Contextualising Soil To Soil Textile Production In Aotearoa,
2026
Independant, Aotearoa
Contextualising Soil To Soil Textile Production In Aotearoa, Genevieve Rae, Gina Russell, Seonaid Burnie, Ngaio Cowell
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Regenerative textile design begins in the soil, and ends in the oneone (soil). In this paper oneone is described and articulated by Papahoa Fibreworks (Papahoa or the organisation) as their context and guide for designing a textile production system in Aotearoa. The kaupapa (purpose, foundational approach) of context based design, alongside Hua Parakore has led Papahoa to offer organically grown linen, dye plants, and dye services for the local fashion industry. As a case study, Papahoa demonstrates both soil to oneone textile processes in Waitaha (Canterbury) historically, and looks into the future of how fibre production could be remodeled in …
The Dcf Framework: Integrating Cross-Cultural And Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives On Comfort Experience,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, People's Republic of China
The Dcf Framework: Integrating Cross-Cultural And Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives On Comfort Experience, Danhua Zhao, Rui Qin, Chaomin Ma, Yuhao Jiang, Bingquan Wang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design plays a key role in driving economic and organizational transformations. However, existing approaches face significant challenges in addressing the translation of cross-cultural needs, integrating diverse perspectives, and critically reassessing the role of design within the singular economic/efficiency paradigm, particularly regarding affective experiences assessment such as comfort. To address these, this study proposes a qualitative framework that incorporates multiple stakeholders and cross-cultural users into the design process, referred to as the Diversity-Co-Creation-Framework (DCF). Through four phases—Scanning, Framing, Mapping, and Deepening—the DCF combines tools such as semi-structured interviews and the Futures Triangle from foresight research to engage opinion leaders and cross-cultural …
Incommensurable Durations: Fungal Time And The Limits Of Attunement In Multispecies Design,
2026
School of Science, University of New South Wales, Canberra
Incommensurable Durations: Fungal Time And The Limits Of Attunement In Multispecies Design, Nina Williams, Alia Parker
DRS Biennial Conference Series
An emerging dimension of multispecies design is the effort to attune to new sensory entanglements with the more-than-human world that foreground the alternative temporalities of multispecies life. Adding to such approaches, in this paper we want to emphasise that there is an incommensurability between the timeframes of organisms and those of human ways of thinking about time and of capitalist production. Indeed, multispecies design involves trying to work with alternative timeframes that necessarily disrupt dominant rhythms of design and production. Exploring a set of encounters with fungal time, we consider how such experiments have the capacity to plunge us into …
Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective, Yan Yang, Zhaoyu Wang, Jia Ren, Tie Ji, Han Meng
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Despite the advancement of sustainable design, a critical paradox persists: many practices remain embedded in industrial paradigms, failing to address deep-seated socio-natural contradictions. Grounded in the Eco-Marxist "metabolic rift" framework and informed by recent Agricultural Innovation Design (AID) research, this study proposes a key path for mending these rifts. The research offers a systemic framework for intervening in complex social-ecological systems. The primary conclusions are: (1) metabolic rifts are fundamentally rooted in relational alienation, characterized by the disruption of healthy and reciprocal metabolic relationships between society and nature; (2) structural sustainability requires reshaping metabolic relationships across social, ecological, and intergenerational …
Supporting Mental Health And Wellbeing Through A Staff Home Food-Growing Project,
2026
University of strathclyde, United Kingdom
Supporting Mental Health And Wellbeing Through A Staff Home Food-Growing Project, Laura Maclean, Andrew Wodehouse, Frederike Garbe, Mia Shepherd, Sarah Bowyer
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents a co-designed, nature-based intervention supporting NHS staff wellbeing through food growing. The NHS Home Growing Group (HGG) was collaboratively developed by DesignHOPES, NHS24, and a community garden. Home growing was identified as a feasible and meaningful activity compatible with shift work, with the potential of improving mental wellbeing in line with the NHS’s Five Steps to mental wellbeing model: connect, be active, keep learning, give, and take notice. Following a feasibility study, the 12-week intervention (April–July 2025) engaged 60 NHS staff using windowsill-growing kits designed for flexibility, autonomy, and asynchronous participation. Kits were sustainably sourced through recycled …
Changing The Lens: Micro-Systemic Change Through Design Interventions,
2026
Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Changing The Lens: Micro-Systemic Change Through Design Interventions, David Perez, Nuri Kwon
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines how design-led activities function as micro-systemic interventions that can influence people’s perceptions, actions and decision-making towards the futures. Using the optical metaphor of a design lens, we reinterpret Voros’ (2003) Futures Cone as a flexible field of vision that can be focused, dispersed, or magnified through design. The “design lens” serves as a conceptual framework comprising three components: design settings, information, and collectiveness. We apply this lens to two projects: a speculative walking workshop for policymaking, and a creative engagement project with residents in a social housing redevelopment. The aim is to examine how these elements interacted …
Inclusive Design Revisited: A Paradigm Of Trustworthy Connectedness,
2026
University of Twente, The Netherlands;
Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
Inclusive Design Revisited: A Paradigm Of Trustworthy Connectedness, Iris Van Hest, Eveline Van Zeeland, Jörg Henseler
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper revisits inclusive design by moving beyond its traditional emphasis on individual accessibility, which tends to overlook the relational dimension of inclusion. It proposes a paradigm of trustworthy connectedness, in which inclusion is conceptualised not merely as individual participation, but as the facilitation of relational ties between the designer or researcher and the individual or group. Inclusive design often relies on participatory methods, yet when participation and control become central, they risk silencing the very groups these approaches seek to include. Rather than participation or decision control, trustworthy connectedness, expressed through the designer’s competence and warmth, is central to …
A Survey Of Generative Ai Adoption Amongst Industrial Design Experts,
2026
AHO, Norway
A Survey Of Generative Ai Adoption Amongst Industrial Design Experts, Trym Abrahamsen, Charlotte Sjödell
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper is based on interviews with 20 expert industrial designers with 8-40+ years of experience about how they are adopting generative AI into their workflows. Using thematic analysis, the study reveals how top-down pressure for speed and efficiency drives rapid, bottom-up adoption of generative AI tools. The core finding is that in this scramble for adoption, designers and design businesses risk cognitive offloading and significant loss of control over micro-decisions in key parts of the design process. By critically examining the potential loss of control and reflection, the inquiry explores how the value of industrial design work extends far …
Analysis Of Design Start-Up Companies’ Challenges And Enablers In Saudi Arabian Ecosystem,
2026
University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom;
Jazan University, Saudi Arabia
Analysis Of Design Start-Up Companies’ Challenges And Enablers In Saudi Arabian Ecosystem, Omaimah Alsenani, Paul Rodgers, Alexander Holliman
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In recent years, Saudi Arabia’s economy has shifted from oil dependence toward diversification, spotlighting the “creative economy”. This transformation highlights the design economy, where designers are pursuing entrepreneurial and commercial opportunities. Understanding the challenges and enablers that shape design start-ups is key to supporting their growth within the design economy. This paper, part of larger PhD research, explores the Saudi Arabia design ecosystem and the experiences of running a design start-up. The paper addresses the question: “How does the Saudi Arabian ecosystem support or hinder design start-ups?” It provides a qualitative perspective based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen designer-entrepreneurs across …
Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors,
2026
ITI/LARSyS, IST - University of Lisbon, Portugal
Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Metaphors play a crucial role in how designers understand, communicate, and shape technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. This paper introduces Archipelagic AI (AAI), a speculative framework that employs metaphor-making as a design research strategy to challenge the colonial epistemologies that structure AI systems. Developed through collaborative autoethnography and fabulation in one of Europe’s richer ecosystems (Samouco in the Tagus Estuary), AAI draws on archipelagic studies and Caribbean decolonial thought to foreground a geosocial intelligence emerging through relational nodes of situated knowledge, where matter, forces, currents, and affects interweave in fluid assemblages. Structured around three metaphorical figures — …
Care-Ful Reorientations In Design,
2026
Northeastern University
Care-Ful Reorientations In Design, Irem Tekogul, Laura Forlano, Carlos Teixeira
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In an era marked by increasing uncertainty and precariousness, feminist care ethics provide a conceptual foundation for reimagining alternative futures, challenging the persistence of "futures-as-usual" that often perpetuate dominant sociotechnical regimes. Care is a future-oriented and imaginative ethic: one that requires moral imagination to recognize the needs of distant others, the vulnerabilities of future generations, and the ethical entanglements of emerging sociotechnical systems. Building on an ethnographic study of design practices within a multinational technology company, we propose reorienting questions and tactics to integrate care ethics into future-making, addressing the disjunction between techno-futures and emergent care-informed design approaches. We outline …
From Decoration To Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations In Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback,
2026
Tsinghua University, China
From Decoration To Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations In Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback, Yibo Meng, Bingyi Liu, Siyuan Li, Xinran Huang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Office plants are ubiquitous in urban workplaces, yet they are often treated as disposable decoration rather than living co-inhabitants. This paper examines how interaction design can reconfigure this cultural framing. Using a research-through-design approach that combines interviews, the creation of an aesthetic biofeedback artefact, and a longitudinal deployment, we explore how plant vitality, expressed through light and sound, shapes everyday encounters between employees and plants. Rather than improving maintenance efficiency, the artefact functions as a relational probe. Participants described empathy, comfort, and companionship, alongside guilt, pressure, and resistance when the plant’s expressions demanded attention. These tensions show how care for …
Integrating Co-Design And Auto-Ethnographic Approaches: A Preliminary Review Of Methods, Intentions, And Potential,
2026
Design, Monash University Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Caulfield East, Australia
Integrating Co-Design And Auto-Ethnographic Approaches: A Preliminary Review Of Methods, Intentions, And Potential, Jingyuan Tan, Linfu Zhang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Co-design emphasizes the outward connectivity of perspectives and aspirations, while autoethnography foregrounds the inward exploration of the personal and intimate. Recent trends in design research that integrate these approaches prompted this literature review, guided by the question: How might combining co-design and auto-ethnographic approaches contribute uniquely to design practice and research? Drawing from design studies in education, healthcare, HCI, and community engagement, the review identifies five methodological variations of co-design and auto-ethnographic integration: solo, dialogic, triangulated, cumulative, and solidary. It suggests that these collaborative-reflective–narrative approaches empower co-design practitioners to (1) navigate their evolving and layered roles and identities in relation …
Designing Hospitality Through Sensory Workshops For Autistic People With Eating Disordered Behaviour,
2026
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Designing Hospitality Through Sensory Workshops For Autistic People With Eating Disordered Behaviour, Sarah Kettley, Kyle Buchan, Abi Pickard, Ellen Maloney, Rebecca Allen, Callum Glasgow, Karri Gillespie-Smith
DRS Biennial Conference Series
We report on a series of sensory workshops and research interview training conducted with young Autistic people with lived experience of eating disordered behaviour. This under-researched co-occurence has been explored by a collaborative of clinical psychologists, peer researchers and participants through creative methods novel in this domain, led by a participatory design researcher. The paper outlines the design of the workshops, and discusses the insights generated around the key themes of environment, eating utensils and foods. It proposes a set of recommendations and creative opportunities for the hospitality industry to explore a range of approaches including ‘Autism-friendly days’ that may …
Public Dialogues: A Citizen Participation Platform For Adaptive Deliberation,
2026
The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands
Public Dialogues: A Citizen Participation Platform For Adaptive Deliberation, Arnold-Jan Quanjer, Nazanin Karimi, Jos P. Van Leeuwen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents a practice-based approach to designing a platform for creative and deliberative citizen participation, grounded in observations of how people deliberate face-to-face. Insights from these observations informed the design, enabling the platform to mirror and extend in-person dynamics. Because deliberative processes are diverse and serve multiple purposes, taking them online requires a modular architecture, diverse deliberation tools, and flexible moderation. Participation processes also evolve during execution, so the platform was designed for adaptability, allowing moderators to respond to emerging dynamics and changing needs. The paper discusses and evaluates several practical cases demonstrating the platform’s application. Finally, it reflects …
From Critique To City Council: A Design Framework For Inclusive Public Discourse,
2026
University of Tennessee Knoxville, United States of America
From Critique To City Council: A Design Framework For Inclusive Public Discourse, Piper Schuerman
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Using Fayetteville, Arkansas, as a primary case study, this paper frames city council meetings as dynamic systems of discourse, where a citizen’s ability to contribute is shaped by the design of institutional environments and mediating artifacts. Drawing on field studies and participatory design methods, the author dissects how the design of such meetings supports and hinders equitable participation. To address these challenges, the author turns to another structured form of discourse: the design critique. Contemporary critique practices offer participatory frameworks for exchanging feedback that redistribute power and invite diverse perspectives. Building on these parallels, the author prototypes a critique-inspired, multimodal …
Designing With And Through Care: From Empathy To Relational Accountability,
2026
Università della Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Italy
Designing With And Through Care: From Empathy To Relational Accountability, Ibtissam Jayed, Valentina Sorvillo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In contemporary design practice, care risks becoming an imperative that obscures asymmetric power relations. This paper interrogates the relationship between design and care, asking: how can design shift from producing solutions to cultivating relations of care without reproducing paternalistic logics? Through a comparative analysis of case studies through the lenses of knowing, making, and defining with care, we treat caring about, caring for, and caring with as simultaneous and co-present dimensions to examine how care operates within design processes. The analysis identifies a structural pattern: while caring about and caring for are compatible with existing design logics, caring with encounters …
Occupying The Sensors: Underwater Sound In An Urban River,
2026
Northeastern University, United States of America
Occupying The Sensors: Underwater Sound In An Urban River, Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Dietmar Offenhuber
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Although underwater soundscapes of urban rivers are understudied, they can reveal urban and biological processes across multiple scales. We present a case study of the Charles River’s underwater soundscapes in Boston, Massachusetts. We approach underwater acoustic sensing as a method to attune to infrastructural, non-human, and environmental dynamics. Given that water is an ideal medium for sound propagation, the river becomes a magnifier for ignored aspects of the city, such as the urban infrastructure’s impact on the river's soundscape or aquatic fauna activity. In the sensing process, the river’s underwater environment becomes a space where human, more-than-human, environmental, and infrastructural …
Designing Under Uncertainty: How Novices Rationalize Prototype Choices Before And After Parallel Testing,
2026
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, United States of America;
Human Factors & Ergonomics Program
Designing Under Uncertainty: How Novices Rationalize Prototype Choices Before And After Parallel Testing, Pa Chang Vang, Carlye Anne Lauff
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study examines how novice designers justify prototype concept choices before and after parallel stakeholder testing in early-stage product development. Drawing on 99 survey responses collected across two checkpoints in a 16-week interdisciplinary design studio, we used an inductive-deductive coding approach to map emergent themes to innovation frames of desirability, feasibility, and viability. Six themes emerged: desirability (primarily perceived play value) dominated pre- and post-test reasoning, while feasibility (simplicity/modularity) and viability (production cost, market potential) shaped secondary trade-offs. Parallel testing prompted revisions when stakeholder engagement or client cues contradicted expectations; many students retained choices when testing validated initial impressions or …
Growing Pains Of Sustainability: Scale, Care, And Counter-Infrastructures,
2026
HAAU Architecture Studio;
École Spéciale d'Architecture, Paris
Growing Pains Of Sustainability: Scale, Care, And Counter-Infrastructures, Angela Ka Ki Lee
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Sustainability transitions are marked by growing pains: tensions between planetary and local scales, global urgency and lived experience. This paper argues that techno-centric, metric-driven, and scalable approaches obscure inequalities, conceal the labour of maintenance, and overlook affective dimensions. It proposes a counter-infrastructural approach that understands sustainability as emerging through infrastructural, ecological, temporal, embodied, and relational dynamics. Drawing on interdisciplinary theory, participatory workshops, and experiential experiments, the study shows how process-oriented practices can reconnect individuals to energy systems. Bioregional thinking, community-led initiatives, repair and maintenance, and sensory engagement are explored as alternatives that foreground resilience and interdependence. Through lenses of scale, …
