Pollino: A Research-Through-Design Approach To Pollinator Conservation,
2025
Moholy-University of Art and Design Budapest
Pollino: A Research-Through-Design Approach To Pollinator Conservation, Kitti Butter
Nordes Conference Series
This paper examines how design can foster multispecies cohabitation in urban environments by supporting wild pollinators, specifically solitary wild bees. Grounded in theories of more-than-human design and multispecies care, the project challenges conventional human-centric urban planning by integrating ecological insights into practical interventions. Using a Research-through-Design approach, the project “Pollino” was developed as an experimental urban intervention that incorporates pollinator-friendly nesting habitats into public infrastructure. The interdisciplinary project draws on stakeholder interviews with ecologists, urban planners, and municipal decision-makers, along with a one-year pilot study deploying twelve prototypes in diverse urban settings and monitoring their impact on urban biodiversity and …
Lighting A Public Thing? Organizing Design Things In Public Bureaucracy,
2025
PhD Student HDK-Valand
Lighting A Public Thing? Organizing Design Things In Public Bureaucracy, Christina Vildinge, Elena Raviola
Nordes Conference Series
This study takes an interdisciplinary approach to the design of the night city, by exploring how, through complex scripting processes, the relational aesthetics of light is translated in processes of urban planning. This exploration is based on our study of lighting design in the city of Gothenburg and highlights the multiplicities of designing light through dimensions of aesthetics, sustainability, safety, environment, biodiversity, work and more. The question we ask is how the relational materiality of light as a design material is translated in the organizational process of urban planning and how light in this process is made a matter of …
Becoming Compost: Fostering Soil Care Through Design Practices,
2025
Università degli Studi della Campania Luigi Vanvitelli
Becoming Compost: Fostering Soil Care Through Design Practices, Annarita Bianco
Nordes Conference Series
Soil is a complex and interconnected entity, essential for life yet constantly threatened by intensive human practices. Inspired by the Environmental Humanities, this contribution illustrates the experience of two workshops that, by immersing participants in the exchange of soil matter, aim to shed light on the fragility of our planet’s balance and promote greater ecological awareness. Through mixing soil samples, radial chromatography, and augmented reality technologies, Becoming Compost emphasises the importance of soil as a site of biopoiesis, chemical element transformation, and interspecies exchange. It also encourages participants to reflect on the significance of one of life’s fundamental elements, fostering …
Affect In More-Than-Human Design Practice: An Anecdote-Based Exploration Through Dialogue,
2025
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, ENSAG, AAU-CRESSON, France
Affect In More-Than-Human Design Practice: An Anecdote-Based Exploration Through Dialogue, Daphné Hamilton-Jones, Anna M. Schröder
Nordes Conference Series
In an effort to respond to the contemporary environmental crises, Design strives to continuously define and develop more-than-human design practices. In response, this exploratory piece puts in dialogue two “affective anecdotes”: we discuss affective encounters with the ocean and the soil, foregrounding how these experiences have impacted our perspectives on the Design discipline and practice, exploring how, through a reflective dialogue, a relational understanding of these events emerges, while also allowing us to grasp the implicit nature of our more-than-human design practice better. This paper foregrounds the difficulty in expressing affective experiences through words, as well as the value of …
Designing Speculative Probes: Narrating Menstruation With Cultural Sensitivity And Care,
2025
Lab for Social Design, Kolding School of Design
Designing Speculative Probes: Narrating Menstruation With Cultural Sensitivity And Care, Canan Akoglu, Sofie Kinch, Linda Domke
Nordes Conference Series
This paper explores the design of speculative probes as a situated, exploratory, and critical practice for engaging with intimate and stigmatized topics in specific socio-cultural contexts. It examines how designers navigate cultural sensitivities with care, demonstrating how speculative design can foster alternative spaces for dialogue rather than directly confronting taboos. Drawing on a case study in Tunisia, which addresses cultural stigmas around menstruation among young men and women, the paper highlights the importance of narrative-driven and culturally sensitive speculative design in fostering non-judgmental spaces for dialogue and mutual learning, thereby supporting systemic and cultural transformation. This paper advocates for design …
Toying With Relations: Speculative Toys For Children And Sustainability,
2025
Stockholm University, Umeå University
Toying With Relations: Speculative Toys For Children And Sustainability, Karey Helms, Petra Jääskeläinen, Sharon Lindberg, Elin Sporrong, Arjun Menon, Meike Schalk, Airi Lampinen
Nordes Conference Series
Toys as situated within the relational ontologies of children includes how more-than-human relations are imagined and valued through play. Motivated by a concern for a damaged environment, we critique a selection of existing toys intended for outdoor play and fabulate other versions based upon alternative relations. From the detailing of six redesigns through text and collage, we foreground generative pathways for how children, and adults, might relate differently to nature. These pathways are presented as questions prompted by the toys. This exploratory research contributes to the imagining of multispecies worlds and the agency of children in toying with more-than-human relations.
The Relational Designer,
2025
Technische Hochschule Nürnberg Georg Simon Ohm | Nuremberg Tech
The Relational Designer, Michaela Honauer
Nordes Conference Series
Despite the growing recognition of relational design, limited attention has been given to the designer as a relational individual. Why is a designer relational (i.e. relationship-oriented)? How can they reflect and make their individual relationality transparent? This exploratory paper sheds light on these questions and stimulates reflection of designers as relational entities. A designer can take on many roles –practitioner, researcher, manager, collaborator, provider, politician, etc.– but always remains an individual with personal feelings and connections. Like every other individual, a designer experiences their being and doing uniquely. This constructivist understanding of the designer likewise suggests that every designer approaches …
Seasonal Design,
2025
University of Borås
Seasonal Design, Svenja Keune, Åsa Ståhl
Nordes Conference Series
Imagine it is a rainy winter day, and you are walking up to a little mustard yellow house on wheels and step up three wooden steps to enter. You notice the pulsing light of candles and the warmth of the fireplace that is heating the indoors. Some people are sitting around the table dreaming of how they would use the house if they could borrow it for a while. You take a step inside to join and have some tea. While stepping in you hear the splash of a puddle and feel your socks soak up water before you even …
Designing With Rural Mobilities: Attempts At Relational Design,
2025
Kolding School of Design
Designing With Rural Mobilities: Attempts At Relational Design, Sofie Holst, Morten Krogh Petersen, Mathias Poulsen, Alexandra Lindek, Maximilian Schmidauer
Nordes Conference Series
This exploratory paper contributes to the development of relational design as a methodology by examining how relational design unfolds – or fails to unfold – within the context of the development and research project X. Mobilities both create and disrupt relations, making our engagement in the X project particularly suitable for investigating where and how relational design operates, as well as the effects it can achieve. Specifically, we analyze how relational design, when developed through fieldwork, within the particular project constellation of X, and through engagements with mobilities studies, is nurtured, constrained, and problematized. We emphasize that designing relationally is …
Linguistic Hospitality: Thinking With Language To Reflect On Positionality Within More-Than-Human Participatory Design.,
2025
Hasselt University
Linguistic Hospitality: Thinking With Language To Reflect On Positionality Within More-Than-Human Participatory Design., Weronika Kozak, Liesbeth Huybrechts
Nordes Conference Series
This text is a reflection on an ongoing PhD research on more-than-human hospitality, more particularly on how farmers live with water. Within my research, I will undertake an ethnographic study paired with participatory design, through which I will attempt to bring water home - shift mindsets towards water and build capacity for an environmental transition. In this contribution I will address a relatively under-discussed issue of multilingualism within participatory design and reflect on the process of entering a sensitive context without speaking the native language. Taking the form of a polyphonic essay, this text will explore paradoxes and possibilities lying …
Shaping Space And Forming Dimensionality Through Origami Practice,
2025
Aalto University
Shaping Space And Forming Dimensionality Through Origami Practice, Laureen Mahler
Nordes Conference Series
Space surrounds and enfolds the breadth of our doings. It is vital in relational perspectives on designing because relations exist both in and because of space. This is especially apparent in practice-led design research, in which world-building is predicated on repeated flows that form becomings. Through diverse documentation of the author's origami research, this exploratory paper investigates how engagement with space in the making process provides a rich medium for new perspectives on relationality. Specifically, when space is perceived as alive and dynamic — physically made alongside the artifact — its activation reveals new potentialities for identifying relations and interdependencies. …
A Companion Map For Relational Metadesign Journeys,
2025
University of Wales Trinity St. Davids
A Companion Map For Relational Metadesign Journeys, Hannah Jones, Anette Lundebye, Mathilda Tham
Nordes Conference Series
How can we hold, practice, communicate complex relationality in design research, education and practice; as individuals, in teams, and between different communities of knowledge? We explore the role that a particular visual metadesign framework has played in negotiating such relationality over a period of 20 years. Drawing upon cases of organisational change, design of education and research leadership, we address complex sustainability contexts, including gender and intersectionality. The paper examines how the iterative development of the framework has evolved in dialogue with the specific needs of each project as well as with an ongoing discourse of the needs presented by …
Relational Design For Remote Intergenerational Sensorial Play Experiences,
2025
Estonian Academy of Arts
Relational Design For Remote Intergenerational Sensorial Play Experiences, Kristi Kuusk, Azeem Hamid, Zaur Babayev, Paula Veske-Lepp, Nesli Hazal Oktay
Nordes Conference Series
This paper explores intergenerational mental well-being through sensorial play between children and remote grandparents. With increasing physical separation due to transnational family networks, maintaining these relationships is vital for mental health. While digital communication tools help, excessive screen use negatively impacts children's well-being. Through three case studies, we exemplify relational design sensitivities by engaging participants in co-creation, adaptive improvisation, and networked interactions through our design process. We investigate how relational design approaches combined with sensorial design could enhance connection beyond screens, emphasizing the role of embodied, multisensory engagement in intergenerational bonds.
A Designer’S Ethic: An Art In Balance,
2025
Georgetown University
A Designer’S Ethic: An Art In Balance, Akshaya Narayanan, Anna Lathrop, Lucas Vaqueiro
Nordes Conference Series
Designers are increasingly becoming involved in areas that were once considered silos. From healthcare to technology and government, designers are shared custodians for addressing large-scale, complex problems. With this shift towards more interdisciplinary work and blurred boundaries between fields, a designer's role takes many forms. As we navigate the landscapes of interdisciplinary practice and confront issues that affect our society and planet unprecedentedly, the responsibility to act ethically primarily rests on the individual. Without general, agreed-upon ethical guidelines, like the Hippocratic oath for doctors, we explore ways to establish shared values for the design community. Drawing from design justice and …
Exploring Data Physicalization For Environmental Engagement: A Case Study On The Disposal Of Contact Lens Blisters,
2025
Institute of Science Tokyo, School of Environment and Society
Exploring Data Physicalization For Environmental Engagement: A Case Study On The Disposal Of Contact Lens Blisters, Chengtian Li, Daichi Tezuka, Xinru Zhu, Salani Giorgio, Kayoko Nohara
Nordes Conference Series
In response to increasing calls for more responsible and creative design approaches, this research explores how data physicalization can shed light on the often-overlooked ecological impacts of everyday consumption. Focusing on the disposal of contact lens blisters, a seemingly trivial yet significant waste stream, we developed two tangible interfaces that encourage playful and reflective interactions. Through participant observation and discussion, we found that making disposal habits both visible and interactive enhanced participants' awareness of, and engagement with, routine actions typically deemed insignificant. By emphasizing embodied engagement, playfulness, and metaphorical representations, this exploratory paper contributes to design practices seeking to nurture …
Knitting For A Gnome And Other Spiritual Kindnesses: Fabulating Our Way Into Relationality,
2025
Delft University of Technology
Knitting For A Gnome And Other Spiritual Kindnesses: Fabulating Our Way Into Relationality, Otto Rønnest, Maja Riemann
Nordes Conference Series
This paper explores relational fragments from Nordic mythology and folklore through a critical fabulation that was crafted as a situated co-labouring and embodied auto-ethnographic designerly approach to expanding our design practice towards relationality. It is a search for and a move towards “alternative Wests” and seeks to step beyond Design-as-Modern. From the critical fabulation situated insights for designing relationaly are presented, not as a recipe for others but as inspiration for others to engage in their own culture to find their own situated practice.
Towards Eco-Social Contracts Through An Entangled Manifestation Of Digital Litter,
2025
Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University
Towards Eco-Social Contracts Through An Entangled Manifestation Of Digital Litter, Seda Özçetin, Ylva Fernaeus, Şeyda Özçetin, Larissa Pschetz
Nordes Conference Series
Many of the current debates in technology concern the extractive practices around planetary resources and data, which produce electronic waste as well as everyday sense of clutter among media channels and files. In this paper, we engage with this problem space through a specific focus on Terms of Service agreements, which have become a prerequisite for even the most rudimentary use of technology. We do this by presenting an exploded view of an existing Terms of Service policy ecosystem, in the form of an outdoor installation, temporarily littering a patch of nature. Through this installation, we expose eco-social contracts as …
Is It About Time? On The Meanings Of Temporal Representations In Object Art,
2025
Stockholm University
Is It About Time? On The Meanings Of Temporal Representations In Object Art, Patricia Ciobanu, Ylva Fernaeus
Nordes Conference Series
Perspectives on time within interaction design research have extended beyond material embodiments, such as standard clocks, to exploring alternative designs and situating these in cultural practices and relations. We investigate examples of how time has been expressed in a series of object-based artworks that represent time otherwise, highlighting how they use a variety of material forms to engage with social, political, and contextually performative issues. Through a critical analysis, we illustrate how such works engage with topics of social negotiation, hidden labour, gender, power, and technology-supported disruptive living. We end with a reflection on how these expressions of meaning-making cultivate …
Agonistic Design In Practice: Introducing Agonism To Interaction Design Pedagogy,
2025
Umea Institute of Design
Agonistic Design In Practice: Introducing Agonism To Interaction Design Pedagogy, Robert Collins, Anjuli Tushar Acharya, Tom Van Wijland, Hanxiong Zhang, Johan Redström, Marco C. Rozendaal
Nordes Conference Series
In an increasingly technology-mediated world, agonistic design seeks to support agency over convenience in an attempt to give the user more determination over the technologies which may adversely affect them. This paper explores the experimental integration of agonistic design principles into an Interaction Design Masters course to address the emerging harms of algorithmic decision systems (ADS). Conducted with Interaction Design Master’s students at a Swedish University, the intervention introduced agonistic design through a seminar, tutorials, and projects which move from ideation, to prototyping, ending with public exhibition and reflection exercise. Drawing on frameworks supporting democratic design and constructive disagreement, the …
Resisting Rationality And Designing For Being: In Place, In Time, And In Networks,
2025
Luleå University of Technology
Resisting Rationality And Designing For Being: In Place, In Time, And In Networks, Martin Åhlén, Jessica Rohdin
Nordes Conference Series
This exploratory paper is a critique to rationalistic driven design practices that excludes voices and damages the planet we share with other beings. Rationalism is implicated in the unprecedented climate change the world is suffering, which serves as the backdrop for the paper. The authors propose an alternative approach in a relational design framework of being—in-place, in-time, and in-networks—as a prompt for reflection and opening the views on how design affects its surroundings. Engaging with various scholars, the paper reflects on the necessity for design and designers to slow down, interact, be fully present, engage their senses, respect their surroundings, …
