Along The Line Of Emotional Support: Reimagining Ai Companions For Young Adults’ Wellbeing,
2026
Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Along The Line Of Emotional Support: Reimagining Ai Companions For Young Adults’ Wellbeing, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Xue Pei, Andrea Gaggioli
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Young adults increasingly face emotional stress, uncertainty, and a lack of accessible, non-judgmental support. While AI technologies are emerging as potential companions, many adopt anthropomorphic and chat-based models that risk emotional overdependence, blurred boundaries, and false intimacy. This research explores how AI systems might be reimagined to foster authentic and ethical forms of companionship that support young adults’ wellbeing. Grounded in Positive Technology and its focus on promoting human flourishing, this research adopts a research-through-design approach, integrating semi-structured interviews, co-design sessions, hands-on prototyping, and user feedback. The resulting prototype, ALONG is a calm, embodied AI companion designed to encourage personal …
Infodesign Journal: Tensions And Contradictions In Twenty Years Of Information Design Research In Brazil,
2026
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Infodesign Journal: Tensions And Contradictions In Twenty Years Of Information Design Research In Brazil, Sara Miriam Goldchmit, Tiago Barros Pontes E Silva, Cláudia De Souza Libânio
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The Brazilian InfoDesign journal specializes in the subject of information design (ID), with a historical trajectory that reflects efforts in establishing a Brazilian perspective on the traditionally Anglo-American ID epistemology. Recently, the paradox of indexing to gain international scientific recognition marked an inflection point for this knowledge ecosystem, posing new editorial challenges and language barriers while opening avenues for the dissemination of pluriversal approaches. Aiming to map tensions and contradictions in the evolution of information design research in Brazil, this paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the InfoDesign journal database, containing 397 publications spanning from 2004 to 2024. Findings …
Decolonising Digital Practices In Intangible Cultural Heritage. Implications From Literature And Funded Ec Research Projects Towards A Framework Of Design Principles,
2026
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Decolonising Digital Practices In Intangible Cultural Heritage. Implications From Literature And Funded Ec Research Projects Towards A Framework Of Design Principles, Eleonora Lupo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In the context of a digitally mature world in which the relationship between Cultural Heritage and digital technologies is under re-evaluation, this paper critically rethink the use of digital technologies for preserving and valorising Intangible Cultural Heritage through a decolonising lens. A criticall literature review is provided and a comparative analysis is conducted on EC funded reserachprojects in order to depict from rhetoric misuses to real transformative uses of digital technologies, in avoiding excluding actors depending on their gender, cultural inclination or digital literacy, generating a genuine capacitation and participation of the whole ecosystem and distributing leadership and agency. This …
How Epistemic Uncertainty Tolerance Affects Creative Idea Generation In Design,
2026
Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
How Epistemic Uncertainty Tolerance Affects Creative Idea Generation In Design, Sue During, Michael Mose Biskjaer, Elger Abrahamse, Alwin De Rooij
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Creativity in collaborative design unfolds under conditions of unspecific and ambiguous information. While such epistemic uncertainty is inherent to many design projects, its impact on creativity is underexplored. This study investigated how epistemic uncertainty induced through problem briefings affects creativity during idea generation, and how tolerance for epistemic uncertainty moderates this relationship. A between-subjects experiment with 67 student participants collaborating in 18 groups tested idea generation under high versus low epistemic uncertainty conditions. The results showed a dual pathway effect: high epistemic uncertainty, compared to low epistemic uncertainty, increased idea originality, but decreased idea usefulness. Average group tolerance for uncertainty …
Maintaining Counterpublics: Archival Recursion And Prefiguration,
2026
University of Florida, United States of America
Maintaining Counterpublics: Archival Recursion And Prefiguration, Seojoo Han
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study examines Interference Archive, a collectively run archive of social movement ephemera in Brooklyn, as a site where archival practice and design converge in continuous public formation. Through an analysis of exhibitions, interviews, and institutional materials, it demonstrates how archives employ the design tactics of tracing and projection not as discrete interventions but as recursive practices embedded in long-term infrastructuring. Tracing reveals genealogies of struggle, enabling participants to locate themselves within shared histories, while projection transforms this awareness into forward-looking artifacts and events that circulate beyond the archive. Unlike conventional participatory design or speculative futuring, IA cultivates a prefigurative …
Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities,
2026
Indiana University Bloomington, United States of America
Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities, Austin Toombs, Seora Park, Tilar Manion, Xinyun Zhang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design research in social computing has used the concept of care to describe how technologies help or hinder interpersonal support online. Yet opportunities remain to explore how the subtle, everyday forms of care that have long sustained communities can inform social technology design. Addressing this, we present a collection of design patterns that translate culturally specific, everyday social practices like passeggiata (Italian social stroll) and sobremesa (Spanish post-meal lingering) into design prompts for digital platforms. Our collection has five pattern families: Shared Habits and Routines, Atmospheric Qualities, Collective Identities, Facilitation Roles, and Boundary Practices. The patterns map these families to …
Methodologies As Complex Systems: Practicing Pluralism In Systemic Design For Transformations Toward Regeneration,
2026
COBALT (Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning & Transformation)
Methodologies As Complex Systems: Practicing Pluralism In Systemic Design For Transformations Toward Regeneration, Haley Fitzpatrick
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Pluralism is essential for transformations toward regeneration, to (re)align human activity with holistic planetary health. Systemic design’s pluralistic intentions offer a promising pathway, yet its methodologies rarely match the complexity they aim to engage. The focus often falls on adding new methods instead of examining how methodologies function. As a result, systemic design methodologies struggle to navigate the contextual, epistemic, and cultural differences within plural pathways toward regeneration. This paper argues that systemic design methodologies can negotiate pluralism more effectively when functioning as complex systems themselves: nonlinear, emergent, and relational. Drawing on participatory action research across three diverse communities, I …
The Language Of Reflexivity: Investigating Limitations And Opportunities For Reflexivity In Prevailing Design Process Models,
2026
North Carolina State University, United States of America
The Language Of Reflexivity: Investigating Limitations And Opportunities For Reflexivity In Prevailing Design Process Models, Asa River Jackson
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Prevailing design methodologies and models tend to contain language specific to pragmatic and contextual foundations of design history and culture. Consequently, these models provide limited support for the diverse and constructive nature of contemporary design practice, and particularly, lack the presence of embedded reflexivity. This paper seeks to determine the predominant and excluded language of 66 design process models, which function as projections of instruction and value in design dissemination. In the analysis, special attention is given to omissions within these process models, as well as their differences among more recently documented methodologies. As a result, the paper explores reflexive …
Strategic Design In Business Organizations: An Approach For Design Management, Business Strategy, And Design Strategy,
2026
Arizona State University, United States of America
Strategic Design In Business Organizations: An Approach For Design Management, Business Strategy, And Design Strategy, G. Mauricio Mejía
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The term “strategic design” gained popularity over the last three decades. It originated in the 1990s, when design management scholars began studying the strategic value of design within business organizations. In the 2000s, terms such as design thinking and user-centered design gained traction, expanding the scope of design work and who was considered a designer. In professional networks, strategic design has been emerging as some professionals claim to be strategic designers or discuss related practices. This exploratory paper aims to identify definitions, roles, and skills associated with strategic design in the context of business organizations. A scoping of the literature …
Surfacing Wetlands Through Design Ethnography And Critical Visualisation,
2026
University of Technology Sydney
Surfacing Wetlands Through Design Ethnography And Critical Visualisation, Alexandra Crosby, Sarah-Jane Jones, Holly O'Neil
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores the visualisation of wetlands and waterways as a more-than-human design practice that can generate situated and relational understandings of colonised urban wetlands and waterways in Australia. We analyse three design research projects that create online visualisations of wetlands in Australia: The Sound of Water, Environmental Flows in Nap Nap Swamp (2021); The Rippon Lea Water Story (2023); and Dyarubbin the real Secret River (2020). These projects are brought together in this paper to open discussion about the role of design research place-based ethnography and critical visualisation in communicating with and about water places. We make the argument …
Evaluating Creative Efficacy In Human-Ai Design Convergence: An Experimental Study Of Support Modes,
2026
Tongji University,Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, China
Evaluating Creative Efficacy In Human-Ai Design Convergence: An Experimental Study Of Support Modes, Yuying Pei, Ling Fan*
DRS Biennial Conference Series
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has demonstrated significant potential in the divergent phases of design, its role in the convergent phase (solution selection) is less understood. This study investigates how different AI-assisted selection modes impact a designer's creative efficacy. We conducted an experiment (N=40) with graduate design students, who used four distinct AI support modes—(1) Textual Description, (2) Pros/Cons Comparison, (3) AI Scoring, and (4) Direct Recommendation—to select a final design from a set of concepts. Efficacy was measured using behavioral data (selection time, choice), user satisfaction (QUIS), cognitive load (NASA-TLX), and technology acceptance (TAM). Results show that the AI Scoring …
Queering Design With A Queer Community: Co-Creation, Translation, And Application Of Queer-Positive Design Principles,
2026
University of Cincinnati
Queering Design With A Queer Community: Co-Creation, Translation, And Application Of Queer-Positive Design Principles, Colin Putman
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Trans and queer individuals, particularly transmasculine, transfeminine, nonbinary and genderqueer folks, remain underrepresented in contemporary design practice despite a growing awareness of the community’s existence. This project creates a set of translational materials co-created by members of the queer community. These materials are intended to educate industry professionals on queer perspectives and provide actionable methods to help design solutions that meet the needs of queer people. Co-creation processes centering the queer community were used to identify and describe key queer-inclusive design principles: discretion, perception, inclusion, and motion. These principles were then translated into an educational zine intended for creative professionals, …
Designing For Node-Based Ai Tools: An Analysis And Synthesis Of Design Principles,
2026
Hunan University, China, People's Republic of
Designing For Node-Based Ai Tools: An Analysis And Synthesis Of Design Principles, Shunan Zhang, Yi Xiao
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Node-based interfaces are rapidly gaining traction in AI-driven design tools, yet a clear and comprehensive design framework remains essential. This paper addresses this critical need by presenting 10 carefully distilled design principles. These principles emerged from a thematic literature review of 14 recent, impactful papers published between 2020 and 2025, specifically focusing on Human-AI Interaction and visual programming. We meticulously grouped these principles into three core categories: Interaction & Usability, Human-AI Co-Creation & Creativity Support, and Explainability & Extensibility. Crucially, we also analysed how these principles intricately interconnect at a detailed level, highlighting their dynamic relationships. Based on this foundational …
Imperfect Utopias: Norms In Vr Design And Queer Counter-Strategies,
2026
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Imperfect Utopias: Norms In Vr Design And Queer Counter-Strategies, Alexandra Chalmers Braithwaite
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper puts forward a set of strategies for designing queer experiences for virtual reality. First, the paper will outline The Body Traces Archive VR experience, the primary practice-based outcome of my doctoral research. This will be followed by a discussion of the medium of virtual reality and three industry-standard design norms that serve to limit and foreclose the possibilities of virtual reality: militaristic mastery and control, seamless (dis)embodiment, and prioritisation of comfort. For each industry standard norm, I propose a queer counter-strategy that works to re-align VR towards other possibilities. In turn, they are: utopian worldbuilding, embodiment via friction, …
From Lab To Line: Mechanisms For Anchoring Human-Centred Design In Public Policy And Service Development,
2026
Delft University of Technology
From Lab To Line: Mechanisms For Anchoring Human-Centred Design In Public Policy And Service Development, Maike Klip, Jasper Van Kuijk
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Human-Centred Design (HCD) is increasingly proposed as a way to align government policies and services with citizens’ needs and capabilities. However, embedding HCD in everyday government practice remains challenging. This paper reports on a 2.5-year longitudinal action research study within the CGDC programme, where eight national agencies jointly redesigned debt-repayment services. The study combines observations, interviews and workshop data to analyse barriers and enablers for HCD practices in a politically and organisationally complex environment. Findings identify six recurring mechanisms: 1) Normalising user involvement, 2) Organising mandate for user needs, 3) Building multidisciplinary collaboration, 4) Creating facts on the ground, 5) …
Designing For Themselves: The Gearbox Model Of Value-Reclaiming Design Within Grassroots Sports Communities,
2026
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
Designing For Themselves: The Gearbox Model Of Value-Reclaiming Design Within Grassroots Sports Communities, Yijia Jiang, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Shiyu Liu, Kin Wai Michael Siu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Grassroots sports communities (GSCs) express and impact values through everyday design practices that build belonging, identity, and agency. Adopting qualitative multi-case analysis of representative GSCs (n=10), this study explores how these communities define and reclaim their values through design practice. Four modalities are identified: 1) narrative re-authoring, 2) aesthetic re-coding, 3) collaborative re-making, and 4) ethical re-grounding. These modalities constitute a dynamic process wherein design functions as a relational infrastructure for collective meaning-making. Based on these findings, the study generates a Gearbox Model of Value-Reclaiming Design, theorising how communal design agency is exercised through dynamic and recursive interplay. The model …
Designing For Self-Tailoring In Adolescent Health Behavior Change,
2026
Human-Centered Design, Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
Designing For Self-Tailoring In Adolescent Health Behavior Change, Timothy A. Houtman, Froukje Sleeswijk Visser, Ece Şekerli, Valentijn Visch
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Digital behavior change tools increasingly use system-driven tailoring to guide users toward healthier choices. While well-intentioned, such approaches may undermine autonomous behavior change by removing users from decision-making processes and limiting opportunities to develop self-knowledge: a practical understanding of what works for oneself that can help regulate current and future behaviors. This is particularly consequential for adolescents, who are developing personal autonomy at a time when the health behaviors they establish can have long-term consequences. We propose that self-tailoring can enhance autonomy by actively involving users in constructing and adapting approaches to their own contexts. Through two studies, we investigated …
The “P” In Design: Towards A Genealogy Of The Political In The Field,
2026
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
The “P” In Design: Towards A Genealogy Of The Political In The Field, Silvia Cantalupi, Annalinda De Rosa, Laura Galluzzo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper interrogates the persistent claim of design’s neutrality by tracing how notions of the political have surfaced, receded, and re-emerged across design discourses in Western contexts from the late 1960s to the present. Building on Arendt’s understanding of the political as the space of collective world-making through human plurality, and Mouffe’s agonistic perspective that foregrounds conflict and power, the paper proposes a genealogy revealing how design has always been entangled with ideological, economic, and socio-technical transformations. The analysis maps political trajectories across Radical Design, Participatory Design, Critical and Speculative Design, Social Design, Design for Social Innovation, Design Activism, Adversarial …
Co-What? A New Perspective On Participation And Collaboration With Vulnerable Populations In Design Studies: Methodological Inquiry,
2026
NHL Stenden University, Netherlands, The
Co-What? A New Perspective On Participation And Collaboration With Vulnerable Populations In Design Studies: Methodological Inquiry, Gijs Terlouw, Lars Veldmeijer
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Although co-design is widely promoted in healthcare, it is seldom true co-design. In practice, power imbalances persist, and (former) service-users’ voices rarely shape design decisions. This study examines how design processes can nevertheless surface these much-needed perspectives. Using a multiple-case study design, nine peer-reviewed healthcare design projects were selected and reformulated into analytical scenarios, enabling systematic comparison of methodological strategies. Thematic cross-case analysis explored how user perspectives were elicited, how insights informed design decisions, and where representation broke down. A key finding is that lower levels of direct involvement require more methodological steps to capture and translate users' needs adequately. …
Understanding The Electric Vehicle Purchase Decision Through The Lens Of Experience,
2026
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan
Understanding The Electric Vehicle Purchase Decision Through The Lens Of Experience, Yen Chen Chang, Hsien Hui Tang Tang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study reinterprets the EKB model from an experiential perspective to examine electric vehicle (EV) consumer decision-making in Taiwan and extends the influence factors in the modified EKB model. Based on semi-structured interviews, the findings reveal how experience operates differently across five stages. Regarding internal factors, personal beliefs are identified as a long-term factors of problem recognition stage, while “Consumer experience with product/brand” is extended to include vicarious experience and experiential control. Post-purchase experience generates affect that, together with “Switching cost”, re-initiates evaluation cycles. Regarding external factors, real experiences from “Role of third parties” can shorten or bypass search and …
