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 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 …
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 …
Knowledge Products From Applied Design Research,
2026
HU University of Applied Sciences
Knowledge Products From Applied Design Research, Koen Van Turnhout, Wina Smeenk, Daan Andriessen, Miriam Losse
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This article examines how researchers can enhance the impact of their work on professional practice by developing effective knowledge products. This term refers to the means by which researchers enable others to learn from the knowledge they generate through their research. The concept of knowledge products is related to discussions on intermediate-level knowledge and alternative forms of research communication. Both elements contribute to the uptake in practice. Despite successful examples of knowledge product development, the design research community lacks a shared theoretical foundation for knowledge products. This paper addresses that gap by 1) framing knowledge products as mediating artefacts that …
Transdisciplinarity In Practice: Challenges And Transformative Potentials Of Participatory Design In Sociobiodiversity Contexts,
2026
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Transdisciplinarity In Practice: Challenges And Transformative Potentials Of Participatory Design In Sociobiodiversity Contexts, Denise Dantas, Suzana M. R. Álvares, Laercio Marques Da Silva, Neide Araujo, Joel Leandro De Queiroga, Luiz Octavio Ramos Filho
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This article examines the epistemological, political, and practical challenges of transdisciplinarity in a participatory design project with agroforestry family farmers in São Paulo, Brazil, within the Design for Biodiversity initiative. By bringing together designers, scientists, and farmers, the project demonstrates how participatory design operates as a negotiation between institutional knowledge and vernacular expertise. Farmers’ experiential knowledge informed design decisions and interpretations of socioecological dynamics. Findings reveal tensions not only in interactions with farmers, requiring communication adapted to accessible language and local realities, but also within the academic team, due to differing worldviews and validation standards. Through a design-led action research …
Staging Dramaturgies: Supporting Urban Curators In Navigating Sustainability Transitions,
2026
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, The
Staging Dramaturgies: Supporting Urban Curators In Navigating Sustainability Transitions, Cristina Ampatzidou, Martijn De Waal, Linda Vlassenrood
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Urban curators, citizen-professionals with creative backgrounds, who mobilise their skills to orchestrate positive local change, require tools that help building community, engaging institutions and establishing legitimacy within complex transition dynamics. This paper examines Huis van de Toekomst (HvdT), a community space in a Rotterdam district undergoing a shift from natural gas to district heating, where using a participatory design approach, we co-developed a digital community visualization prototype. Using dramaturgical analysis, the study shows how the setting and composition of participatory events, and how different actors are addressed, influence how community and institutional dynamics unfold. The prototype functioned as a boundary …
Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design,
2026
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores and unpacks aspects of relationality by examining design engagements in a Swedish municipal care setting. Our exploration of relational perspectives on homecare is grounded in home care workers’ (HCWs) use of a workday scheduling and planning app. This paper presents empirical data generated through interviews and participatory observations, and identifies three themes: Manifesting relationality, Affectionating relationality and Tensioning relationality. Based on our understanding of relationality as it is developed in social care and design research, we discuss how relationality develops in everyday care, by juxtaposing this with real-life accounts of relational care. Then, we deliberate on the …
Educating Inclusive Human Augmentation By Design: A Triadic Definitional Framework And Pedagogical Validation,
2026
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
Educating Inclusive Human Augmentation By Design: A Triadic Definitional Framework And Pedagogical Validation, Keren Zhang, Huiyi Zhang, Ka Wing Tsang, Yijia Jiang, Shiyu Liu, Kin Wai Michael Siu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Advances in AI, wearables, exoskeletons, and BCIs are driving human augmentation (HA) into everyday use, yet education lacks a design-focused definition, a practical positioning language, and awareness of ethics. This study asks: How should HA be defined for design, and how can a critical, inclusive approach be taught and validated? Based on systematic reviews, we propose a three-part toolkit: a Human–Machine–Environment paradigm that redefines objects and boundaries; a map of design possibilities (dimensions, categories, intervention levels); and ethical dimensions spanning the thing, the human, the environment, and society. We validated the toolkit through three 8–11 week speculative workshops (n=45). Four …
Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education,
2026
Häme University of Applied Sciences, Finland, Mondragon University, Spain
Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores a pedagogical intervention that leveraged speculative enactment as a portal to utopian futures. During a Blended Intensive Program, students were presented with a design challenge that addresses workplace inclusion by reimagining it as a “future otherwise.” The challenge was projected into a future temporality, allowing participants to respond to contemporary challenges with radical imagination. Drawing on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as method and Bloch’s (1986) notion of concrete utopias, this study investigates how engaging with these enacted visions as sensorial expression serves as a mechanism to unleash potentialities latent in the present. Situated at the intersection of Design …
How To Observe Design Practices,
2026
Université de Montréal, Canada
How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Aside from design theories and design methods, the design research field has built numerous methods for observing design practices. Most of them can be classified into two categories: ethnographies, which consist of sharing the daily lives of designers, and experimental approaches, which reconstruct design situations in the controlled environment of a laboratory. This study retraces the history of these methods, that exist almost independently from one another creating silos within the design research field. Throughout their respective developments, both ethnographies and experimental approaches indicate the same blind spot: the study of material traces of processes that have already taken place. …
Designing A Toolkit To Explore The Design Space Of Woven Textiles,
2026
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Designing A Toolkit To Explore The Design Space Of Woven Textiles, Milou Voorwinden, Savanne Klop, Holly Mcquillan
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Driven by the potential of smart textiles, shape-changing structures, living textiles, and sustainable manufacturing methods, designers seek to push the boundaries of weaving. However, most existing industrial technologies are designed for mass-producing simple, flat fabrics. This has narrowed the collective understanding of the design potential of woven textiles, thereby restricting the development of complex, three-dimensional, and animated textiles. We present a toolkit, developed through an exploratory workshop and focus group discussions with academic and industry-based designers, that enables exploration and expansion of the design space for woven textiles. The card deck and canvas provide a shared language to externalise and …
From Values To Metrics: A Methodological Framework For Early-Stage Design Of Rural Cultural Project,
2026
School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza, Spain
From Values To Metrics: A Methodological Framework For Early-Stage Design Of Rural Cultural Project, Rosana Sanz Segura, Giordana Gallina, Eduardo Manchado Pérez, Ignacio López Forniés
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents the methodological framework of an ongoing design research project focused on cultural creation in rural contexts. It structures the design work that precede co-creation workshops, including the design of tools, participant criteria, session formats and preliminary analyses to understand community needs. Based on design research in rural regions of Aragón (Spain), the study integrates human-centred and community-based design to adapt participatory processes to low-density territories. Initial results include a mapping of key actors, a first set of metrics for evaluating participation and collaboration, and the identification of gaps that justify a specific methodological guide for rural cultural …
Degree Of Anisotropy: A Textile Epistemology Of Making,
2026
Rhode Island School of Design, United States of America
Degree Of Anisotropy: A Textile Epistemology Of Making, Sheetal Agrawal, Joy Ko
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This research demonstrates textiles as an analytical framework to encode forms of distributed intelligence inaccessible to computational modeling alone, challenging contemporary design's reliance on material homogeneity. Using 3D-printed Voronoi lattices on pre-stretched tulle substrates, we reconceptualize anisotropy (directional variation in material behavior) from engineering liability to design theory cornerstone. While conventional design favors isotropy for predictability, it has been long observed that biological textiles (skin, muscle tissue, tendons, spider silk, etc) have achieved adaptive functionality through engineered heterogeneity. By systematically varying infill patterns within Voronoi structures, we establish a methodology enabling textiles to hold contradictory mechanical states simultaneously and respond …
Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method,
2026
Jade University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Architecture, Oldenburg, Germany
Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Conventional participatory planning and design practice imply linear accumulation of data, facts, and representations, predicting meaningful futures through consensus-driven strategies. Transformation is framed as the transparent management of knowable information towards a providential destiny. By reducing participatory reasoning to factual transfer and discursive negotiation, reductionist approaches fail to address the systemic complexity and contingent character of socio-ecological challenges. They overlook disruptive shocks (financial crises, pandemics) that reorder systems. We propose disruption as a co-design method: a deliberately staged technique that exposes boundaries, surfaces dependencies, and fosters collective sense-making under uncertainty. Drawing on 4E cognition and relational design theory, we propose …
"That's Fine..." Uncovering Ambiguity Through Emotional Labelling In Scottish Design Students’ Design Process,
2026
University of Strathclyde, Scotland, United Kingdom
"That's Fine..." Uncovering Ambiguity Through Emotional Labelling In Scottish Design Students’ Design Process, Hazar Taissier Marji, Paul A. Rodgers, Ross Brisco
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Putting emotions into words is a natural human strategy for reinterpreting situations, even when done unintentionally. Evidence shows that this process, known as affective labelling, can reduce distress compared to non- affective verbalisation. Given that, the word 'fine' is widely used as a self-report label for emotional states, yet its meaning remains strikingly ambiguous. Limited research has explored such neutral or mid-spectrum emotional terms that are neither overtly positive nor negative but still shape the design process. This study examines how Scottish design students use 'fine' to describe their emotional experiences during their final design projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted …
Understanding Digital Health Engagement Among Older Adults In India: A Cultural Probe Based Study,
2026
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Understanding Digital Health Engagement Among Older Adults In India: A Cultural Probe Based Study, Radhika Sharma, Aakash Johry
DRS Biennial Conference Series
India is moving towards a health crisis, with a rapidly increasing population of older adults who have to deal with chronic health issues and declining family support. Remote health monitoring technologies offer opportunities for improved healthcare management; however, existing design guidelines often fail to address the cultural realities of Indian senior citizens. In this study, we identified six critical interaction areas for remote cardiac health monitoring, including self-monitoring, emergency response, and assistance-seeking patterns. Targeted cultural probes were designed for each area to evoke natural behaviours from 27 participants, aged 59-86, across diverse living situations. This participatory approach revealed that elderly …
Design Philosophies,
2026
Edinburgh Napier University
Design Philosophies, Peter Buwert
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Responding to the DRS26 Design Philosophies Meta-Theme call to explore the past, present and possible futures of design’s theoretical articulations, this track presents six original contributions, diving unflinchingly into the realms of design philosophy to tackle questions of ontology, epistemology, cognition, ethics and aesthetics, each wrestling productively with timely and relevant topics which illustrate and bring to life the underlying philosophical ideas being presented for appraisal. Common themes emerging across all papers are the embrace of depth, complexity, uncertainty, fallibility and humility, critical respect for the past, earnest activity in the present, and hope for the future.
