Learning To Design With Communities: Situated Public Design Education Through The Roots Project In The Gambia,
2026
Esade Business School, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Learning To Design With Communities: Situated Public Design Education Through The Roots Project In The Gambia, Mireia Sierra, Juan José Ramos, Ramon Bragos
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents the ROOTS Project, developed by interdisciplinary student teams from Esade, UPC, and IED within Fusion Point's Challenge-Based Innovation framework, in collaboration with IdeaSquare at CERN. As part of a challenge proposed by IDAEA-CSIC (Spain) and the Sankandi Youth Development Association (SYDA, The Gambia), students co-designed low-cost environmental monitoring tools to support community-led mangrove restoration in the River Gambia region. A two-week field deployment in Sankandi embedded the project within a layered local governance structure (the Alkalo, the Village Development Committee, and its Environmental Committee) through which the technology was formally adopted and transferred. Drawing on student reflections …
“Why Do All The Schools Look The Same?” Exploring Children’S Spatial Design Preferences Through Generative Ai In India,
2026
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
“Why Do All The Schools Look The Same?” Exploring Children’S Spatial Design Preferences Through Generative Ai In India, Chinmay Pade, Charu Monga
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Artificial Intelligence is increasingly embedded in creative and spatial design processes, transforming how ideas are visualized and interpreted. This study examines how generative AI tools influence children’s imagination and articulation of spatial design preferences for schools in India. In a context where school environments are often standardized and children’s perspectives remain marginalized, participatory workshops with primary-school students engaged them in describing, writing, and generating AI-assisted images to express their visions for school spaces. The process revealed both the potential and the limits of AI-driven visualization. While AI expanded imagination and made ideas instantly visible, it also reproduced globalized aesthetics detached …
Exploring How Llms Shape Collaborative Decision-Making In Service Design,
2026
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
Exploring How Llms Shape Collaborative Decision-Making In Service Design, Yaoqi Li, Hyunyim Park
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The increasing integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into design workflows is reshaping how designers make decisions. This study examines the influence of LLMs on design decision-making during the early stages of service design, through a diary study with service design practitioners. By analysing usage logs and conducting post-intervention focus group interviews, we examine collaborative decision-making across three interaction dimensions: designer–designer, designer–LLM, and LLM–LLM. The findings reveal that LLMs reshape the internal decision logic and collaboration mode within service design teams. Across different stages of collaborative decision-making with human, LLMs take on varying roles as apprentice, collaborator, advisor, expert, co-creator, …
Bias Reconsidered: Ecologically Rational Heuristics In Design Cognition,
2026
Purdue University, United States of America
Bias Reconsidered: Ecologically Rational Heuristics In Design Cognition, Paul Parsons, Srishti Agrawal, Phuong Bui, Prakash Shukla, Ali Baigelenov
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design cognition is often described through a heuristics-and-biases lens that foregrounds systematic errors such as anchoring, fixation, and premature narrowing. Yet in professional practice, the same patterns may function as adaptive strategies for coping with ambiguity, constraint, and ill-defined problems. This paper examines how bias-like tendencies appear in expert data visualization work using a multi-phase qualitative study with 11 professional designers. We analyze situated episodes through two contrastive interpretive lenses: a bias lens that highlights potential distortions, and an adaptive-expertise lens that treats the same tendencies as resource-rational strategies. We situate these interpretations within a broader design cognition perspective, drawing …
Distributed Care Hubs: Rethinking Disability Care Policy Through Participatory Research,
2026
Lehigh University, United States of America
Distributed Care Hubs: Rethinking Disability Care Policy Through Participatory Research, Christina Chi Zhang, Kyra Zimmerman, Austin Duncan, Jiin Jung
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper develops the concept of "distributed care hubs" to describe the informal, relational infrastructures through which disabled people sustain everyday life amid insufficient formal care systems. Drawing on participatory research in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—combining community mapping, ethnographic interviews, and computational analysis—we show how community-built care emerges through ordinary social interactions, shared spaces, and reciprocal relationships. Distributed care hubs reveal that disability care and everyday sociality are inseparable; they challenge independence-centered policy frameworks by foregrounding interdependence as a universal human condition. Yet these hubs remain precarious, functioning as compensatory mechanisms shaped by systemic failures that force disabled people into informal survival …
Agnes As A Critical Wearable: Mediating Age, Materiality, And Embodied Expertise,
2026
AgeLab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
Advanced Care Research Centre, University of Ediburgh
Agnes As A Critical Wearable: Mediating Age, Materiality, And Embodied Expertise, Elisa Cardamone, Taylor Brennan, Sophia Ashebir, Lisa D'Ambrosio, Joseph F. Coughlin
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design is increasingly engaging with the body through soft systems, wearables, and responsive materials, exploring how material interactions shape experiences of care and inclusion. This paper examines the Age Gain Now Empathy System (AGNES) - a wearable suit simulating the chronic physical conditions and functional changes associated with older age - as a critical, soma-focused design intervention. Drawing on auto-ethnographic reflection and participant observation, we present a theoretical and methodological analysis. We argue that AGNES' critical materiality actively mediates how the ageing body is read and made visible, inviting embodied understanding and supporting co-creation partnerships. We analyse how this wearable …
Intermediary Ecologies And Participatory Infrastructures In Wind Power Planning – Towards A Practice Of Design For Just Transitions,
2026
London College of Communication, University of Arts London, CoDesign4Transitions
Intermediary Ecologies And Participatory Infrastructures In Wind Power Planning – Towards A Practice Of Design For Just Transitions, Tessa Laven, Ramia Maze, Niki Wallace
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper analyses how transition intermediaries and participatory infrastructures shape an unjust energy licensing process and outlines implications for design for just transitions. Centring on the Fosen Wind Farm in Norway, where wind power development violated Indigenous Sámi cultural rights, it traces how licensing enabled renewable expansion while generating democratic and rights-based conflicts. Using historical case analysis and a synthesis of various literatures, the paper explores the intermediary ecology of licensing and shows how interactions among transition intermediaries structure power asymmetries. In dialogue with design research on infrastructuring, it proposes three practices for design in just transition contexts: unveiling institutional–cultural …
Can Textiles Be Alive? Exploring Transitional Materialities Through Microbial Biosensors And Textile Fluidics,
2026
Northeastern University, United States of America;
Harvard University, United States of America
Can Textiles Be Alive? Exploring Transitional Materialities Through Microbial Biosensors And Textile Fluidics, Avantika Velho, Saurabh Mhatre, Varenya Sethumadhavan, Hann Tu, Neel Joshi, Katia Zolotovsky
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores materials in transition through Living Textiles, a platform that integrates genetically engineered whole-cell biosensors into textiles for on-body physiological and environmental sensing. The project investigates how textiles can act as computational and ecological systems, integrating living cells that sense their environment and communicate through material change. By combining biological sensing with textile craft, Living Textiles reframes smart materials as regenerative and cohabited rather than extractive and disposable. The research contributes to the field of transitional materials design by: (1) presenting new interaction possibilities with microbial cells; (2) developing methods for designing microenvironments that sustain life and sensing; …
More Than Weeds: Thickening Designer-Plant Relations In The Sonoran Desert,
2026
Arizona State University, United States of America
More Than Weeds: Thickening Designer-Plant Relations In The Sonoran Desert, Andrew James Whitcomb, Marysol Ortega Pallanez
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Affective relations among humans and more-than-humans are full of shifts, subtleties, and complexities. Yet, design research often treats feelings as stable instruments to utilize for making sustainable climate futures. Through reflection-on-practice, we untangle impressions and gestures in the field during a design research project in the Sonoran Desert titled Gifts for Tempe. Our reflections focus on shifts in our attention and attachments with an ‘invasive’ plant commonly known as Stinknet. The impressions and gestures reveal designer-researchers’ thick tensions in designing for climate futures. By showing how affective relations with more-than-humans change over time, we identify that climate futuring involves learning …
Uncovering The Health Impacts Of Extreme Temperatures In Western United States Prisons Through Interdisciplinary Architectural And Epidemiological Methods,
2026
University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Environmental Design
Uncovering The Health Impacts Of Extreme Temperatures In Western United States Prisons Through Interdisciplinary Architectural And Epidemiological Methods, Serena Langdon-Dimidjian, Allison Macht, Shawhin Roudbari, Katherine Lemasters, David Ciplet, Elizabeth Corrado, Michael Clifton, Bob Eisman
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Mass incarceration is a public health and architectural crisis in the United States. Extreme temperatures present mental and physical health challenges for incarcerated populations, exacerbated by the architectural strategies of carceral spaces. At the intersection of architecture and epidemiology we investigated how participants could leverage architectural drawings to analyze the inhumane temperatures they experienced in state prisons. Through interviews and focus groups with formerly incarcerated people, we found that the method of participatory architectural drawing allowed participants and researchers to spatialize the impact of extreme temperatures on mental and physical health as mediated by architectural space. Through a collaboration between …
Reframing Architectural Practice Through Territory And Emotion: The Atlas Of Emotions In Bajo Atrato, Colombia,
2026
Universidad del Rosario, Colombia
Reframing Architectural Practice Through Territory And Emotion: The Atlas Of Emotions In Bajo Atrato, Colombia, Carolina Saldarriaga-Cardona
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study reframes architectural practice in Bajo Atrato, Colombia, through a relational understanding of territory and emotion, during the implementation of the Peace Agreement. Using a situated research-by-design approach, the study combines field journeys, workshops on emotional cartographies, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and audiovisual recordings in Carmen del Darién, Marriaga Swamp, Triganá Bay, and Santa María de la Antigua del Darién. These methods consider everyday life, memory, and collective care as forms of territorial knowledge. The recognition of territories, identification of emotions, and the visibility of the Territorial Expressions of Grieving led to the creation of the Atlas of Emotions, …
The R’S Have It: Navigating The Playground Of Design For Health Through Design Rationale,
2026
NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, The
The R’S Have It: Navigating The Playground Of Design For Health Through Design Rationale, Bard Wartena, Derek Kuipers
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines how systemic designers in health navigate plural perspectives and overlapping quality regimes. We introduce the Playground of Design as four interconnected spaces of problem, design, change, and solution, together with four R’s, Rapidness, Rigour, Relevance, and Resonance, as conversational lenses for articulating design rationale in plural settings. Two Dutch cases illustrate this approach. Bias Blaster, a serious game for adolescents recovering from psychosis, is reread retrospectively to reconstruct systemic design rationale. E-Health Junior, a long-running e-health consortium, is reconstructed through interviews and translated into a pedagogical workshop for perspective-taking. We argue that combining the Playground of Design …
Co-Living With Agentic Ai: Reframing Design Research For Experiential Trust In Everyday Domestic Life,
2026
Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America
Co-Living With Agentic Ai: Reframing Design Research For Experiential Trust In Everyday Domestic Life, Jay Moon
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As artificial intelligence evolves into agentic, adaptive, and generative systems, design research faces an epistemic shift. AI assistants, once reactive interfaces, are increasingly experienced as proactive presences that shape everyday life. This transformation reframes trust, no longer limited to technical reliability, transparency, or explainability, but also emerging as a relational and experiential phenomenon formed through interaction. While industry emphasizes technical trust, including privacy, security, and system reliability, design research must also address experiential trust, a felt confidence grounded in the lived quality of human and AI coexistence. Focusing on the smart home as a case of everyday domestic life, where …
Visual Thinking With Artificial Intelligence And Augmented And Virtual Reality,
2026
Design Program, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University
Visual Thinking With Artificial Intelligence And Augmented And Virtual Reality, Peter Stewart Harkins, Jan Michel Auernhammer
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Visual thinking, a foundation of design, is often framed as a reflective conversation between a designer and their medium. Recent advances in generative Artificial Intelligence and immersive technologies, such as Augmented and Virtual Reality, are profoundly reshaping this conversation. This article explores how these digital tools augment the visual design process, moving beyond traditional methods. Through a series of autoethnographic, practice-based examples, we demonstrate several key transformations, particularly: AI-driven dialogues that rapidly iterate within a visual language and translate across languages; embodied, spatial sketching in AR/VR that enables new forms of visuospatial reasoning; and novel methods for perspective-taking and collaboration …
Beyond Assumptions: Identity Mapping As A Tool For Inclusive Public Design Learning,
2026
Independent researcher
Beyond Assumptions: Identity Mapping As A Tool For Inclusive Public Design Learning, Corie Seed, Chiara Del Gaudio
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Recent studies in Design Education emphasize the importance of teaching Design as a contextually situated practice, and ways for leveraging local knowledges and embracing plural epistemologies. Within this framework, it becomes crucial for designers to be able to acknowledge their own assumptions, biases, and identities and how they influence their design decisions when dealing with cultural complexity. Yet, an effective practice for cultivating this awareness, defined as critical self-reflection, remains underexplored in Design Education. This paper aims to outline key ways to foster the practice of critical self-reflection in teaching and learning Public Design. Drawing on interviews with design educators, …
Archives And Graphic Memory: 1980s Brazilian Rock Album Covers As Cultural Heritage,
2026
FAUUSP, Brazil
Archives And Graphic Memory: 1980s Brazilian Rock Album Covers As Cultural Heritage, Paulo Eduardo Moretto, Priscila Lena Farias
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The centrality of modernist and institution-centred narratives has narrowed the scope of Brazilian graphic design throughout history, limiting its cultural and epistemological diversity. This article explores the value of researching graphic artefacts normally understood as not pertinent to design research, focusing on album covers from the Brazilian rock scene of the 1980s. Based on the formation of an archive of 155 covers, this study emphasizes the need for appropriate methods to analyse mass-culture artefacts whose wide circulation shapes collective design practices and visual imaginaries. By reflecting on the criteria of selection, interpretation, and preservation that determine what is collected, analysed, …
Sketching Social Robots: Visualising Futures Of Human–Robot Interaction Through Participatory Imagination,
2026
University of Waikato, New Zealand
Sketching Social Robots: Visualising Futures Of Human–Robot Interaction Through Participatory Imagination, Nicholas Vanderschantz, Jessica Turner, Jemma Konig, Claire Timpany, Rafeea Siddika, Nathan Shakes
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In this paper, we explore sketching as a speculative and reflective practice for imagining social robots. Through a series of participatory design workshops, participants observed two prototype robots and then produced sketches and word maps envisioning possible appearances, behaviours, and social roles for robots in everyday life. Analysing the artefacts of these workshops reveals how non-expert human users perceive and imagine future robots in their worlds. We examine common themes of emotion, familiarity, discomfort, and relational values in the artefacts produced by the workshop participants. Our work highlights a way that sketching and written idea generation by non-designers can serve …
Speculative Design Through Synthetic Data: Exploring How Synthetic Data Be Used To Represent Missing ‘More-Than-Human' Data,
2026
RMIT University, Australia
Speculative Design Through Synthetic Data: Exploring How Synthetic Data Be Used To Represent Missing ‘More-Than-Human' Data, Michael Dunbar, Chris Speed
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Smart city data infrastructures largely reinforce anthropocentric paradigms, neglecting the entangled relationships that shape more-than-human worlds. This paper explores synthetic data as a transformative tool to address these omissions, offering alternative ways to represent missing non-human perspectives. Through a research-through-design approach, we present Kin Bank: a speculative interface that uses synthetic data to generate poetic, transactional representations between human and non-human actors. Adopting the metaphor of a shared bank account, the system foregrounds ecological and financial interdependencies while challenging reductionist data practices. Findings from a user study show how synthetic data can surface unseen relationships, embrace ecological complexity, and provoke …
Generative Analogical Intelligence: Speculative Co-Design Through The Fabric Of Analogy,
2026
Texas State University, United States of America
Generative Analogical Intelligence: Speculative Co-Design Through The Fabric Of Analogy, Nishra Ranpura
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly embedded in creative practice, offering new possibilities for ideation while raising concerns about reduced idea diversity and diminished cognitive engagement. This paper introduces generative analogical intelligence (GAI) as a human-centered approach that foregrounds analogy, material culture, and speculative reasoning to sustain creative thinking. Through a research-through-design (RtD) methodology, the study develops and refines the FABRIC framework (form, action, behavior, relation, intention, context) across three co-design phases involving design students, non-specialists, and design professionals. Findings suggest that analogy-based cross-pollination can reintroduce productive cognitive friction, support both divergent and convergent thinking, and generate varied outcomes. However, …
Design-Led Ecodesign Implementation: Enabling Product And Organisational Transformation For Sustainability Transitions,
2026
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Design-Led Ecodesign Implementation: Enabling Product And Organisational Transformation For Sustainability Transitions, Enrica Monticelli, Francesco Zurlo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
A research project conducted in a major appliance company investigates how Ecodesign, when implemented through a design-led and cross-functional process, can evolve from a technical activity into a catalyst for organisational transformation. The study examines the application of a company-specific Ecodesign tool designed to guide product development teams and support adaptive change. A conceptual framework integrating Design-Led Innovation, Dynamic Capabilities, and the Multi-Level Perspective is adopted to interpret how design mediates learning across functions. The paper focuses on the Seize phase, when Ecodesign is integrated into new product development routines through pilot projects. These pilots act as experimental settings in …
