1 Introduction

The term "seeing" is utilized in various fields such as philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, media studies, art criticism, sociology, and psychoanalysis, to denote the act of perceiving or what is perceived by individuals. It often carries a philosophical connotation regarding our perception of things. Since the relationship between objects is established through the act of seeing one another, we refer to the eyes through which an object perceives another object as "seeing." Recognizing seeing as a fundamental aspect of the creative process is not a novel concept. Conversely, seeing is typically an intuitive act performed by designers during the creation process. For humans, seeing is indispensable for obtaining information from the real world and responding to the circumstances of our lives. However, due to the prevalence of seeing, we often perceive the world unconsciously, and the demands of our fast-paced lives often cause us to overlook the significance of seeing. Building upon the aforementioned perspective, seeing goes beyond being a mere means of gathering information; it is an act of discovering new insights from multiple viewpoints and acquiring profound knowledge. Furthermore, it serves as a crucial catalyst for individuals to lead more fulfilling lives by fostering opportunities for reflection. Theories on creative problem-solving strongly advocate for the benefits of adopting multiple perspectives. The development of innovative digital platforms holds the potential to revolutionize the human act of seeing, offering new possibilities for transformation.

This paper introduces Posthuman CollectiveEyes, a digital platform that enhances the human act of visual perception by facilitating the sharing of collective human and nonhuman viewpoints. By incorporating diverse viewpoints, the platform not only enriches the act of human seeing, but also amplifies human thinking capabilities. The emergence of artificial intelligence has sparked interest in human augmentation within the posthuman framework [54], which forms the basis for our platform's name and concept. Posthuman CollectiveEyes embraces a posthuman approach by specifically delving into perspectives that extend beyond the human viewpoint. In our current implementation, Posthuman CollectiveEyes incorporates viewpoints not only from humans, but also from non-human entities such as animals and machines, offering unique and diverse viewpoints beyond those of humans. It constructs posthuman viewpoints by amalgamating these diverse viewpoints. These diverse viewpoints not only enhance human visual perception but also foster transformative thinking, prompting us to reassess the nature of being human and gain deeper insights. Previous work has focused on enhancing human visual perception, such as systems combining first-person and third-person perspectives [44] or providing a user with a drone's viewpoint [39], with the goal of developing technologies that offer posthuman viewpoints. In contrast, the goal of Posthuman CollectiveEyes differs from these approaches. It collects diverse human and nonhuman viewpoints and presents them simultaneously using mixed reality technologies as posthuman viewpoints. Mixed reality technologies have gained significant popularity, and ongoing studies, exemplified by [65], are focused on exploring how these technologies can enhance human augmentation and advance the postman approach. What distinguishes the Posthuman CollectiveEyes approach is its unique integration of virtuality by carefully controlling a degree of transparency, enabling a seamless blending of virtual elements, such as superimposed viewpoints, with our surroundings. This innovative approach allows multiple viewpoints to be overlaid onto a user's current viewpoint without interrupting his/her ongoing activities.

Emerging technologies like Posthuman CollectiveEyes have become deeply intertwined with society, making it increasingly challenging to assess their societal impact and explore their potential applications using conventional approaches based on the human-centered perspective. This paper examines the role of the more-than-human perspective in human-computer interaction research, drawing upon the design experience of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. The concept of enhancing the act of human visual perception by incorporating collective human and nonhuman viewpoints to realize posthuman abilities represents a novel idea. Extracting knowledge solely from ordinary users using the conventional human-centered perspective proves challenging. Hence, this study aims to explore the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes by employing the more-than-human perspective [29, 55, 59, 79], which embraces a material or nonhuman viewpoint.

This study especially adopts a design approach that incorporates the affordances of digital platforms based on the more-than-human perspective. The more-than-human perspective is predominantly utilized in the social sciences to analyze the impact of technologies on people's actions and decision-making within organizations and societies [97, 98]. This perspective finds extensive discussions in sociomateriality studies [58, 59, 79] influenced by actor-network theory, which considers humans and technologies as equals without distinction [55]. Within these approaches, affordances are defined as the interrelationships between the world and technologies that offer people the potential for certain actions [26].

By employing the more-than-human perspective, we can enhance our understanding of the current digital platforms, bringing attention to aspects that may be difficult to discern through the human-centered perspective and shedding light on underlying elements that are not immediately visible [25, 90]. As depicted in Fig. 1, digital platforms are abstract and cannot be directly perceived. Consequently, stakeholders often struggle to grasp the capabilities and opportunities they offer. However, by illustrating the affordances and demonstrating their impact on stakeholders, we can increase the likelihood of considering the digital platform's potential opportunities [87]. Furthermore, explicitly presenting new affordances can contribute to clarifying the semantics of the digital platforms [88]. Gregor identifies five interconnected types of theories: (I) theories for analysis, (II) theories for explanation, (III) theories for prediction, (IV) theories for explanation and prediction, and (V) theories for design and action [33]. The traditional use of the more-than-human perspective, as illustrated above, can be categorized as Type II theories, which offer explanations without aiming for precise predictions. In contrast, the application of the more-than-human perspective in this study aligns with Type V theories, as it provides explicit guidelines for methods, techniques, principles of form and function, etc., to construct artifacts. This departure from the existing more-than-human perspective represents a significant development.

Fig. 1
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Digital platforms from the more-than-human perspective

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This paper offers three key contributions. Firstly, it aims to elucidate the design process of Posthuman CollectiveEyes by adopting the more-than-human perspective. While previous studies have utilized the more-than-human perspective to analyze the role of social media within corporate organizations, there has been a lack of discussion on how this perspective can aid in designing novel digital platforms. As demonstrated in Section 4.4, this study showcases how employing a design approach that extracts affordances from the more-than-human perspective enables the identification of crucial abstractions provided by digital platforms, thus facilitating improved design of such platforms.

Secondly, this paper presents the foundational concept and various use cases of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. While previous research has focused on developing services that enable the sharing of a limited number of perspectives, there has been no proposal for a digital platform like Posthuman CollectiveEyes, which facilitates the sharing of viewpoints from a diverse collective and presents them as posthuman viewpoints. The realization of a digital platform that enhances the human act of seeing is deemed highly innovative in this context. Moreover, a distinctive feature of Posthuman CollectiveEyes is its exploration of a posthuman approach to collecting diverse viewpoints. This approach encompasses not only human perspectives but also nonhuman perspectives, including those of animals, machines, and even superhumans. This unique perspective offers abundant potential beyond existing approaches in terms of opportunities. Additionally, we showcase the implementation of a prototype for Posthuman CollectiveEyes to demonstrate the feasibility of our novel approach. Although the current prototype system only incorporates minimal functionalities for extracting insights presented in Section 5.

The final contribution pertains to our utilization of experience prototyping and annotated portfolios to consolidate our design experiences with the more-than-human perspective into knowledge and comprehensively explore the potential opportunities offered by Posthuman CollectiveEyes. We demonstrate that experience prototyping and scenario-based methods hold promise for gathering knowledge, while annotated portfolios serve as a valuable tool for documenting and holistically analyzing this knowledge by integrating the perspectives of designers, experts, and users. Traditionally, when showcasing the feasibility of a novel digital platform, most studies have primarily focused on its usability or performance. In contrast, our approach centers on extracting the potential opportunities and challenges associated with the digital platform. Through the utilization of derived affordances, we argue that the more-than-human perspective holds significance in constructing novel digital platforms with diverse potential opportunities and in effectively communicating the roles of complex platforms among various stakeholders, as illustrated in Section 5.

This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides an introduction to the background of our study. The aim of this section is to provide essential context for understanding our approaches and the current state of the art in related areas. Section 3 outlines the derivation of five use cases for Posthuman CollectiveEyes, which are based on the findings from a user study conducted using the workshop format. These use cases serve as a foundation for deriving the affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes from the more-than-human perspective, as presented in Section 4. Section 4 outlines our design process for Posthuman CollectiveEyes, with a specific focus on embracing the more-than-human perspective. Additionally, we present the successful implementation of a prototype system to exemplify the feasibility of our innovative approach. Furthermore, we put forth potential future directions aimed at surpassing the current limitations of the implementation, thus paving the way for integrating Posthuman CollectiveEyes seamlessly into our everyday existence. In Section 5, we present a comprehensive analysis of our findings from the more-than-human perspective using annotated portfolios. This section reveals the diverse opportunities offered by Posthuman CollectiveEyes. Section 6 focuses on the discussion, limitations, and future challenges of this study. The purpose of this section is to explore how the proposed approach can be further enhanced by incorporating popular concepts from the social sciences. Finally, in Section 7, we present our conclusions, summarizing the key results of this research.

2 Background and related work

In this section, we provide an overview of the relevant literature that informed our study. Sections 2.1 and 2.2 highlight two key aspects that played a crucial role in inspiring the conception of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. These aspects are instrumental in exploring the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes during the initial phase of our study. The subsequent sections cover three main topics. The first topic delves into existing studies that aim to enhance human visual perception through the utilization of information technologies and their relationship to Posthuman CollectiveEyes. The second topic focuses on the concept based on the more-than-human perspective of affordance, which serves as a fundamental concept in our study. We examine various studies on affordance and highlight the unique perspective our approach offers compared to existing perspectives. Lastly, we discuss the methodologies employed in our investigation of Posthuman CollectiveEyes' diverse opportunities. We provide an overview of these methodologies and demonstrate how they have been tailored to suit our specific research objectives.

2.1 Enhancing human visual abilities

The human eye and ear have evolved over a very long time. It is important to develop humans with technologies because the speed of human biological evolution cannot keep up with technological evolution. In particular, human visual capability has been enhanced with various technologies at different points in time. In this section, we briefly introduce the enhancements to human visual capability based on technology.

Telescopes and microscopes have made it possible to see distant objects invisible to the human eye and to see the microscopic world [21]. The telescope, developed in the 17th century, refracts light through a combination of lenses, making distant objects appear closer and extends the distance of human vision. Telescopes were useful in navigation and were used to observe things at a distance. The development of the telescope also made it possible for humans to observe celestial objects and had a great impact on our understanding of the world. During the same period, the microscope was also developed. The microscope extended human vision by enabling us to see microscopic objects at a large magnification. The development of the microscope had a great influence on the scientific discovery of microorganisms and cells.

In the 19th century, the camera was developed [83]. By recording landscapes and portraits as they were seen, the camera made it possible to see the past and extended human vision to the time axis. Early cameras took hours to take pictures, but today we can take high-quality and color pictures in an instant. Recording what we see with a camera leaves physical evidence of our memories, and the photographs permit recalling past events. In addition, we can now share what we have seen with others. In other words, it has become possible to see oneself not only from one's own first-person point of view but also from the third-person point of view of others [105]. In this way, the camera has given us a new way of observing the world by involving the viewpoint of other people.

Since 2010, virtual reality (VR) technologies have developed rapidly and are becoming popular among the general public. VR technologies allow us to perceive a virtual space as a reality created by a computer. VR technologies have enabled us to subjectively observe a world that is not real. In addition, the development of the 360° camera has made it possible to capture images and videos that are not restricted by the angle of view. By viewing images from a 360° camera in a VR environment, a new way of observing the world has become possible in which humans can see the direction they want to see from a perspective that is not their own [104].

People see the world with two eyes, while the perspective of information processing using a camera sees the world from a single viewpoint. Therefore, the visual information presented by information technology is less informative than that seen by the human eye, and the meaning that humans can perceive from the world is likely to be diminished. To compensate for the single point of view’s linear perspective, various techniques, such as reverse perspective and aerial perspective, have been used in paintings [3]. For example, current paintings attempt to eliminate the unnaturalness of a single perspective by incorporating multiple viewpoints, as introduced by CézanneFootnote 1. The extension of human seeing has contributed to the development of various sciences by broadening human horizons to see things that cannot be seen with the natural eye. New developments in the ability to see will continue to be a driving force of the development of humankind in the future.

As demonstrated above, humanity has consistently strived to enhance our visual perception throughout history. The advent of diverse technologies has significantly enriched our lives. Continued advancement in developing new technologies to expand our visual capabilities is crucial for our future progress. Posthuman CollectiveEyes represents an extension of these technologies, yet its full potential remains unknown. The objective of this study is to unveil the means by which we can explore the potential opportunities presented by the emerging new technology.

2.2 Art, metacognition and seeing

Seeing is not only a means of gathering information, but is also essential for us to live better lives by noticing new things and providing opportunities to think deeply. For example, Schön argues that in product design and service design, it is important to look at things carefully and think reflectively to create better products [92]. Art gives viewers a deeper understanding of reality by providing an unusual perspective on the everyday. Shklovsky argues that the purpose of art is to make reality different [93], and Bell argues that making everyday life different is important for understanding the design of everyday objects [7].

Carr and his colleagues further theorize that being able to think from different perspectives is a fundamental building block of metacognition and enhances the development and implementation of cognitive processes [16]. Multiple perspectives serve as the basis for strategic analysis, identification, synthesis, and integration of information in complex decision-making. According to Flavell, metacognition consists of both active monitoring and regulation of cognitive processes [27]. The experience of metacognition includes the use of metacognitive strategies or regulation [12]. Thus, it can be argued that people who are more multifaceted are able to see problems from more sides and, thus, tend to reflect on and evaluate their own ideas and judge which are more effective or relevant. As a result, we expect that such people have better understandings of problems and are more likely to produce more differentiated solutions.

Picasso and Black were the founders of Cubism in the early 20th century. Whereas conventional figurative painting was based on a single point of view, Picasso and Black painted by grasping objects from multiple viewpoints and reconstructing them on the canvas [85]. They abandoned the single-focus perspective of the Renaissance by extreme deconstruction, simplification, and abstraction of form. This use of multiple perspectives has become characteristic of the Cubist style, but Black and Picasso did not explain why they adopted this approach. One popular contemporary interpretation is that the use of multiple perspectives provides a higher degree of truth and accuracy than the traditional naturalistic style that had dominated art since the Renaissance. Rivière, a writer and art critic, argued that a linear perspective creates unrealistic distortions [89]. For example, if a person stands in the middle of a railroad track, the tracks appear to converge and meet at a point, even though they are actually parallel.

Photomontage is a work of art created by cutting, gluing, rearranging, and overlapping two or more photographs to create a new image, thus creating a composite photograph. Hockney attempts to provide the human eye with a new way of seeing by taking photographs from multiple angles and placing them on the same canvas at the same time, as if he were a cubist, and using inverse perspective, which is the opposite of the widely used perspective drawing. [63]. Montage is a film technique in which multiple fragments of images are combined to create a single continuous scene. In particular, the filmmaker Eisenstein's montage is more associated with auteurism and leftist ideology, considered for shaking the audience's stable everyday life and prompting them to actively question it. Eisenstein's theory of montage was an attempt to go beyond a mere methodological approach to visual form to grasp and develop the essence of the visual medium itself as an idea [22].

The preceding discussion highlights the fundamental role of perception in our everyday lives, and how art serves to expand our capacity for seeing. While technologies like movies have extended the act of visual perception and introduced novel experiences, information technologies go beyond providing new experiences and exert a profound influence on human cognitive capabilities. Posthuman CollectiveEyes, too, enhances our perceptual abilities by enabling us to view the world from multiple perspectives. A thorough exploration of the arts presents promising avenues for augmenting our perceptual faculties, and the aforementioned art-based approaches offer valuable insights that contributed to the conception of Posthuman CollectiveEyes.

2.3 Unleashing posthuman visual abilities with information technologies

Extensive research has been conducted on enhancing human visual capabilities and delving into the potential opportunities of posthuman vision through the utilization of information technologies [86]. For example, Jack-In Head is a concept for augmenting human abilities and the human presence [46]. This concept allows for immersive connections between humans and other artifacts or between humans. Procyk investigated a paired first-person video exchange with a head-mounted camera and a mobile screen [84]. This system showed that paired mutual video streaming achieved a parallel experience in a public place. KinecDrone allows us to enhance our physical sensation of flying in the sky [39] by sending the video it captures to a user's smart glasses. The user has the sensation of flying in the sky, viewing the scene captured by the flying drone while remaining in place; thus the user feels as if he or she is truly flying. The method of accessing other people's viewpoints used in Posthuman CollectiveEyes is similar to the approaches described above, but Posthuman CollectiveEyes is different in that it considers the possibility of using the viewpoints of a larger number of unrelated people.

Several approaches have been proposed to capture a remote view of the real world using a robot's point of view rather than human vision. A robot remotely located at a tourist attraction would be able to move around the location on behalf of a user [14], giving users the ability to access any location without having to physically go there [99]. Furthermore, the use of mobile robots is becoming more common when people cannot attend meetings. These robots perform a variety of activities on behalf of a user. This approach is particularly effective when working in hazardous areas; however, it is usually expensive to install a large number of robots. The above mentioned approaches propose several different methods to capture machines’ viewpoints. Thus, the approach can be used in Posthuman CollectiveEyes as underlying tools for collecting machines’ viewpoints.

In a virtual world where individuals control a 3D model character, they typically utilize two primary visual perspectives: the first-person perspective (FPP) and the third-person perspective (TPP). When employing the FPP, the person assumes the viewpoint of the character, perceiving the virtual environment through the character's eyes. Conversely, the TPP situates the person around the character, granting a broader view that encompasses the character's appearance. In a study by Kambe et al. [44], a system is proposed that enables the simultaneous utilization of both FPP and TPP through the integration of webcams and a head-mounted display. Current Posthuman CollectiveEyes does not consider both FPP and TPP as simultaneously presented multiple viewpoints, but the above mentioned studies offers a good new direction to enhance Posthuman CollectiveEyes.

At the same time, a new type of ubiquitous mixed reality called crossreality has emerged from the fusion of a networked sensor and actuator infrastructure and a shared online virtual world. Crossreality makes it possible to construct a new type of mixed reality, called ubiquitous/pervasive computing, by fusing the real world using sensors and projection technologies with a virtual reality that depicts a world that does not exist in reality, making it possible to move between the two worlds [81]. Posthuman CollectiveEyes offers a new way to develop crossreality where a user can select multiple viewpoints shown and view them as if they were his or her own viewpoints, and it is necessary to consider the back and forth between the two realities.

The recent availability of personal devices with built-in video cameras, such as smartphones, high-resolution photo cameras, action cameras, and other wearables, has enabled users to capture, store, and share their daily lives in the form of photos and videos. With social web platforms, 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and more than 1 billion hours of YouTube video are viewed every dayFootnote 2. Wearable video cameras that can be attached to clothing, such as Google ClipsFootnote 3 and NarrativeClip 2Footnote 4, and smart glasses with built-in video cameras, such as Spectacles by SnapchatFootnote 5, have also popularized a phenomenon known as "lifelog", a new form of personal big data [34]. A lifelog is a personal record of one's daily life in a varying amount of detail, for a variety of purposes. The record contains a comprehensive dataset of a human's activities. The data could be used to increase knowledge about how people live their lives. Posthuman CollectiveEyes is similar to lifelog in that it acquires people's viewpoints on a daily basis; however, its purpose differs greatly from lifelog because it aims to provide a service that does not exist in the past by showing multiple collected viewpoints simultaneously.

2.4 Affordance

The term affordance was first defined by Gibson, who discussed the possibilities of action available in an environment [32]. Gibson argues that affordances exist in relation to the ability of actors to act. The use of the affordance paradigm was popularized by Norman, who defined affordances as aspects of the design of artifacts through his research on design and human-computer interaction [77]. According to Norman, the properties of an artifact inform how the artifact is used. Later researchers argued that affordances emerge relationally through the direct interaction of technologies and users and relate to the processes of adaptation that shape the actions people take with technologies [30, 97]. In other words, affordances, as a relational concept, are understood not as properties of the world or technology itself but as potential interactions between them. The value of considering the relational concept of technology affordances as distinct from both technology functions and human purposes is that they help explain general empirical observations. In line with contemporary thinking, it is useful to elaborate on affordances further [98].

The concept of affordance has recently been introduced to analyze the impact of new combinations of technologies and organizational capabilities on organizational innovation, forms, and functions based on the more-than-human perspective [60, 100]. With regard to the organizational use of information technologies, "the concept of technology affordance refers to the possibility of action, i.e., what an individual or organization with a particular purpose can do with a technology or information system.” [69]. Thus, affordances are emergent properties of social systems. As such, affordances are neither properties of the technology itself nor of the society that uses it, but given their respective properties, they constitute opportunities for action that exist at the intersection of these two entities. The above definition emphasizes that affordances exist when the possibility of action is available, yet the recognition of affordances is required for organizations to take action.

Treem and his colleagues examined the use of social media in organizations through the more-than-human perspective and identified four affordances from the lens of the so-called “material agency” of technology: visibility, editability, persistence, and association [97]. For example, the affordance of persistence allows content to grow and knowledge and communication to be maintained over time. Additionally, the editability of social media allows for more purposeful communication. In other words, asynchronous text-based conversations allow users to improve the quality of information, target content, and tailor personal expression. Affordances allow individuals to connect with other people and content, support social connections, and engage in relevant or emergent connections.

Introducing the concept of affordance from the more-than-human perspective provides a fresh framework for understanding our interconnected world, where technologies play a mediating role. While traditional approaches to affordance analysis focus on examining social phenomena in highly mediated technological contexts, our approach aims to utilize the affordance concept in the design of digital platforms deeply ingrained in our daily lives. By employing the affordance concept, we gain a clearer understanding of the relationship between digital platforms and their diverse stakeholders. As a result, designers of digital platforms can explore the potential opportunities offered by their digital artifacts based on affordances.

2.5 Experience prototyping and annotated portfolio

Buchenau and Suri coined the term experience prototyping [13]. User experience is a summary of a person's feelings, emotions, perceptions, and psychological responses resulting from interactions with a product, system, or service that may occur before, during, or after such interaction in a particular context [64]. In prototyping user experience, prototypes are intended to provide an understanding of actual experiences so that designers can contemplate them before the product or service comes into existence. Prototyping is an appropriate way to maintain the designed user experience throughout the development process. With today's advanced digital services, it is difficult to develop a complete prototype to explore the various aspects of the target. The tools and methods used for experience prototyping enhance the willingness to experience subtle differences between respective design solutions. For example, paper prototyping (e.g., [94]), a well-known example of low-fidelity prototyping, can benefit greatly from advanced technologies such as augmented reality because it provides a much cheaper alternative without developing an actual expensive complete system [76]).

As shown in [71], instead of choosing between low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping, both can be combined in investigating different aspects of design considerations. In [61], the author states that "the best prototype is the one that is the simplest and most efficient way to visualize and measure the possibilities and limitations of a design idea.” One promising approach is to build multiple fragments of the user experience and develop various experience prototypes to investigate each user experience. Since the fidelity of the prototypes is a cost issue, it is possible to develop each prototype suitable for investigating each experience. Experience prototyping focuses on implementing a representation of the designed user experience that is independent of the underlying technologies with the goal of understanding, exploring, communicating, evaluating, maintaining, and actively engaging the audience in this experience throughout the design process. Experience prototyping extends the definition of prototyping [64].

Despite recent advances in knowledge framing and the discovery of more effective ways to transfer knowledge within the research community, there is a need for a better understanding of how design generates new knowledge. As design relates to social innovation [62] and the personalized manufacture of digital artifacts for social impact, it is essential to explore strategies and methods for understanding how digital artifacts are designed [60, 70]. In museums, curators arrange different artworks so that when audiences see them simultaneously in the same place, they can recognize the essential ideological claims implicitly represented by the works [23]. This example is useful for examining the potential opportunities presented by artifacts, especially digital artifacts, that are inherently very complex.

The annotated portfolio method proposed by Gaver and Bowers provides a way to articulate new knowledge gained from research-oriented design practices. They argue that (1) the use of the annotated portfolio method may serve a more valuable role beyond a single artifact as an alternative to more formalized theory in concept development and practical guidance of design. (2) If a single design occupies a point in a design space, a collection (portfolio) of designs by the same or related designers establishes a domain in that space. (3) Comparing the various individual items makes it possible to articulate the designer's opinion about the area of the design, its relevant dimensions, and the relevant place and configuration to adopt those dimensions [31]. The annotated portfolio method provides a means of revealing the similarities and differences that exist in a collection of artifacts [11]. This method originally required selecting a collection of artifacts, finding appropriate representations for them, and adding simple text and image annotations. This method provides a way to publicly communicate the extracted insights and knowledge. Gaver and Bowers emphasize that there are a variety of ways to create an annotated portfolio [31].

In this study, we utilized the experience prototyping method and the annotated portfolio method to uncover the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes from the more-than-human perspective. As detailed in Section 5, our approach differs from the original experience prototyping method. We explicitly incorporated scenarios where participants assume roles and engage with working prototypes. This approach streamlines the experimental process, enabling us to extract knowledge more efficiently. Moreover, our utilization of the annotated method has been enhanced compared to the original annotated portfolio method. Our approach involved creating annotated portfolios with a focus on two key aspects: thematic and reflective. This comprehensive approach allows us to gain a broader understanding of potential opportunities and challenges through the documentation process. By employing these methods, we were able to effectively extract and explore the diverse opportunities offered by Posthuman CollectiveEyes, taking into account the more-than-human perspective. Our approach not only reduces the efforts required to conduct experiments but also enhances our awareness of potential opportunities and challenges through the documentation process.

3 An overview of collective sharing human seeing and its use case analysis

Based on our experience with digital platforms, Posthuman CollectiveEyes, which we propose in the next section, is a digital platform newly constructed that enables eye sharing [48, 49]. First, we give an overview of the digital platform that enables collective human sight sharing. Next, to design Posthuman CollectiveEyes, which shows multiple viewpoints from human and nonhuman on a user's current viewpoint, we first held a workshop to understand what was possible by sharing human and nonhuman sight, where the participants discussed various use cases. The purpose of this section is to clarify the typical use cases of Posthuman CollectiveEyes based on the discussions in the workshop.

3.1 A digital platform for collectively sharing human sight

We have been conducting research on CollectiveEyes and CollectiveEars, which are digital platforms that enable people around the world to collect and share their visual and auditory information [48, 49]. CollectiveEyes and CollectiveEars capture what people say and hear using cameras and microphones worn by each user, store them in a distributed storage system, and provide them to users so that they will be able to see what others are seeing as if they were seeing it themselves and hear what they are hearing. Previous studies have not sufficiently examined the possibility of simultaneously providing users with what they see and hear from the collected data [48, 49]. In this study, we consider not only human viewpoints but also nonhuman viewpoints as targets of collection/sharing and discuss the potential opportunities of simultaneously showing users what other humans and nonhumans see. In digital games, sports games, artworks, etc., multiple perspectives are provided to support decision-making, to better observe situations, and to make people aware of things they were unaware of [85]; the significance of using these mechanisms on a daily basis has not been sufficiently explored. Posthuman CollectiveEyes shares the traditional notion of sharing people's viewpoints but also asks the following questions: How do we present these viewpoints? How can these viewpoints be used? In Posthuman CollectiveEyes, by selecting one of the multiple viewpoints, it is possible to view the selected viewpoints as one's own. In such a case, it is important to understand the current environment in which one exists even while viewing another person's viewpoint, and it is necessary to introduce crossreality [81], which manages multiple realities.

3.2 Use case extraction from discussions in an alien workshop

We held a workshop with specializing in human-computer interaction to identify the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. We, the proposers of the basic idea of sharing people's sight and hearing, did not expect the workshop’s specific outcome. The reason for developing the workshop format is that we judged it important to derive various ideas from discussions on the use and presence of alien perspectives, as opposed to conventional methods, by having multiple participants freely discuss and stimulate one another’s creativity with their different ideas.

We named this workshop the "Alien Workshop" and divided the 28 participants into 5 groups (Group A: 3 males, 2 females; Group B: 5 males; Group C: 6 males; Group D: 3 males, 3 females; and Group E: 5 males, 1 female,), where each member freely exchanged opinions on the themes described below. Workshop participants were asked to pretend to be aliens as nonhuman beings. The participants discussed how aliens could use their ability to see the viewpoints of other people and organisms, which they have possessed since birth. We chose this approach because we expected that by considering the capability of Posthuman CollectiveEyes as a biological ability of aliens, the participants would express their opinions on novel services that were not extensions of existing services. After the discussion, the participants wrote their personal opinions on each topic.

The following explanation was given at the beginning of the Alien Workshop.

“You are an alien. Aliens have two abilities that humans do not have. The first is the ability to see not only one’s own viewpoint but also the viewpoint of other aliens. The second is the ability to enter a different space called exhibition, where you can see the different viewpoints of aliens in the space at the same time.”

Next, each group discussed each of the two abilities that aliens have, the situations in which they would use the abilities, and the viewpoints that they would like to see using the abilities. From the opinions of each participant, we extracted the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes and from them derived the five use cases: Supergrasping Worlds, Defamiliarizing Everyday, Photomontage Lifelog, Happy Friends, and Serendipity. Supergrasping World allows users to view the world from multiple viewpoints. Defamilializing Everyday makes it possible to show something slightly different from the real world by interweaving it with the real world. Happy Friends allows a user to see the viewpoints of acquaintances who are in the same emotional state as the user. Photomontage Lifelog allows users to show their happy memories of daily life. Serendipity developed on CollectiveEyes allows us to randomly display various views of the world, and the purpose of this use case is to give the user serendipity. More details about these use cases are explained in Appendix 1, and the use cases are adopted to discuss the affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes in the next section.

4 Designing posthuman collectiveeyes digital platform based on the more-than-human perspective

In this section, we describe a design approach for Posthuman CollectiveEyes. The objective of this study is to explore potential opportunities of the Posthuman CollectiveEyes digital platform, which is built from the idea of collectively sharing the viewpoints of others and is not designed from clear requirements to solve specific problems. For this purpose, we create the paper prototypes of the five use cases presented in Appendix 1 and extract the aspect categories from these development experiences. Next, using the categories as a guideline, we derive five affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes and explain our design approach to identify the abstractions offered by the platform from the more-than-human perspective. Finally, we show the implementation of the current prototype.

4.1 Overview

We employ the more-than-human perspective to design Posthuman CollectiveEyes, where the potential opportunities are not clear. According to the research on affordances related to various digital platforms, such as social media introduced in Section 2, the role of the more-than-human perspective is to provide various stakeholders with opportunities to think about the impact of invisible digital platforms on people and society using the abstract concept of affordances in various social contexts.

All objects in the world, whether physical or virtual, have materiality. Materiality is defined as the arrangement of the physical or digital material of a technological artifact into a particular form that is important to a user and that persists across time and place [57]. The objects have material agency because they have material properties that induce certain actions but make it difficult to induce other actions [79]. The more-than-human perspective allows designers to observe the world from the aspect of materiality. As a result, they understand the need to consider the symbiotic relationship between the actions of the stakeholders and the potential opportunities of the technologies in each situation, which enables the integration of the individual actions of the technologies and the stakeholders. Thus, it is possible to provide a valuable perspective that avoids the divergence between users and technology artifacts [70, 77]. By treating the interaction between human behavior and the potential opportunities of technologies as the unit of analysis, the more-than-human perspective provides a language for understanding digital platforms and their role in influencing the processes of thinking and acting on those platforms [26]. In our study, we adopt the concept of affordance from the more-than-human perspective drawing inspiration from previous work such as [60, 97, 100]. As defined by Turvey, affordances can be thought of as properties of the environment in the sense of characteristics of what is latent or manifest in a particular situation [100]. In other words, affordances can be defined as the interrelationship between the intentions of actors and the potential of technologies to provide the possibility of a particular behavior. An important aspect of this definition is that it complements perception as a set of functions from the actor's standpoint, constructing affordances as properties or possibilities that have not yet been realized and clarifying potential opportunities for inducing actions.

Our use of the term “affordance” allows us to consider the relationship between technologies and the world. As Orlikowski claims, technology is a part of the world, intricately woven into society and inseparable, as shown in the upper part of Fig. 2 [79]. She introduces the concept of agential cut proposed by Barad [6] to separate technologies from the world and make them discussable. Since there are many ways to separate technologies from the world, various kinds of agential cuts can be defined. However, how to specifically define agential cut has not been discussed, and it is difficult to conceptualize the relationship between technologies and the world. Therefore, as Leonardi argues (bottom of Fig. 2), we will discuss the affordances based on the definition that separates technologies from the world, defining them as the interface between the world and technologies against the backdrop of the idea of critical realism [59].

Fig. 2
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Definition of affordance in this study

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In this study, affordances are considered not the properties of a technology but as the relations between technologies and the world. In other words, affordances are generated from all the relationships among people, situations, and technologies. This definition of affordance differs from Norman's human-centered approach, which is widely referred to in the HCI community as described in Section 2, in that it considers that materials visually guide human behavior. The major difference is that by viewing affordances from the aspect of technologies, which are material, rather than from the human side, it is possible to consider how technologies induce humans, society and the environment. As a result, it is possible to consider the design of technologies from the aspect of how technologies as a material should construct affordances and how the affordances perform on humans and society.

4.2 Creating paper prototypes and extracting aspects

To extract the necessary knowledge for deriving affordances, we constructed paper prototypes for the five use cases presented in Appendix 1. Figure 3 shows the paper prototypes of the respective use cases. The paper prototypes are realized by simulating the viewpoints of various people using the photographs taken by the authors with their cameras of several scenes typical of each use case. Here, a) is the paper prototype of Supergrasping Worlds, b) and c) are the paper prototypes of Defamiliarizing Everyday, d) and e) are the paper prototypes of Photomontage Lifelog, f) and e) are the paper prototypes of Happy f) and e) is the paper prototype of Happy Friends, and h) and i) are the paper prototype of Serendipity.

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Paper prototypes of use cases

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Next, we coded the various facets of these paper prototypes based on our experience of building and manipulating them. We then examined the codes using affinity diagrams [66] to classify them into aspects. Facets represent perceived functionalities of these paper prototypes, while aspects are categories used to group these facets. These inductively extracted aspects serve as guidelines to narrow down the search space for deriving affordances in the next section. Figure 4 provides a summary of the analysis.

Fig. 4
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Facets and aspects extracted from use cases

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As depicted in Fig. 4, we have categorized the extracted facets into three aspects, which are essential for Posthuman CollectiveEyes to shape the behavior and thoughts of users. These aspects include the viewpoint display aspect, which pertains to how Posthuman CollectiveEyes presents viewpoints to the user; the viewpoint selection aspect, which relates to how Posthuman CollectiveEyes chooses viewpoints that align with the user's current interests; and the viewpoint management aspect, which involves how Posthuman CollectiveEyes handles the collection and organization of viewpoints from individuals.

As noted by Faraj regarding the characteristics of technologies, the aspects that abstract the characteristics of the technologies are not necessarily appropriate for discussing the effects of technologies on humans, society, and the environment [26]. Therefore, it is preferable to use affordances, which are relational relationships between technologies and the world (human/society/environment), to discuss the impact. The aspects of a technology can serve as a guideline for considering the relationship between the world and each aspect provided by the technology. This is because digital platforms have various relations with the world, and it is possible to discuss the derivation of affordances by unraveling these complex relations. In the next section, we explain how we extracted the affordances through the aspects derived above.

4.3 Extracting affordances

In this section, we employ retroduction to derive the affordances that constitute Posthuman CollectiveEyes, based on the findings from the construction of the paper prototypes and the extracted aspects presented in Section 4.2. Retroduction involves abstract and creative thinking and is one of the four basic types of reasoning, alongside deduction, induction, and abduction [19]. It is also closely associated with discovery and invention, as it allows for the exploration of underlying mechanisms that can explain observed empirical events. Retroduction refers to the process of deducing the underlying mechanisms that could logically account for observed empirical events. A retroductive argument proposes an explanation to account for an observed fact or set of facts. The persuasiveness of a retroductive explanation lies in its ability to transform a salient and unusual event into something ordinary and predictable. Therefore, retroductive reasoning is generally considered the weakest form of reasoning. However, unlike deduction and induction, retroduction generates new ideas, some of which can be validated through induction and proven to be true. Thus, retroductive reasoning is particularly valuable as it enables us to learn more about the world around us.

Leonardi, who defines the affordance concept as a basis of this study, argues that affordances are impossible to observe directly using humans or machines according to critical realism [59]. Therefore, a human-centered approach in which only objects observable by a user are the subject of discussion may distort the exploration of the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. Therefore, we decided to use the paper prototypes of the use cases and extract affordances from the insights with these prototypes through retroduction. The insights discovered by retroduction in the process of creating paper prototypes and manipulating them will provide useful information for extracting the affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes from the material perspective.

In this section, we examine the extraction of affordances from the three aspects extracted in the previous section. Posthuman CollectiveEyes has a variety of relations with the world. By classifying the various properties of Posthuman CollectiveEyes into aspects, it is possible to unravel the relationships with the world and to consider affordances from the aspect of each relationship. In general, when considering a complex system, it is possible to understand it correctly by dividing it into multiple aspects. Even if we consider only the levels that can be observed by humans and machines, the search range is so vast that it is difficult to discover affordances that cannot be directly observed from them. Therefore, we divide the observable levels into three aspects to narrow the search range and search for affordances using retroduction. By dividing and governing the retroduction process in consideration of the aspects, the process of deriving the affordances can be made easier.

Firstly, let's focus on the facets related to the viewpoint display aspect. The primary role of Posthuman CollectiveEyes is to exhibit multiple viewpoints simultaneously, often in a layered manner using the paper prototypes. By generating these viewpoints, the platform enhances the user's visual capabilities as if they had numerous eyes. However, it is crucial to ensure that displaying multiple viewpoints does not interfere with the user's current viewpoint when manipulating the paper prototypes. Furthermore, it should be possible to control the display of multiple viewpoints simply by indicating the user's interest in a particular viewpoint. To achieve an ambient display of multiple viewpoints, we considered enabling users to adjust the transparency level of these viewpoints. Based on these considerations, we identified two important affordances from the content display aspect: Augmentability and Embodimentability. Augmentability represents how multiple viewpoints are presented on the user's current viewpoint, while Embodimentability pertains to the control of how multiple viewpoints are displayed in an ambient manner. These affordances are intrinsic to all paper prototypes, facilitating the presentation of multiple viewpoints effectively.

Next, let's shift our focus to the facets related to the viewpoint management aspect. These facets provide insight into the internal operations of the platform. Our investigation primarily centers around affordances that emphasize the adherence to ethical standards for safe usage. In particular, we have discovered the importance of accurately representing the current state of the individuals (both human and nonhuman) providing the viewpoints, including factors such as their emotions. Considering this perspective, we have identified the affordance of Transparability, which encompasses the collection of various viewpoints and associated meta-information. This affordance serves as a fundamental abstraction in the implementation of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. It ensures that the platform effectively gathers viewpoints while maintaining transparency and promoting ethical considerations.

Lastly, let's delve into the facets related to the viewpoint selection aspect. These facets shed light on how viewpoints are chosen based on a user's interests. Our investigation primarily focuses on the selection process guided by a user's current preferences. To achieve this, viewpoints must be classified into distinct categories, where viewpoints within the same category share certain similarities. Moreover, it is crucial to present viewpoints that align with the user's current context. Therefore, the user should have the ability to indicate their preferences, allowing for the display of relevant viewpoints without explicit user input. Taking these considerations into account, we have identified two pertinent affordances: Machmakability and Nudgeability. Ensuring a match between the diverse viewpoints provided by humans and nonhumans and the viewpoints desired by users is paramount, Machmakability represents the affordance of determining which of the collected viewpoints aligns with a user's current interests. Furthermore, dynamically adjusting the displayed viewpoints based on the user's context and intentions is crucial. Nudgeability captures the affordance of reflecting the user's current interest in each displayed viewpoint, allowing for dynamic updates and personalized experiences.

4.4 Designing posthuman collectiveeyes based on the more-than-human perspective

In this section, we explain how we designed the abstract objects provided by Posthuman CollectiveEyes based on the five affordances identified in the previous section. Abstraction in digital platforms, which is widely used in the process of generalization, is defined as the process of removing physical, spatial, or temporal details [18] or the process of defining the more important and detailed objects provided by the platform on which attention should be focused [53]. As explained above, an affordance is an interface between a technology and the world in which it is used, and from the perspective of a digital platform, an affordance can be considered to be constructed between users and abstract objects provided by the platform. In other words, the design of a digital platform from the more-than-human perspective can be defined as the process of using affordances as a guideline for designing the performativity of appropriate abstract objects. Performativity is defined as the process by which humans and nonhumans behave as agents in society and the environmentFootnote 6. Conventional studies on the affordances of digital platforms have not been related to the design aspect of performativity, which is how affordances affect humans and the environment. For this reason, it has only been used to analyze how existing platforms affect organizations and society. In this study, we relate affordances to the abstract objects provided by the platform and examine how abstract objects as material agencies are performative to humans and the environment, which enables us to examine the design potential of digital platforms. The performativity of abstract objects does not induce predetermined actions but rather induces unpredictable actions depending on the situation. As described above, by examining the design of abstract objects from the material aspect of the digital platform, it is possible to examine appropriate abstract objects that can be realized with state-of-the-art technologies.

4.4.1 Augmentability

Augmentability is an affordance for showing multiple viewpoints. The affordance aims to enhance our visual abilities from a posthuman approach. As the use cases presented in Appendix 1 show, the presentation of multiple human/nonhuman viewpoints can be used for a variety of purposes. Posthuman CollectiveEyes provides the CubicMontage abstraction to show multiple viewpoints in a layered manner with respect to a user's current viewpoint. CubicMontage is an abstract object for showing multiple viewpoints in those spaces and enacts Augmentability in the context of user relationships. Like a cubist painting, it projects a user's current viewpoint (projected to the plane or 3D shaped object) into a space. As an abstract object with material agency, we designed the performativity of CubicMontage by integrating various viewpoints into one viewpoint such as a cubist painting. CubicMontage provides a variety of viewpoints that expand a user's current consciousness and thoughts as one integrated viewpoint and, thus, enacts the Augmentability affordance.

CubicMontage makes it possible to combine multiple viewpoints, as shown in Figure 5. The figure on the left shows the base viewpoint combined with the other viewpoint. A user's real-world viewpoint is superimposed while viewing another person's viewpoint from the first-person perspective, or the real-world viewpoint is superimposed while viewing a scene in the virtual world. In the figure on the right, multiple viewpoints are superimposed on the base viewpoint. A user not only can view his or her current viewpoint as the base viewpoint but also can view multiple viewpoints simultaneously from the third-person perspective. The superimposed viewpoints can be square, elliptical and other shapes, and their placement on the base viewpoint can be freely selected for each use case, making it possible to view the base viewpoint and the superimposed viewpoints simultaneously. Additionally, by selecting one of the multiple viewpoints in the figure on the right, it is possible to view a single viewpoint as one's own viewpoint, as shown in the figure on the left.

Fig. 5
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Layering human viewpoints

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Posthuman CollectiveEyes makes it possible to construct various use cases by combining human, nonhuman, and virtual world perspectives. The nonhuman viewpoints include those of animals such as dogs and cats, robots, and surveillance cameras in the city. The viewpoint of the virtual world is not the viewpoint of the real world but a computer-generated viewpoint of the virtual world. For example, Supergrasping Worlds, shown in Fig. 3(a), mainly uses nonhuman viewpoints to construct Augmentability to support a user's decision-making. Other use cases mainly use the human viewpoint to provide affordances. By showing various viewpoints, for example, Defamiliarizing Everyday tries to defamiliarize the current situation, making a user more aware of the current world by showing the viewpoints of people who are looking at similar things.

4.4.2 Embodimentability

Embodimentability is an affordance for controlling the visibility of multiple viewpoints displayed in a space where a user sees. The affordance also aims to enhance our visual abilities from a posthuman approach. Embodimentability makes it possible to make multiple viewpoints ambient to the current viewpoint by increasing the degree of transparency of the viewpoints, reducing the size of the viewpoints, or image processing the viewpoints. Currently, Embodimentability is provided by controlling the degree of transparency of viewpoints and edge processing the viewpoints.

Posthuman CollectiveEyes provides the Ambiency abstract object to enact the Embodientability affordance in the context of user relationships. As shown in [10], by increasing the degree of transparency of a representation, it is possible to make that representation ambient. By controlling the degree of transparency and edge processing of the viewpoint as an abstract object with material agency, we design Ambiency for enacting Embodimentability by controlling the embodiment of the viewpoint according to the situation. A user can control the timing of the presentation of multiple viewpoints, which facilitates the transition between multiple viewpoints. Figure 6 shows how the degree of transparency of the multiple viewpoints displayed on a user's current viewpoint is changed. In this way, Ambiency allows a user to focus on the viewpoint that is important in the current situation among the multiple viewpoints, thus allowing a user to act flexibly and enact his or her actions.

Fig. 6
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Ambiently presenting multiple human visual perspectives using the transparency degree

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The figure on the left in Fig. 6 shows an example of superimposing multiple viewpoints onto the current viewpoint using CubicMontage. Using Ambiency, the middle figure shows the multiple viewpoints with 50% transparency. In the figure on the right, the degree of transparency of the viewpoints is set to 70%. Increasing the degree of transparency allows us to see the current viewpoint without disturbance, but it makes it difficult to compare multiple viewpoints with the current viewpoint. Therefore, it is possible to use multiple viewpoints in an ambient manner by controlling the degree of transparency of the presented viewpoints according to the situation.

In addition, using CubicMontage, it is possible to show other people's viewpoints and one's own current viewpoint simultaneously. This makes it possible for people to respond to what is happening around them while seeing other people's viewpoints as if they were their own. Figure 7 shows an example of simultaneously showing one's own viewpoint and another person's viewpoint. In this case, it is difficult to move from the current viewpoint because people cannot see their own. Using Ambiency, it is possible to convert the viewpoint in front of a user into an edge view and superimpose it on the viewpoint that the user is viewing as another person. A user can decide how to act in the current location by controlling the tradeoff between the visibility of the other's viewpoint and the user's own viewpoint. In Fig. 7, as an example, the right viewpoint is displayed with 80% transparency on the other person's viewpoint and 50% transparency on the user's viewpoint using Ambiency. In the middle image, the other person's viewpoint is shown with 40% transparency and the user’s viewpoint with 80% transparency. In the image on the left, the other's viewpoint is shown with 0% transparency and a user’s viewpoint with 80% transparency.

Fig. 7
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Fusing two realities

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Figures 3 (b and c) show how Defamiliarizing Everyday uses Embodimentability. By increasing the degree of transparency of the multiple viewpoints, the current viewpoint is not disturbed. In other words, multiple viewpoints can be displayed only when necessary for comparison with the current viewpoint. In Supergrasping Worlds, shown in Fig. 3 (a), only the center of the current viewpoint is made nontransparent to facilitate decision-making by simultaneously viewing the other viewpoints and the current viewpoint and using the multifaceted information from them. In other use cases, the current viewpoint is made transparent because the relationship between the current viewpoint and the other viewpoints is weak. Photomontage Lifelog, Happy Friends, and Serendipity are use cases that aim to obtain information from multiple viewpoints, increasing the degree of transparency of the current viewpoint with low relevance. However, as shown in Fig. 3 (f), it is possible to temporarily direct attention to the current viewpoint by changing the degree of transparency of the current viewpoint to 0% when necessary.

4.4.3 Matchmakeability

Matchmakeability is an affordance regarding which multiple viewpoints should be shown in the current space. The realization of Matchmakeability implies the incorporation of an economic mechanism that matches the viewpoints provided by many people with the viewpoints that a user wants to seeFootnote 7. This is similar to the mechanism discussed in shared economy platforms [24]. Posthuman CollectiveEyes provides Topic Channel as an abstract object that is intrinsic to a shared economy platform with material agency to enact Matchmakeability in the context of user relationships. By categorizing a large number of collected viewpoints, we design the performativity of the Topic Channel by enabling the display of viewpoints that match the interests of the current user. This allows us to enact a user's actions by providing viewpoints that are more likely to be of interest to him or her.

In Posthuman CollectiveEyes, viewpoints are classified into several categories called “topic channels”, as shown in Figure 8. By specifying a topic channel through the Topic Channel abstraction, users can select the viewpoint they wish to view. The topic channel allows a user to change the viewpoint to be displayed by specifying a new topic channel, similar to changing the TV channel. Even if users do not explicitly specify the topic of interest as a topic channel, they can be guided to view the viewpoint of their choice by simply specifying their preference through Nudgeability for the currently displayed multiple viewpoints, as shown in the next section.

Fig. 8
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Categorization of human visual viewpoints

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In Posthuman CollectiveEyes, users can indicate in the platform what kind of viewpoint they want to see by specifying a channel. The current Posthuman CollectiveEyes platform offers two types of topic channels within the Topic Channel abstraction, the experience-based channel and the value-based channel, proposed by Kimura [50]. Figure 9 shows a list of topic channels defined on the current Topic Channel abstraction. As described in the paper, the experience-based channel is extracted based on specific human actions, providing a viewpoint that is in line with a user's expectations. On the other hand, the value-based channel categorizes viewpoints more abstractly than the experience-based channel. Therefore, it is possible to provide serendipitous viewpoints by allowing more ambiguous matching. By selecting one of the types, Posthuman CollectiveEyes can select viewpoints that are more likely to be of interest to a user from potential target viewpoints around the world.

Fig. 9
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Examples of topics in the experience-based channel and value-based chanel

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Matchmakeability is mainly used in Photomontage Lifelog, Happy Friends and Serendipity. Photomontage Lifelog and Happy Friend use the experience-based channel. Figure 3 (d) shows the case where a landscape is chosen as a topic channel, and Fig. 3 (e) shows the case where food is chosen. Serendipity adopts the value-based channel. Figure 3 (h) shows the case where Historical is selected, and Fig. 3 (i) shows the case where Cute is selected. Supergrasping Worlds shows the viewpoints from nearby people, animals, robots, drones, and cameras embedded in the city. It is important for the topic channel to show various viewpoints in the vicinity of the user using the GPS information of the acquired viewpoints. Defamiliarizing Everyday promotes the defamiliarization of the real world by making us aware that what we see in the current viewpoint is not the only current viewpoint. For this purpose, it is important to collect and present viewpoints that are looking at the same thing as what we are looking at now. For example, if people are in a sightseeing spot, the topic channel will show them other sightseeing spots in that city or similar scenery in other cities.

4.4.4 Nudgeability

It is not easy to show the viewpoint that a user prefers. In particular, users of Posthuman CollectiveEyes often try to find something interesting in those viewpoints rather than referring to multiple viewpoints with a clear purpose. For this reason, it is necessary to provide a mechanism that shows users the serendipity of selecting the viewpoints to be presented [4]. Nudgeability allows a user to specify his or her interest in the currently presented multiple viewpoints and to change the presented viewpoints according to a user's interest.

Posthuman CollectiveEyes provides Discovery that abstracts the selection of multiple viewpoints that a user might be interested in based on the user's interest in each current viewpoint to enact Nudgeability in the context of user relationships. By guiding a user's latent/unconscious interests, Nudgeability is enacted through discovery with the automatic adjustment of the presented viewpoint’s topic, allowing a user to intuitively indicate his or her interest in the currently presented viewpoint. This allows the Discovery abstraction to access viewpoints that are more appropriate to the current situation and to influence a user's actions.

Discovery, based on the idea of Amazon DiscoverFootnote 8, allows a user to specify the interest of the presented viewpoint. To change the topic channel of the displayed viewpoint within the range of the selected topic channel, Discovery displays one viewpoint of a randomly selected channel. If a user is not interested in the viewpoint, he or she can suppress the display of the viewpoint by selecting "Not Interested", which immediately replaces a viewpoint with another viewpoint; however, if one selects "Interested", the probability of displaying the viewpoints belonging to the selected viewpoint increases. If none of the viewpoints are selected as "interested" within a certain period of time, a viewpoint is automatically changed to another viewpoint belonging to the same topic channel.

The use of this abstract object results in the presentation of viewpoints that are more desirable to a user. As described in Section 4.4.3, the current topic channel for showing viewpoints is determined from a user’s specified topic channel. However, since a user's preferences change over time and based on the situation, it is necessary to change the topic channel that selects viewpoints dynamically. If viewpoints other than those belonging to the currently selected topic channel are presented, they can stimulate a user's curiosity. In other words, selecting "Interested" or “Not Interested” in a particular viewpoint indicates a user's current interest in the selected topic channel where current viewpoints are expected to be viewed.

Nudgeability may provide different affordances in different use cases. In Supergrasping Worlds, Defamiliarizing Everyday, and Happy Friends, it is not important to specify the viewpoint of interest; indicating that a viewpoint is uninteresting shows that a user wants to see a different viewpoint and expects to switch viewpoints. In Photomontage Lifelog and Serendipity, both like and dislike are used to select the viewpoint of interest, as they adopt the topic channel as an important affordance, and the channel changes are important in their usage.

4.4.5 Transparability

Transparability facilitates understanding the behavior of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. Transparability presents a user with information similar to what most current platforms provide as a privacy policy [56]. In Posthuman CollectiveEyes, we aim to make it as easy as possible to understand the behavior of the platform. Posthuman CollectiveEyes offers Presence as an abstract object that enacts the Transparability affordance in the context of user relationships. As an abstract object with material agency, Presence provides the following two types of affordances. The first suggests the collection of personal information, which provides users with an opportunity to consider whether the platform's handling of privacy conforms to their own policy. Specifically, if the currently provided viewpoint is a human viewpoint, a user is presented with text with rough geographic information that implies that it is a viewpoint provided by someone else. The second is to communicate how the collection of viewpoints is performed so users can understand how the various viewpoints are collected. Specifically, by displaying the emotions of the person who provided the viewpoint at the time when it is displayed, it is possible to abstractly present the circumstances under which the viewpoint was provided.

By presenting the characteristics of the provider of the viewpoint in an ambient manner, Presence enacts Transparability by making it possible to be aware of the presence of the platform's behavior. This allows a user to become aware of the behavior of the platform by knowing about the people who provided the viewpoint that they are currently accessing; thus, Presence is able to influence the actions of its users. The purpose of Presence is to provide each stakeholder with an understanding of what the platform is doing through affordances, thereby enabling them to understand that the platform is behaving ethically and, thus, helps them decide whether it is safe to use. Figures 3 (f, g, h, and i) show examples of the use of Presence. In these examples, some viewpoints have red, green, and purple frames. Red indicates that the person providing the viewpoint has a positive emotion, green has mindful emotions and purple indicates other emotions. In these use cases, Presence is expressed indirectly. In other words, by displaying the emotions of the person providing the viewpoints, the user understands that these viewpoints are those of someone else in the world and that the platform is acquiring the viewpoints of people. Additionally, by showing the emotions at the time, a user will be able to understand how the platform enlists the people who provide the viewpoints.

4.5 Implementing the posthuman collectiveeyes digital platform

In this section, we describe the current prototype implementation of the Posthuman CollectiveEyes digital platform. Figure 10 presents screenshots that show multiple viewpoints implemented on the prototype. In this figure, (A) shows a superimposed bird's eye view of the area when a user looks up. In (B), the superimposed viewpoint in (A) is displayed with an increased degree of transparency. In (C), the superimposed low-angle nonhuman viewpoint while crossing an intersection is shown. In (D), multiple viewpoints are superimposed while crossing an intersection.

Fig. 10
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Implementing the Posthuman Collective Eyes prototype

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The current prototype uses a head-mounted display (HMD) like Fove 0Footnote 9 or a public display to view another person's field of view and uses Tobii Eye Tracker4CFootnote 10 and Leap MotionFootnote 11 to recognize a user's gaze gestures and hand gestures. For gesture control, we reuse the implementations in CollectiveEyes and its variations [48, 49, 51], and how to design the gesture is shown in these papers. The gaze gesture is mainly used to select multiple viewpoints, while the hand gesture is used to control the ambience of the viewpoints. In addition, our prototype acquires people's viewpoints by attaching a standard web camera to their heads.

To extract the knowledge used in designing Posthuman CollectiveEyes under the more-than-human perspective, the current prototype implements the minimum functionalities, mainly considering that it can provide sufficient experience for the participants in the experiment shown in Section 5. In particular, the current prototype implementation of the video database uses a centralized database, which makes it possible to acquire the viewpoints of a limited number of people and provide them to a small number of users. In addition, we assume that people who offer their viewpoints manually tag their viewpoints for the classification used to implement the topic channel abstraction. Section 4.5.4 describes some possible directions to make the current prototype to become operational in our daily lives.

4.5.1 Software structure

Figure 11 shows the software structure of the Posthuman CollectiveEyes prototype. As the figure shows, the current prototype consists of the following eight modules.

Fig. 11
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Overview of prototype implementation

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Views composition management module

This module serves as the implementation of the CubicMontage abstraction enabling the construction of posthuman viewpoints, which determines the arrangement of multiple viewpoints selected by the Eyeview Mapping Management module for display within a user's field of view. In the current implementation, only the middle and left cases of the reality-virtuality continuum depicted in Fig. 15 have been implemented, given that the display target is solely the HMD (Head-Mounted Display). The module has been developed using UnityFootnote 12 to overlay the multiple viewpoints onto the user's current viewpoint. In future iterations, we plan to incorporate a complete and seamless reality-virtuality continuum, as outlined in the subsequent section. Leading-edge HMDs like Apple Vision ProFootnote 13 provide the necessary performance capabilities to enable practical use cases.

Eyeview embodiment management module

This module enables the actualization of the Ambiency abstraction, further facilitating the construction of posthuman viewpoints. It determines which viewpoint to display in an ambient manner, taking input from the Gesture Management module into consideration. The selection of the viewpoint is based on gaze gesture information, while the ambience of the chosen viewpoint is controlled by hand gestures. As illustrated in Section 4.4.2, the current implementation of the module manages the ambience of the superimposed viewpoints. In future iterations, we may explore the utilization of generative AI technologies such as GPT-4Footnote 14 to generate a morphed current viewpoint for the user using the superimposed viewpoints. Additionally, we may consider adjusting the size of the superimposed viewpoints to create an alternative approach to realize the Embodimentability affordance.

Current View Management Module

This module is responsible for managing the presentation method of a user's current viewpoint. The Current View Management module handles the display of the user's current viewpoint, which is captured by the web camera attached to their HMD (Head-Mounted Display). The display of the current viewpoint is synchronized with the user's actual viewpoint using the HMD sensor, allowing the user to see their current viewpoint while wearing the HMD. The module also controls edge processing and manages the ambience of the current viewpoint. Furthermore, it retrieves the user's emotions to enhance their viewpoints and enable specific use cases. Currently, the emotions of the viewpoint providers are manually identified by themselves. However, in the future prototype system, emotions should be automatically detected from users using various biosensors. This topic has been extensively discussed in existing literature, and we plan to incorporate existing approaches into our future prototype systems. When a user employs an AR HMD like Apple Vision Pro or utilizes a public display, the module tracks the user's location and movements to accurately position the superimposed viewpoints on their current viewpoint.

Gesture Management Module

This module is responsible for managing the interactions of the prototype in an integrated manner. It collects various events through sensors, converts them into necessary information, and transfers the information as commands to each module. In the current implementation, it utilizes gaze gesture recognition through a gaze recognition device like Tobii Eye Tracker 4C, as well as hand gesture recognition using a motion sensor such as LeapMotion. The module in the current prototype system provides the following six basic commands based on gaze and hand gestures. The select command is used by the user to choose a target person by moving their gaze from top to bottom. The deselect command allows the user to return to the previous view by moving their gaze from bottom to top. The access command is employed by the user to select another person whose visual perspective they want to access. The user accomplishes this by observing a selected person and moving their gaze from top to bottom around that person. The replace command enables the user to remove a view they wish to replace by moving their gaze from bottom to top on that view. Additionally, the user can stop seeing and hearing all views by directing their gaze to a stop button displayed in the virtual space. This is achieved through the stop command. The user can also play back the views by directing their gaze at a playback button, utilizing the playback command.

Customization Management Module

This module implements the Discovery abstraction. It handles information related to the selected viewpoint based on the command received from the Gesture Management module and transfers it to the Eyeview Mapping Management module. This information includes whether the user is interested or not interested in a particular viewpoint. In the current prototype system, the module uses hand gestures to determine the user's interest in specific viewpoints. However, there is still an issue with the current implementation regarding how to select certain viewpoints as candidates to promote serendipity for the user. In future versions, it is necessary to consider how to leverage the user's serendipity from diverse viewpoints shared by different individuals. To address this, we need to explore the implementation of the Topic Channel abstraction, as discussed in the following paragraph. This exploration will help us better understand how to facilitate serendipitous discoveries for the user by incorporating diverse perspectives and topics of interest.

Eyeview Mapping Management Module

This module implements the Topic Channel abstraction. It is responsible for selecting a topic channel for each use case. Based on the chosen channel, the Eyeview Mapping Management module selects the viewpoint to be presented by matching the tag information assigned to the video with the viewpoint information stored in the Eyeview Video Database module. The currently selected viewpoint is then modified using the information provided by the Customization Management module. To improve the matchmaking process among the diverse collected viewpoints, it is crucial to reconsider the implementation of this module. Enhancing the module's functionality will contribute to making Posthuman CollectiveEyes more practical. In Section 4.5.4, we will discuss possible future directions for enhancing this module and present potential improvements to be implemented.

Eyeview Video Database

This module serves as the core component for realizing the Presence abstraction. It is responsible for storing the videos captured by cameras attached to different individuals as video files in a database. In the current prototype, a simple file system is utilized to store a limited number of people's viewpoints. Although this approach is sufficient for conducting the experiments described in Section 5, for Posthuman CollectiveEyes to be practical, it is necessary to consider using a distributed scalable storage system. In the current implementation, individuals who provide the video files are manually tagged with keywords based on the information contained in their viewpoints. While this manual tagging process is suitable for the experiments presented in Section 5, achieving practicality in Posthuman CollectiveEyes requires an automatic and scalable real-time tagging system for the collected viewpoints. In the practical prototype system, a significant number of viewpoints are stored in a shared distributed storage, highlighting the importance of scalability in the distributed storage system. However, it is important to note that the purpose of Posthuman CollectiveEyes is not to view other people's viewpoints in real-time; rather, the past viewpoints are superimposed on a user's current viewpoint. Therefore, real-time performance for tagging is not essential. In Section 4.5.4, we will discuss future directions to enhance the scalability of the storage system and implement automatic tagging capabilities.

Eyeview Capturing Management Module

This module serves the purpose of capturing diverse viewpoints through a posthuman approach. The primary implementation of the module involves capturing human eyeviews using a camera attached to the user's head-mounted display (HMD). Additionally, there are several modules designed to capture various nonhuman viewpoints. In our current prototype implementation, we explore the following four modules:

  1. 1.

    Capturing viewpoints from cameras attached to different points on the human body, such as knees or waists.

  2. 2.

    Capturing viewpoints of pets, such as cats and dogs, using specialized cameras like [47].

  3. 3.

    Capturing viewpoints from cameras attached to machines, with our current design incorporating cameras mounted on drones.

  4. 4.

    Capturing viewpoints generated by artificial intelligence (AI) software, such as MidjourneyFootnote 15, where generative AI creates diverse viewpoints based on existing viewpoints.

Notably, viewpoints generated by generative AI hold promise as they can also produce unrealistic perspectives, thus stimulating imaginative thinking. Furthermore, as detailed in the following section, we employ a 360-degree camera to generate posthuman viewpoints.

4.5.2 Obtaining and displaying viewpoints

Recently, small wearable cameras have become popular because of their low cost. Therefore, in our current Posthuman CollectiveEyes prototype, we use head-mounted cameras to capture human viewpoints and cameras attached to nonhuman or objects are used to capture nonhuman viewpoints. Integrating 360-degree viewpoints creates opportunities to defamiliarize people's current act of seeing [41]. These viewpoints make a user aware of the unconscious environment and reveals new aspects of our daily lives. The Posthuman CollectiveEyes prototype provides three perspectives, as shown in Fig. 12: the human viewpoint, which shows the viewpoint of someone somewhere in the world; the nonhuman viewpoint, which includes not only the viewpoint of animals such as dogs and cats but also that of machines such as drones and surveillance cameras; and the 360-degree viewpoint, where a part of the image acquired by a 360-degree camera is cut out and shown as multiple viewpoints. Since Posthuman CollectiveEyes can easily integrate these various viewpoints for constructing posthuman viewpoints, various use cases can be constructed by allowing everyone to share these viewpoints.

Fig. 12
figure 12

Presenting multiple human visual perspectives

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The Posthuman CollectiveEyes prototype also needs to present multiple viewpoints in different ways. For example, using an HMD, we can superimpose multiple viewpoints on the current viewpoint, but if an HMD is not available, we need to project them using a nearby projector or display them using a public display. For this purpose, it is necessary to consider the presentation of multiple viewpoints in consideration of the reality-virtuality continuum [73] shown in Fig. 13. The reality-virtuality continuum considers the range from complete virtuality to complete reality on a continuous scale. The reality-virtuality continuum includes all possible variations and configurations of real and virtual objects. In this figure, on the left, multiple viewpoints are shown on the wall in the real world; in the middle, they are displayed on a user's current viewpoint; and on the right, they are displayed in a virtual space. The difference between the right and middle projections of the real world is that in the right projection, a user can see multiple viewpoints without using a wearable device, such as on the wall of a room, on a desk, or on a display. In contrast, in the middle case, we assume that the wearable device is used to augment the real world. In addition, by processing a user's viewpoint as ambient, even when the user is viewing multiple viewpoints in the virtual world, it is possible to grasp the situation of the real world to a certain extent using methods such as those proposed by [37]. The potential of processing the real world in consideration of the reality-virtuality continuum, as shown in [37, 40], increases the usefulness of the use cases of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. However, this opportunity is not investigated in the current study, and we leave research on this topic to future work.

Fig. 13
figure 13

Reality-virtuality continuum

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4.5.3 Privacy management

One important concern of our approach to collecting people's viewpoints is ensuring user privacy. Currently, the viewpoints that users watch are recorded in a storage system, and users retrieve these viewpoints from the storage system. Posthuman CollectiveEyes needs to address privacy issues at two levels. At the first level, there is a potential risk of privacy violation from viewpoints that contain sensitive information. Since these viewpoints are stored in the storage system for an extended period, the risk of privacy breaches increases. To mitigate this risk, the current prototype system discards old viewpoints, keeping them for only one day. This approach not only reduces the possibility of privacy violations but also minimizes the required storage size for collected viewpoints.

At the second level, there is the issue of presenting viewpoints that may include other people's privacy information. In the current prototype system, this issue is not explicitly considered, and any viewpoints, regardless of their privacy content, can be presented. However, a study such as [48] demonstrates that people do not feel their privacy is violated solely by the presence of their figures. We will reinvestigate the issue in the future implementation of Posthuman CollectiveEyes.

4.5.4 Possible directions for building practical prototype implementation

The selection algorithm for choosing among the diverse viewpoints simultaneously shown in a user's virtual space is the most significant drawback. This algorithm falls under the category of matchmaking algorithms used in various digital platforms like Facebook and Uber. The key challenge lies in determining the similarities among diverse people's viewpoints. In conventional image processing, similar views refer to those containing similar physical elements [103]. However, in our case, similar views are more nuanced and should encompass diversity to stimulate human imagination and enhance thinking abilities effectively. Before developing the algorithm, it is essential to investigate a new definition of the similarity concept that aligns with the platform's goal of deploying diverse services. In the future version of the Posthuman CollectiveEyes platform, keywords will be extracted by automatically symbolizing the aforementioned similarities from captured videosFootnote 16 or by annotating the videos and identifying commonalities using a crowdsourcing platform [102].

To develop a scalable and stable platform that supports practical services, the second drawback to address is the management of a substantial number of viewpoints. The platform needs to incorporate various system techniques, as described in [80], to achieve scalability and stability. Handling a large number of simultaneous viewpoints in a large-scale system can be challenging. However, for most users, the real-time occurrence of the viewed viewpoint is not crucial. If users are unaware or can suspend their disbelief regarding the real-time aspect, this approach can offer practical services without compromising scalability and efficiency. Therefore, when selecting viewpoints, the future Posthuman CollectiveEyes platform should consider options that do not consume excessive computational resources when presenting views to a target user. As mentioned in Section 4.5.1, real-time performance is not necessary for tagging viewpoints. Hence, leveraging a crowdsourcing platform [102] is a promising approach to generate tags for respective viewpoints. Nevertheless, recent advancements in machine learning technologies make automatic tagging feasible. In this case, the crowdsourcing platform can be utilized to correct any incorrect tags, thereby enabling more scalable tagging.

The third drawback pertains to efficiently capturing meaningful viewpoints without infringing on users' privacy. Currently, we propose capturing people's viewpoints through the use of smart glasses equipped with cameras. However, not all viewpoints that individuals encounter hold significance, and capturing and providing every single one of them would compromise privacy. To address this, leveraging lifelog systems, such as those employed in [38], which focus on capturing meaningful information from users' daily lives [34], presents a promising approach to make Posthuman CollectiveEyes practical. For instance, as demonstrated in [2], an automated tagging system applied to lifelog data offers the potential to eliminate the need for manual tagging, as required by the current prototype implementation of the Topic Channel abstraction. Furthermore, existing lifelogging systems, like [35], have already incorporated privacy considerations, making them valuable resources for addressing privacy concerns in Posthuman CollectiveEyes. The strategies utilized in traditional lifelog systems prove useful for investigating and resolving privacy issues. Additionally, as indicated in [48], individuals do not perceive a privacy violation when their figures appear in viewpoints. However, they may be unwilling to reveal information displayed on their mobile devices or disclose their engagement in personal hobbies. Hence, the platform needs to discern the essential aspects within viewpoints. Based on the aforementioned points, we believe that leveraging lifelog systems to acquire people's viewpoints is a promising direction for the future development of Posthuman CollectiveEyes.

5 An analysis using experience prototyping and annotated portfolio

An affordance is cooperatively constructed between a digital platform and its stakeholder, as described in the previous section. Since the affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes are enacted for multiple stakeholders, the demonstrative meanings may be constructed from the different angles of the respective stakeholders. Our complex real world is apprehended by foregrounding relationships in wholes rather than by isolating parts [95], so it is difficult to understand the mechanisms behind the affordances by either positivist or interpretivist approaches [74]. In our approach, we chose four stakeholders—researchers, designers, service providers and users—to extract their perspectives of the five affordances and extract the opportunities of the more-than-human perspective based on the critical realism approach. Posthuman CollectiveEyes defines its affordances according to the behavior of their abstract objects, which are invisible structures and mechanisms that are actualized from program codes. We need to investigate how the affordances are perceived by different stakeholders in terms of their performative properties and discuss the essential mechanism behind the affordance from the stakeholders’ perception.

In this section, we summarize how the design approach based on the more-than-human perspective influences the design of Posthuman CollectiveEyes based on interviews with respective stakeholders to investigate the socially constructed meanings of affordances. Then, we summarize the holistic analysis of the findings based on the annotated portfolio method. In particular, for each use case, we discuss how the affordances play a central role and how they should be handled based on the interview results. From the perspective of critical realism [19], it is possible to approach the mechanism at the real level and get to the essence by collecting multifaceted findings using various methods based on practice-based design [101]. As a means of documenting these findings and analyzing them holistically, we believe that annotated portfolios are an appropriate tool to document diverse findings.

5.1 Purpose and research method

In the analysis of the interviews with users and experts in this study, we aim to answer the following three research questions from the analysis of the annotated portfolio documenting diverse findings in the interviews.

  • RQ1. What are the user impacts resulting from each use case constructed of the five affordances?

  • RQ2. What role do the five affordances play in each use case?

  • RQ3. What are the effects of Posthuman CollectiveEyes being extended to be fused by humans to emphasize the more-than-human approach?

RQ1 investigates which affordance plays a key role in each use case. RQ2 investigates how the five affordances play different roles for each stakeholder in each use case. RQ3 investigates the effects of the Posthuman CollectiveEyes platform when it is directly integrated with humans and becomes available as part of human biological functions in the future. Although in the current Posthuman CollectiveEyes platform, users must wear several physical devices such as HMDs, we will investigate whether there will be significant psychological changes when it becomes a part of the biological functions of a user’s human body. In particular, we investigate the opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes from the perspective of the immersion and cyborg relation, which Rosenberger claims [90].

To extract the findings on RQ1–3, we conducted in-depth focus group interviews with multiple stakeholders. There are 14 participants in the study, including two researchers who are described below. First, we conducted focus group interviews with two user groups consisting of three people each (a total of six people) to extract the findings from the users' perspectives. Each user was labeled UG1–UG3 and UG4–UG6 in the respective groups. In these groups, we mainly investigate how affordances should be provided to users. Next, we interviewed a group made up of three designers to extract knowledge from their viewpoint. This group consists of experts who have in-depth experience designing services using VR and AR technologies. Each designer was labeled DG1–DG3. This group mainly discussed how desirable it was to provide visual cues of affordances to users. Finally, to extract knowledge from the service providers’ point of view, we interviewed three experts who have extensive experience in operating information systems. Each expert was labeled SPG1–SPG3. In this group, we mainly examined how the digital platform should provide affordances from the perspective of providing diverse services.

The interview sessions are generally run as follows. We conducted four sessions for the two user groups—one designer group and one service provider group. Each session lasted approximately two hours. We asked each group to deepen their understanding of Posthuman CollectiveEyes using the experience prototyping method. In this process, we mainly asked them to understand the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes by performing the scenarios of the five use cases introduced in Appendix 2 with the prototype described in Section 4.5 with the user enactments method [78]. Next, we explained the five affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes based on the contents of Section 4.4. We then had an open discussion about the potential opportunities and challenges of the effects of affordances in Posthuman CollectiveEyes.

We also summarized the findings from the researcher perspective of designing and developing Posthuman CollectiveEyes. The group consisted of two people based on the researcher's past development experience. The researcher has been working on platforms such as CollectiveEyes [48] and CollectiveEars [49]. Each researcher was labeled RG1–RG2.

5.2 Creating an annotated portfolio

Following the procedures described in Section 5.1, we collected various findings and compiled them into an annotated portfolio. This section shows the process of compiling the results in the annotated portfolio. Our annotated portfolio documentation is inspired by an approach proposed by Hall to include three types of annotations: reflective, thematic, and holistic [36]. The reflective annotations are annotated for each use case from the perspective of each stakeholder, i.e., users, designers, service providers and researchers. These annotations are mainly intended to clarify the findings due to the differences in the opinions of each stakeholder. The thematic annotation is an edited version of the stakeholder's opinions in the reflective annotations for each theme. Here, the obtained opinions are classified into seven themes: Role, Augmentability, Machmakability, Emnodimentability, Nudgeability, Transparability, and Posthuman, and the annotations are reorganized for each theme. Reflective annotations and thematic annotations were created for each of five use cases. The reflective annotations are shown in Figs. 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 of Appendix 3. The thematic annotation is shown in Figs. 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 of Appendix 4. The holistic annotations are summaries of the findings extracted from the reflective annotations and thematic annotations. Two types of holistic annotations were created, one from the reflective annotation shown in Fig. 14 and the other from the thematic annotations shown in Fig. 15.

Fig. 14
figure 14

Holistic reflective annotations

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Fig. 15
figure 15

Holistic thematic annotations

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5.3 Analysis and discussion

In this section, we answer the research questions posed in Section 5.1 by analyzing the annotated portfolio created by the procedure described in Section 5.2 as knowledge extracted from the interviews. We also discuss how the opinions differ from stakeholder to stakeholder.

5.3.1 Discussion about RQ1

From the analysis of the annotated portfolio, it is clear that the presence of affordances is useful for understanding various aspects of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. The provision of affordances is effective not only in facilitating an understanding of Posthuman CollectiveEyes but also in expanding the potential opportunities of each use case. For example, as pointed out by DG1, using Embodimentability to introduce a sense of perspective when presenting multiple viewpoints, it is possible to easily understand the importance of the viewpoints. In addition, as UG3 pointed out, the provision of multiple viewpoints using Embodimentability is effective not only in terms of functionality but also in increasing the enjoyment of interaction. RG1 suggested that the existence of affordances is effective in separating policies and mechanisms in Posthuman CollectiveEyes. Affordances are useful for clearly separating the policies of Posthuman CollectiveEyes from underlying platform’s mechanisms, and they make it easy to design concrete affordances for each use case from the abstract objects provided by the platform.

User Impact of the Five Affordances

Regarding Augmentability, UG3 suggested that the ability to provide a variety of viewpoints, such as first-person, third-person, and 360-degree perspectives, enhances the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. For Matchmakeability, it is useful to understand the ability of Posthuman CollectiveEyes to categorize various viewpoints, but as SPG1 pointed out, how each use case categorizes viewpoints is different for each individual, and therefore, the personalization of the viewpoint’s categorization is important. Embodimentability also makes it easy to understand that the ambience of viewpoints can be controlled by a user, but as SPG2 pointed out, it is desirable to automatically control the ambience of multiple viewpoints according to the current situation. It has been suggested that Nudgeability is an affordance that increases the diversity of Matchmakeability. In particular, as RG1 pointed out, it is considered effective at broadening a user’s thinking. Transparability is an affordance that provides various information about people who offer their viewpoints, and in our design of Posthuman CollectiveEyes, we mainly investigate making users aware of privacy and trust aspects while using the platform. However, the opinions from the participants indicated that this information is also useful in extending the functionality of the use cases. For example, as pointed out by UG1, the emotions of the people who provide the viewpoints at the time can be used for the categorization of Matchmakeability.

5.3.2 Discussion about RQ2

Descriptions of natural processes do not cause changes in nature itself, regardless of the description, but social processes can be affected by the description of the process (assumed behavior) and society itself. Society is not described as a static structure but as a process played out by human and nonhuman actors in society [55]. In other words, the description or theory of processes in society is not only a description of society but also the creation of society itself. To explain the nature of social processes, MacKenzie defines Barnesian performativity (shortly performativity) as the introduction of theories and knowledge that brings the target process closer to the behavior assumed by those theories and knowledge [67]. In other words, in our case, by introducing affordances, the designer or user is shaped into the behavior that the affordance permits. In contrast, using counterperformativity, as defined by MacKenzie, the introduction of theories and knowledge leads the target process away from the behavior assumed by those theories and knowledge [68]. In our study, this means that affordances induce behaviors different from those assumed. For the discussion of RQ2, we will analyze the annotated portfolio using the two concepts of performativity and counterperformativity.

Performativity

For Augmentability and Matchmakeability, it is clear that most of the participants have a similar understanding of these affordances. It seems that the participants intuitively understand that the concrete affordances provided by each use case are generated from the abstract objects provided by the platform. For Augmentability, as DG1 pointed out, there are cases where temporal as well as spatial representations are suitable for displaying multiple viewpoints. In particular, in the case of presenting past viewpoints, such as in Photomontage Lifelog, it is desirable to represent the passage of time temporally. In the case of Matchmakeability, as UG2 pointed out, when the number of viewpoints to be handled increases and more fine-grained categorization becomes necessary, hierarchical topic channels become important. However, structuring topic channels may make it difficult to select an appropriate channel, and it is essential to consider the balance between the diverse tastes of users and the complexity of the abstraction provided by the platform.

Counterperformativity

For Embodimentability, Nudgeability, and Transparability, we found that each participant had a variety of opinions and evoked different ideas about the affordances provided by each use case. In terms of Embodimentability, several suggested that there are potential opportunities to increase the enjoyment of using the platform. For example, SPG2 suggested the timing issue of whether to automatically adjust the degree of transparency of multiple viewpoints or for the degree of transparency to be controlled by the user, DG2 suggested the use of transparency control as indicating the priority for multiple viewpoints, and DG2 suggested that the ambient nature of the multiple viewpoint display should be actively utilized. Nudgeability, rather than its role of automatically selecting the topic channel of the multiple viewpoints to be displayed by indicating a user's preferences, as pointed out by DG1, is understood as an affordance that increases the diversity of the multiple viewpoints to be displayed and explores values that cannot be obtained from the viewpoint selected by a user. Regarding Transparability, it is suggested that the potential opportunities for Posthuman CollectiveEyes are enhanced by actively utilizing the human and nonhuman attributes that provide the viewpoints, rather than how the platform handles privacy and trust. For example, UG1 pointed out that the emotions of the people providing the viewpoint at the time are used for the categorization provided by Matchmakeability. Additionally, as pointed out by RG1 and UG1, the use of human and nonhuman attributes of the viewpoint provider can supplement the information about the multiple viewpoints displayed.

5.3.3 Discussion about RQ3

From the analysis of the annotated portfolio, it is clear that Posthuman CollectiveEyes provides interesting opportunities to consider the extension of human potential. For example, RG1 suggested that the constant use of Posthuman CollectiveEyes provides the possibility for users to notice various everyday events that they would not normally notice. In particular, the opinion suggests that displaying objects and scenes similar to those existing in the current viewpoint and providing various viewpoints as serendipity can enhance human abilities. DG2 also suggested that replacing objects and events in a user's current viewpoint with objects and events in others’ viewpoints enables the user to experience a world that does not exist in reality. This is also effective for providing a user a new awareness of the current viewpoint, as pointed out in RG1. In addition, SPG1 and UG5 suggested that current smartphones provide services that can be used as augmented reality with Posthuman CollectiveEyes. For example, it is possible to view popular tourist spots from various perspectives while traveling, provide new insights by showing our past perspectives, or provide a bird's eye view of the current location using nonhuman perspectives.

5.3.4 The different roles of stakeholders

Finally, we discuss how the different roles of the participants as stakeholders are reflected in their opinions. When considering the extension of humans using Posthuman CollectiveEyes, service providers and users proposed the extension of existing use cases. For example, it is possible to view popular sightseeing spots from various viewpoints, to provide new insights by showing one's own past viewpoints, or to provide a bird's eye view of one's current location using nonhuman viewpoints. These are examples of existing smartphone-based services that can be used hands-free with augmented reality technologies, indicating that it is difficult to come up with novel use cases that differ from existing smartphone services. At the same time, the researcher and designer suggested use cases that take into account the potential opportunities of Posthuman CollectiveEyes, since they regularly consider new opportunities to use emerging technologies. For example, a researcher proposed supporting decision-making by noticing things that are difficult to notice by defamiliarizing the viewpoint that a user is currently viewing. The designer proposed the possibility of providing a new experience by replacing parts of the real world that the user is viewing.

When considering the potential opportunities of a new platform, as in this study, the background of the participant's experience is important, and it is especially important to extract the opinions of people who are constantly considering new possibilities, such as designers and researchers.

5.4 Reflection on affordances and digital platforms

Just as critical realism refers to mechanisms inherent in the world that cannot be understood from surface observation [19], the more-than-human perspective discussed in this study differs from that proposed by Norman in that it is a process of making invisible explicit mechanisms and discussing the design of digital platforms based on them. McGrenere et al. pointed out that the concept of affordance is not well understood in the research community and that there is considerable ambiguity and confusion regarding the term’s use [72]. They also argue that affordances allow for informative analysis to clarify situations and that the usefulness of a technology, i.e., the actions it affords to users, is distinguished from the usability of the objects associated with the perceptual information conveying the affordances. This underscores that affordances are constructed not only from technologies but also from the relationship with users. Affordances cannot be discovered by observing either technologies or users alone, but rather requires an understanding of the mechanisms inherent in a world where both technologies and users exist.

The Augmentability and Matchmakeability affordance present the possibilities of inducing the multistable meanings of artifacts and are considered to be sources of increasing the diversity of the platform enabling various use cases as similarly discussed in [52]. This is evident from the fact that, as pointed out by Suri, users devise various ways of using artifacts that are not expected [96]. The multistable perception means, for example, that fire affords warmth, brightness, and cooking, as well as wound healing. Therefore, affordances that produce multistable meanings (multistability as a postpehnomenology term, referring to how technology serves multiple purposes or has different meanings in different contexts [90]) induce various usages of the platform for users, which increases the creativity of society through the use of the platform. In other words, from the more-than-human perspective, design with multistability in mind leads to clarification of the various possibilities of the platform.

In addition, the Transparability affordance abstracts the implementation of the platform and represents the behaviors related to users, which enables users to be aware of the potential pitfalls of the platform in society. However, if the intention of the represented affordances is not fully understood by the users, the effect of introducing affordances can be lost. For example, in contemporary art, it is not easy to understand the intention behind their affordances. Rietveld argues that in artworks, affordances constitute the meaning of the work [88]. To raise the awareness of affordances, museum exhibitions curate various art works thematically to help the audience understand the intention of the art works [8]. That is, the curation process is considered important not only for providing individual affordances but also for how to collectively offer affordances to clarify their meanings.

One question when considering affordances is whether they should mean the same thing to everyone at all times or whether they should mean different things in different situations. Quantified definitions, which are widely used in scientific research, are useful for making comparisons using common metrics across cultures, but they are not always suitable for discussing the new possibilities of a particular culture [91]. Unlike critical realism, positivism, which is based on quantitative arguments, is suitable for discussing the rules on the surface of a society but not for discussing the underlying mechanisms [19]. Similarly, assigning uniform meanings to affordances is useful for comparing different platforms or making improvements but not for examining new possibilities of a particular platform [52]. Affordances can be thought of as providing platforms with the opportunity to think reflectively about the essence behind them.

6 Possible directions to enhance the current more-than-human perspective

In this section, we explore possible directions from four distinct direction in terms of the more-than-human perspective. Firstly, we examine the concept of procedural rhetoric, originally proposed to elucidate the meaning of digital games. We believe that this concept can be valuable in discussing the meaning of affordance. Currently, our approach to defining affordances is still ad-hoc, and procedural rhetoric offers a systematic framework for designing the meaning of affordances. Secondly, we consider the concept of "invisible things". Affordances are essentially invisible to various stakeholders. Previous studies have highlighted the importance of investigating invisibility in designing our daily lives with new technologies. Thirdly, we delve into human thinking abilities. While we have established that Posthuman CollectiveEyes is a digital platform aimed at enhancing human thinking abilities, the opportunities outlined in Section 5 did not adequately explore how Posthuman CollectiveEyes achieves this enhancement. We aim to present potential directions that contribute to this goal. Finally, we explore the relationship between the human-centered perspective and the more-than-human perspective. The objective of this discussion is to clarify the stance of our current study and identify aspects of Posthuman CollectiveEyes that fall outside the scope of our study.

6.1 Procedural rhetoric and more-than-human perspective

The term "procedural rhetoric" was originally introduced in Bogost's book "Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games" [9]. Bogost defines procedural rhetoric as "the art of persuasion through rule-based expression and interaction, rather than through spoken words, texts, images, or videos." Frasca also discusses a similar concept called "simulation rhetoric," although he uses different terminology [28]. According to Frasca, game creators define simulation rhetoric as a way to convey ideology to players by manipulating or modifying the rules of the game.

In the social sciences, affordances are typically described using verbal language (e.g., [97]). In this study, we also express the five affordances using words. However, each scene depicted in Figure 5 can be viewed as a visual representation of each affordance. Through a computer program, multiple presentations of diverse viewpoints are dynamically represented visually. This can be likened to the concept of procedural rhetoric in video games, where the visual behaviors generated by the platform convey meaning and, in this case, represent affordances. From this perspective, video games can serve as a valuable resource for visually supporting the more-than-human perspective. The current visual representations of affordances in Posthuman CollectiveEyes are simpler compared to many video games, and it would be possible to provide more detailed information as affordances. However, similar to video games, complex procedural rhetoric often requires players to invest time in learning through various tutorials to understand how to engage with the games. Therefore, it would be beneficial to consider a methodology for providing appropriate visual affordances. In Section 4.3, we drew inspiration from procedural rhetoric to extract affordances from the behavioral aspect. However, procedural rhetoric also proves useful in contemplating the role of other affordances.

The consideration of procedural rhetoric in relation to the performativity offered by abstract objects introduces intriguing new inquiries. Users grasp the meaning of abstract objects through their engagement with Posthuman CollectiveEyes. For instance, the presentation of multiple viewpoints in a layered fashion allows users to comprehend the significance of CubicMontage. In other words, the procedures associated with abstract objects influence a user's actions and enable them to perceive the concept of Augmentability, which aligns with the notion of procedural rhetoric. Moreover, procedural rhetoric can be seen as performative since it actively influences a user's actions. Consequently, abstract objects that provide affordances should be recognized as instances of procedural rhetoric due to the performative nature of affordance provision. Specifically, from a performativity standpoint, explicitly addressing the procedural rhetoric of abstract objects becomes a critical aspect of design. During the discussion of affordances in Section 5.3, it is plausible to argue that the performative design of each abstract object holds equal importance to procedural rhetoric in the overall design process. In summary, procedural rhetoric serves as a fitting foundational theory for this study and suggests that insights from video games can effectively inform the design of affordances in digital platforms.

6.2 Invisible things and more-than-human perspective

An essential aspect of this study is the recognition of the more-than-human perspective as a valuable tool for exploring diverse aspects of intangible phenomena, such as digital platforms. Within the realm of ubiquitous computing research, significant efforts have been devoted to rendering the invisible visible, such as visualizing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere or traffic congestion in a city through sensing technologies. By presenting affordances as signs within a space, the meaning of that space is constructed [88]. However, the more-than-human perspective enables a more comprehensive perception of the presence of the invisible in our world. For example, Morton introduces the concept of hyperobjects, referring to entities that surround, envelop, and engage us, yet are too vast to be comprehended in their entirety [75]. Hyperobjects are inherently invisible and elusive. Due to their unseen nature, it becomes challenging for various stakeholders to fully grasp their impact. Rendering such hyperobjects perceivable as affordances proves valuable in prompting individuals to contemplate the realities of the world.

The affordances provided by Posthuman CollectiveEyes share similarities with hyperobjects in their inherent invisibility from the digital platform's perspective. Through the mediation of Posthuman CollectiveEyes, our daily space becomes adorned with diverse viewpoints, potentially constructing virtual hyperobjects. As elucidated in [40], the pervasive presence of mediated virtuality in our daily lives creates an alternate reality experience. By conceptualizing this ubiquitous virtuality as hyperobjects, we can consider the affordances that our digitally mediated space offers. For instance, Defamiliarizing Everyday introduces diverse viewpoints to defamiliarize a user's current perspective. If Defamiliarizing Everyday becomes a ubiquitous feature in our daily lives, its affordance permeates our everyday experiences. However, the more-than-human perspective proposed in this study may not be sufficient to analyze such affordances. We require additional design tools grounded in the more-than-human perspective to effectively design and understand these types of affordances.

A study by Kimura et al. [52] serves as a preliminary attempt in this direction. This study proposes an alternative approach to designing affordances, where three types of affordances based on the more-than-human perspective are proposed: agential affordance, interaction affordance, and behavior affordance. While the five affordances of Posthuman CollectiveEyes can be categorized as interaction or behavior affordances, the agential affordance represents a distinct category that necessitates further visualization enhancements within use cases. This discussion underscores the significance of incorporating different types of affordances to foster the development of diverse use cases on a digital platform, particularly when these use cases become ubiquitously mediated in our daily lives.

6.3 Reflective thinking and more-than-human perspective

Reflective thinking is an integral part of the critical thinking process, involving the analysis and evaluation of current events while rectifying biases and errors in unconscious and intuitive thinking [92]. Dewey defines reflective thinking as an active and persistent examination of beliefs, knowledge, supporting grounds, and the subsequent implications derived from that knowledge [20]. To foster creativity, diverse perspectives are crucial in stimulating reflective thinking [15]. Reflective thinking serves as a vital tool in addressing social issues like environmental sustainability and human well-being [82]. It can be categorized into two forms: active reflective thinking characterized by slow thinking and passive reflective thinking associated with fast thinking [1], akin to Kahneman's concepts of fast and slow thinking [42]. In contrast, Posthuman CollectiveEyes renders invisible aspects visible by offering multiple viewpoints and prompting awareness of previously unnoticed elements. Thus, it supports passive reflective thinking in our daily activities. This aligns with the notion of "Nudge Plus," as proposed by Banerjee, which employs extended nudges to promote reflective thinking and regulate various human behaviors [5].

Supergrasping Worlds aims to help people notice things from multiple viewpoints that they would not notice from a single perspective alone and, thus, to make better decisions. Defamiliarizing the everyday aims to defamiliarize the current viewpoint by presenting similar viewpoints and enhancing the opportunity to notice and think about various things in the current viewpoint. The above use cases mainly try to reduce bias and noise using multiple viewpoints [43]. Photomontage Lifelog and Happy Friends aim to increase positive emotions by recalling past memories of oneself and one's close friends. Serendipity helps one encounter nice coincidences, to discover unexpected things, and to find, by chance, something of value other than what a user is looking for [50]. It makes us aware of things that are related to our interests but that we have not noticed before. Therefore, when presenting Serendipity, it is necessary to show one's interests abstractly, and the value-based topic channel plays an important role.

Based on the preceding discussions, it becomes evident that Posthuman CollectiveEyes serves as an effective tool for fostering passive reflective thinking, as opposed to active reflective thinking, which has been the primary focus of previous efforts in reflective thinking. However, our current platform design based on affordances falls short in terms of systematically incorporating reflective thinking within each use case. To address this limitation, one potential avenue is to explore the design tool proposed in [51]. This study integrates the human-centered perspective with the more-than-human perspective, considering user experience through the lens of four pleasures: physio-pleasure, psycho-pleasure, socio-pleasure, and ideo-pleasure. A promising direction is to incorporate our approach, as proposed in this study, into the material aspect described in [51], thereby explicitly considering affordances within the material aspect.

6.4 Human-centered perspective and more-than-human perspective

As outlined in Section 4.3, the more-than-human perspective allows for the identification and design of abstract objects provided by the digital platform. However, it is important to note that the more-than-human perspective does not replace the conventional human-centered approach. In our study, we utilized a human-centered approach, including workshops, to extract use cases and develop scenarios for creating paper prototypes of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. Thus, the human-centered perspective and the more-than-human approach are complementary in nature. The human-centered perspective is particularly useful for designing specific details such as gesture design and determining the placement of multiple viewpoints within the field of view when implementing the abstract objects derived from this research. However, as discussed in previous works on artifacts designed using the more-than-human perspective (e.g., [17, 45]), it is possible to extend the discussions presented in this paper by involving humans in enacting the agency of nonhumans. This extension opens up new possibilities for identifying affordances through the human-centered perspective in relation to nonhumans. For instance, by extracting affordances from the perspective of the platform-operating organization's impact, it becomes possible to explore the implications on various aspects such as operating costs, software bugs, and environmental impact. This approach broadens the scope of discussions and offers valuable insights into the organizational effects associated with the platform.

When designing a new digital platform or developing a new use case on an existing digital platform, the more-than-human perspective helps us to elucidate the essence of the digital platform. For instance, the affordances of Embodimentability, Augmentability, and Matchmakeability clarify the abstract properties of Posthuman CollectiveEyes and identify the abstract objects provided by the platform, as discussed in Section 4.4. On the other hand, conventional criteria such as usability and performance can be evaluated from a conventional human-centered perspective. In this study, our focus is on the more-than-human perspective to design an innovative digital platform, while also incorporating several human-centered perspectives to extract five use cases for Posthuman CollectiveEyes. Therefore, as demonstrated in this study, it is crucial to explicitly and interchangeably utilize both the human-centered perspective and the more-than-human perspective to clarify the platform's requirements and facilitate better design. Additionally, conventional criteria like usability and performance are imperative for making a digital platform practically usable in our daily lives. By distinguishing the goals of each research approach, it becomes evident that this study emphasizes the more-than-human perspective to uncover diverse potential opportunities for Posthuman CollectiveEyes, while considerations for practical implementation are left for future research, where the human-centered perspective becomes more essential to make the implementation more usable.

7 Conclusion

In this paper, we introduced Posthuman CollectiveEyes, a digital platform that presents multiple viewpoints gathered from diverse individuals in a multifaceted manner. We proposed a novel design approach based on the more-than-human perspective to explore the potential opportunities offered by this digital platform. Our contributions can be summarized in three key aspects. First, we elucidated how the design of Posthuman CollectiveEyes is informed by the more-than-human perspective. As demonstrated in Section 4.4, our insights highlighted that the essential abstractions of digital platforms can be derived by investigating their affordances. We believe that these insights will be valuable for the development of future innovative digital platforms. Second, we introduced the fundamental concept and various use cases of Posthuman CollectiveEyes. In Section 3, we presented five promising use cases, and in Section 4.5, we outlined the current design of the prototype system. This prototype system showcased the feasibility of the Posthuman CollectiveEyes digital platform and identified several directions for enhancing its practicality in real-world settings, and demonstrated that its posthuman approach offers richer potential opportunities beyond existing approaches. Third, we demonstrated the effectiveness of experience prototyping and annotated portfolios in uncovering diverse opportunities within digital platforms. As discussed in Section 5, experience prototyping provided an immersive experience through working prototype systems and scenarios. Implementing minimum functionalities for participants to engage with the scenarios allowed us to extract valuable insights. The experiences shared in Section 5 emphasized that even a simple prototype can yield significant insights, emphasizing the importance of selecting an appropriate fidelity level to optimize research costs. Overall, our paper contributes to the understanding and development of digital platforms by integrating the more-than-human perspective, showcasing use cases, and employing effective prototyping methods. These findings provide a foundation for further advancements in this field. In this study, we extracted affordances that are valuable for the design of Posthuman CollectiveEyes as a case study. Our objective is to extend our design approach from a more-than-human perspective and apply it to other digital platforms and artifacts aspiring to be posthuman. Moving forward, our aim is to continue generalizing the design approach based on the more-than-human perspective pursued in this study, by exploring affordances of additional digital platforms and artifacts seeking to embrace a posthuman approach.

To ensure the practical use of Posthuman CollectiveEyes in our daily lives, further steps need to be taken, as outlined in Section 4.5.4. It is essential to reassess the requirements from an implementation standpoint and conduct a field study using the new prototype implementation. Although the current study's objective is not to quantitatively measure the effects of Posthuman CollectiveEyes on individuals' thoughts and behaviors or to demonstrate the effectiveness of each case study, future field studies will involve conducting quantitative evaluations of each use case to validate their effects. These evaluations will consider both the system perspective and usability aspects, enabling a comprehensive assessment of the benefits. The primary goal of the current study is to explore the potential opportunities offered by the more-than-human perspective, and the upcoming field study will provide valuable insights for further refining and validating the approach.