Mediating Borders Through Sound: Sonic Boundary Objects In Infrastructural Listening,
2026
Northeastern University, United States of America
Mediating Borders Through Sound: Sonic Boundary Objects In Infrastructural Listening, Paula Martin Rivero, Dietmar Offenhuber
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Through Tower of Babel, a spatialized sound installation based on field recordings at the U.S.–Mexico border, we examine how sonic boundary objects translate bureaucratic infrastructures into embodied, perceptual encounters. The installation treats borders as culturally constructed virtual spaces rather than geometric lines, enabling movement across sonic channels and challenging fixed notions of data and identity. We argue that sound-driven artifacts can function as boundary objects in design contexts by mediating knowledge, exposing hierarchies, and fostering collective sense-making. These artifacts support cooperation across diverse stakeholders through sonic habitability: auditory conditions that reframe relations among human, technological, and environmental actors. While auditory …
Touch Wood: Stuckness, Risk Assessment, And Embodied Knowledge In Practice,
2026
Northumbria University, United Kingdom
Touch Wood: Stuckness, Risk Assessment, And Embodied Knowledge In Practice, Hugo Glover
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This practice-based research explores stuckness in creative work not as a problem to eliminate, but as a threshold state where tacit knowledge becomes operative. Drawing on autoethnographic narrative, I examine how attending to stuckness reveals the autonomic nervous system's (ANS) role in embodied knowing. Through a close reading of wood carving practice, I document how physical engagement with materials offered a way to work with, rather than overcome, stuckness. When invited to exhibit this work, I experienced acute stress that led me to adapt a Risk Assessment form—typically used for physical hazards—to map emotional risks such as shame and humiliation. …
Computational User Research For A Public Helpline For Continuous Service Improvement: Parents Anonymous® As A Service Ecosystem,
2026
Myron E. Ullman, Jr. School of Design, University of Cincinnati
Computational User Research For A Public Helpline For Continuous Service Improvement: Parents Anonymous® As A Service Ecosystem, Ali O. Ilhan, Elizabeth C. Harris, Isil Oygur
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Parents Anonymous®, a social service agency, provides a comprehensive ecosystem of supports to parents through its National Parent & Youth Helpline and mutual support groups. The verbal support provided through the Helpline is the core of this public service. We present a computational user research approach that learns from call transcripts to guide continuous improvement across the helpline–group system. From real conversations, we extract clear, actionable signals: how emotions shift during a call, which needs recur over time and when people are most likely to reach out. These insights feed back into everyday practice: refining counsellors’ training and responses, timing …
Strategic Positioning In Design Agencies: Achieving Optimal Distinctiveness Through Portfolios,
2026
Institute for Creative Futures, Loughborough University London, United Kingdom
Strategic Positioning In Design Agencies: Achieving Optimal Distinctiveness Through Portfolios, Bingqing Tian, Antonius Van Den Broek, Mikko Koria
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The growing recognition of design’s value to business and society has driven rapid expansion in the design industries, intensifying competition among designers and design firms. Despite an increased scholarly attention to the strategic role of design, there is a lack of understanding how design businesses strategize and position themselves in the market. We aim to revitalise this debate by reviewing a diverse range of literatures on strategic positioning of design agencies and suggest a focus on the theory of optimal distinctiveness. This theory argues that to be successful, firms need to find an optimal balance between being different to be …
Code Ecologies: Reclaiming Design As Meaning-Making Within Human–Ecological Systems,
2026
Royal College of Art, United Kingdom
Code Ecologies: Reclaiming Design As Meaning-Making Within Human–Ecological Systems, Laura Santamaria
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper reclaims the role of design as a practice of meaning-making within human–ecological systems. While meaning has always been part of design discourse, successive turns – semiotic, experiential, relational – have addressed what meaning is without asking why living systems make meaning at all. Drawing on recent advances in neuroscience, biosemiotics and code biology, it argues that meaning-making is not a cognitive phenomenon unique to humans but a regulatory process intrinsic to living systems. Code Ecologies offers a philosophical framework that reinterprets the biosphere, technosphere and semiosphere as interdependent ecologies of codes, resonant with relational and Indigenous cosmologies. The …
Support Designer’S Wellbeing: Understanding Resilience In Design Education As A Wicked Challenge,
2026
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Support Designer’S Wellbeing: Understanding Resilience In Design Education As A Wicked Challenge, Yilin Quan, Matthew Isherwood, Ji Han
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design students are expected to engage with wicked problems as part of their learning. Since these problems have no definitive solutions, the learning process can be challenging and may negatively affect students’ wellbeing. Cultivating resilience becomes critical. Although the conceptualisation of designer resilience has gained attention, it remains underexplored. This paper proposes a new conceptual model of resilience in design education, suggesting two capacity clusters: one emphasising short-term recovery and balance restoration, and the other focusing on long-term sustained engagement. It further frames resilience cultivation in design education as a wicked problem in itself, characterised by the inherent complexity within …
Co-Designing Academic Archives: Design-Led Frameworks For Post-Digital Cultural Heritage,
2026
UNIDCOM/IADE, Unidade de Investigação em Design e Comunicação, Jardim António Augusto Simenta Mordido, 2 - 1885 Moscavide, Portugal
Co-Designing Academic Archives: Design-Led Frameworks For Post-Digital Cultural Heritage, Ana Luísa Marques, Juliana F. Duque, Filipe Figueiredo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Building an information legacy requires method: identifying, selecting, and cataloguing information that can anchor future research demands a thorough archiving process, with accurate information access and rigorous preservation practice. Yet academic archives today must also respond to a broader cultural condition shaped by digital transformation and interdisciplinary collaboration. This paper discusses the development of an academic design archive as part of the wider GLAM ecosystem, where preservation, innovation and digital transformation coexist. It proposes a design-led framework that approaches archiving as a cultural and participatory process. Through literature review and institutional reflection, the study highlights the archive’s dual role: collecting …
Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks,
2026
Istanbul Technical University
Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks, Cagri G. Varli, Stefano Maffei
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, their material dimension as active design agents (artefacts and infrastructures) remains largely unrecognized. This study challenges the positioning of packaging and distribution tools as passive elements, repositioning them as entities that shape the ongoing negotiation of ethics, responsibility, and co-dependence within food systems. Drawing on interviews, thing ethnography, and relational mapping across two alternative food network case studies, the study examines the roles of these material agents. The findings show that material artefacts contribute to the organization of care, responsibility, and continuity across both pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food networks. Differences in …
Efficiency And Empathy: Integrating Ai Into User Research In An Undergraduate Ux Design Course,
2026
Central Connecticut State Universtiy, United States of America
Efficiency And Empathy: Integrating Ai Into User Research In An Undergraduate Ux Design Course, Nan Hu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The integration of AI into UX design presents both opportunities and challenges for UX education-how to leverage AI’s efficiency while developing students’ human skills. This pilot study examines LLMs as an analytical AI co-pilot in undergraduate user research. Students (N=17) conducted two cycles of user research: one using traditional methods, and another with Claude-assisted analysis. Findings show 14 (82%) of students perceived the Claude-assisted approach as faster in synthesizing data and extracting insights. However, the results also reveal a trade-off: AI's efficiency may reduce empathy-building, with 6 (35%) students reporting diminished user connection. This research illuminates the inherent tension in …
Design For Coastal Futures: Rethinking Space And Time With A More-Than-Human And Transcultural Lens.,
2026
ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Design For Coastal Futures: Rethinking Space And Time With A More-Than-Human And Transcultural Lens., Serena Pollastri, Juan Montalvan Lume, Louise Mullagh, Suzana Ilic
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Amid the intensifying challenges of climate change, there is an emerging consensus within coastal academic and practitioner networks on the importance of integrating design led-approaches that enhance resilience and foster the long-term adaptation for coastal communities. However, coastal environments present peculiar contexts for design actions, as the movement of water consistently challenges the boundaries between water and land, along with the relational interactions between human and non-human communities—both in cyclical and unpredictable ways. Drawing from the authors’ experiences in tidal coastal and estuarine areas across diverse geographies, this article proposes ways to cultivate design’s response-ability (Haraway, 2016) to the more-than-human …
A Messy Substance: Mediating The Stigma And Lived Experience Of Endometriosis Through Participatory Design,
2026
SDSI - Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree - Service Design Strategies and Innovations (Art Academy of Latvia, University of Lapland and Estonian Academy of Arts)
A Messy Substance: Mediating The Stigma And Lived Experience Of Endometriosis Through Participatory Design, Carolina Vaz-Pires, Ricardo Melo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Endometriosis is a chronic condition often surrounded by taboo, silence, and misunderstanding. Although diagnostic uncertainty and epistemic tensions shape endometriosis care, little is known about how design can address the communicative and relational gaps between patients and gynaecologists. This article investigates how participatory and speculative design can support communication between these groups. Using a Research through Design approach, three co-design workshops were conducted with six individuals with endometriosis and five doctors. Participants created analogue artefacts including empathy maps, body maps, clay representations, written narratives, speculative futures and collective posters that materialised embodied pain, emotional burden and clinical perspectives. The workshops …
Towards Positional Citizenship: Designing For The More-Than-Human Political,
2026
TU Delft, IDE Faculty, Human Centred Design Department, Netherlands, The
Towards Positional Citizenship: Designing For The More-Than-Human Political, Vanessa Monna, Abhigyan Singh, Natalia Romero Herrera
DRS Biennial Conference Series
“We have never been modern” wrote Bruno Latour, proposing that the dualism between nature and society has represented a convenient fiction. If humans have never genuinely stood apart, what happens to one of its most anthropocentric fabrications, citizenship? Conventionally a marker of political agency, citizenship determines who can speak, act, and belong. This conceptualisation excludes the multiple more-than-human agents shaping collective experiences. Building upon Plessner’s concept of positionality, the paper introduces “Positional Citizenship” to transcend the Cartesian divide between humans and more-than-humans, reshaping the political as a relational space of co-presence. Building on this shift, design becomes a practice of …
Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design,
2026
Institute of Design, Illinois Tech, United States of America
Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The field of behavioral design uses insight into humans’ cognitive tendencies to help people make better, more rational choices. Yet individuals’ perceptions of what seems rational—let alone viable, or even conceivable—are not universally shared and are often informed by their embodiment as much as cognition. For example, fear of being scolded can inhibit overweight or obese individuals from seeking preventive healthcare, people with ‘invisible’ disabilities may feel pressured to pass as able-bodied to fit in, and Black individuals may avoid ordinary activities likely to prompt ‘birding while Black’ confrontations. Depicting cognition as the single site of judgment and decision-making therefore …
Design For Healthy Ageing: Developing And Applying A Resource Model,
2026
Jiangnan University
Design For Healthy Ageing: Developing And Applying A Resource Model, Yumei Dong, Hua Dong, Tingting Wang, Richard H. M. Goossens
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The sustainable development of an ageing society necessitates active participation of older people, requiring effective integration of their individual and collective resources into design. However, designers’ understanding of older people’s resources is rather limited. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of older people’s resources to support design for healthy ageing. Through literature review and interviews with 19 recently retired Dutch seniors, twelve resource types were identified, categorised into six dimensions: practical, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, and time. These categories were synthesised into a Diamond Model of Resources. The framework, encompassing both resource categories and the Diamond Model, was …
Collaging Queer Decolonial Worlds: Applied Techniques In Design,
2026
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Collaging Queer Decolonial Worlds: Applied Techniques In Design, Alexandra Eleazar, Cara Flores
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Collaging is a form of design that references, remixes, and transforms the past, while holding potential for queer decolonial imaginaries. Through bringing together decolonial and queer theories, we propose an exploration of collage as a design technique that seeks to tear through dominant imaginaries to create more emancipatory visualizations. To explore this, we first turn to feminist theoretical understandings of collage, and then ask: how does collaging show up as a distinctly queer and decolonial design practice? Then, we utilize examples from our field work to demonstrate how collage can function as a queer and decolonial design practice that shows …
Plural Exhibition Experiences: Co-Designing Multisensory Storytelling With An Indigenous Sámi Museum,
2026
University of Lapland
Plural Exhibition Experiences: Co-Designing Multisensory Storytelling With An Indigenous Sámi Museum, Siiri Paananen, Emma Kirjavainen, Juri Etto, Eeva-Kristiina Nylander, Jonna Häkkilä
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This article examines an Indigenous-led exhibition renewal at the Sámi Museum Siida, in which multisensory design and digital media were collaboratively developed with Sámi artists and museum experts. The exhibition was created primarily for the Sámi community, in a museum that also receives many international visitors. The study is based on a survey (n=35) and three focus groups (n=9) with participants representing diverse visitor perspectives to understand how people experienced and interpreted the exhibition’s sensory and technological elements. The results demonstrate that the exhibition created a sense of immersion through spatial and multisensory design grounded in local artistic and cultural …
Urban Typography And Cultural Memory: A Literature Review In Support Of A Design-Led Approach To Heritage And Preservation,
2026
University of Waikato, New Zealand
Urban Typography And Cultural Memory: A Literature Review In Support Of A Design-Led Approach To Heritage And Preservation, Carolina Short, Gareth Schott
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Typography has increasingly been recognised as a valuable lens for cultural and urban analysis. This literature review extends such perspectives by examining how design-led approaches can support the documentation, reinterpretation, and revitalization of urban letterforms as cultural heritage. Drawing on typographic studies, geosemiotics, and design research, it focuses on urban typography — typographic landscapes — understood as spatial and multimodal carriers of memory, identity, and cultural value. While existing scholarship has explored the semiotic and aesthetic dimensions of typography in the urban environment, and some have proposed design-led interventions, connections between theory and practice remain open to further development. The …
Participatory Design As Third Space: Iterative Ethic In Singapore’S Contemporary Multiculturalism,
2026
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Participatory Design As Third Space: Iterative Ethic In Singapore’S Contemporary Multiculturalism, Cheng Chen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Participatory designers in Singapore work within Bhabha’s “third space,” where identities and practices are continuously negotiated across cultural boundaries. This qualitative study, based on interviews and ethnographic observation with 18 designers addressing social welfare for marginalized communities, examines how designers’ intersectional identities—such as female, queer, Chinese, and gig creatives—shape an ethic of care rooted in Asianised neighbourliness. Designers strategically inhabit in-between spaces, balancing top-down and bottom-up approaches through critical curiosity and cultural competence. Findings identify three interlinked personas: (1) Facilitator—mediating perspectives and trust; (2) Maker—engaging in embodied, situated making; and (3) Reflexive practitioner—cultivating curiosity across demographics. This iterative ethic enables …
Responsible Retail And Branded Environments,
2026
Hasselt University
Responsible Retail And Branded Environments, Katelijn Quartier, Mia Münster, Bethan Alexander, Zakkiya Khan, Marina Ricci, Francesca Murialdo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As spaces of consumption adapt to social, environmental, and technological shifts, design is emerging as a powerful agent of change. This track investigates the future of retail, hospitality, and other consumer-facing environments—including cafés, concept stores, and hybrid formats—through the lens of responsibility. Topics addressed include, but are not limited to: Restorative and regenerative approaches to consumption are gaining momentum, alongside wellbeing-driven design that recognises how the built environment can support mental, physical, and emotional health. At the same time, socially and environmentally sustainable practices—often grounded in circular economy principles—are redefining how we think about materiality, consumption, spatial design, and business …
Design With Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, And Politics,
2026
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Design With Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, And Politics, Zixuan Wang, Jiashuo Liu, Bow Yiying Wu, John Vines, Karey Helms, Sarah Kettley, Paul Rodgers, Ann Light
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This is an overview editorial of the track "Design with Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, and Politics" at the Design Research Society (DRS) conference 2026. In this track, we discuss how care could serve as a critical lens guiding research and design. Our track received 55 full paper submissions, and 21 of which have been accepted through a double-blind peer-review process. Together with three additional submissions from the open track, we organise these papers into four theme sessions: Knowing with Care, Practicing with Care, Co-designing with Care, and Making with Care. Collectively, the track demonstrates diverse ways of engaging with care …
