boundaries that block paths towards more relational ways of living with non-humans.