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, …
New Agenda For Inclusive Design,
2026
Royal College of Art
New Agenda For Inclusive Design, Hua Dong, Abdusselam Selami Cifter, Stella Boess, Farnaz Nickpour, Yumei Dong, Weining Ning
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The Inclusive Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society (InclusiveSIG - with Professor Hua Dong as its Convenor, and Dr Weining Ning as its co-convenor) organised the “New Agenda for Inclusive Design” Track for DRS2026. The Track has attracted more than 50 submissions from 16 countries. In total 19 papers were selected after blind peer-review, and three further papers added, forming four sessions: 1) Rethinking Inclusive Design; 2) Studying Older People: Theories and Methods; 3) Neurodivergent Groups: Adults and Children; 4) Assessing Accessibility and Inclusion. New agenda and trends include “relations as inclusion”, “aesthetics as a driver for …
Situating Design Research: Unique Perspectives And Practices Of Design Research Locally Grounded,
2026
Heriot-Watt University
Situating Design Research: Unique Perspectives And Practices Of Design Research Locally Grounded, Euan Winton, Kirstie Jamieson, Arno Verhoven
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This theme track is new to DRS2026 and situates design research in the local environment, providing cases and examples of design research being undertaken that are locally situated and relational to place. This theme track provides an opportunity for researchers contributing new insights to our research community based on the unique opportunities presented by the local context, whether that is related to climate, culture, geography, economics, or institutional. The emphasis on this theme is to learn from locally situated cases of design research through projects undertaken “in situ” that demonstrate a sensitivity and understanding of the local context in which …
Extended Directions In Design Research,
2026
Aalborg University, Copenhagen
Extended Directions In Design Research, Hadas Zohar, Amalia De Götzen, Anca-Simona Horvath
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The open track welcomes design research that explores distinctive directions beyond the conference's thematic streams, thereby enriching the scholarly discourse with diverse perspectives. The selected papers are divided into four sessions. The first session, Relational and Situated Design Practice, foregrounds embodiment, exchange, co-exploration, ritual performance, feminist critique, and cultural remembrance. The second session, Material, Mind and Machine, investigates the entanglements among physical matter, human cognition, and computational processes, challenging the separation among the object, the mind, and the machine that mediates them. The third session, Strategic Design Practices for Learning, Attention, and Co-Creation, discusses strategic design, together with means of …
Material In Transition: Rethinking The Value Of British Wool In Sustainable And Circular Futures,
2026
University of the Arts London, United Kingdom
Material In Transition: Rethinking The Value Of British Wool In Sustainable And Circular Futures, Veronika Kapsali, Nicci James
DRS Biennial Conference Series
British wool (BW), once central to the UK economy, is now economically marginal yet ecologically regenerative, revealing deep tensions between sustainability rhetoric and material practice. This paper reframes BW as a transitional material, whose value, meaning, and use are shifting across ecological, infrastructural, and discursive systems. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 35 stakeholders across the BW supply chain, combined with policy and industry analysis, the study applies reflexive thematic analysis to examine how value is produced, diminished, and potentially restored. these findings are situated within new materialist and posthuman theory and emerging sustainability regulation (ESPR and Digital Product Passports), the …
Made To Misfit: Critical Design As A Tool For Pluriversal Thinking In Design Education,
2026
University of Antwerp, Faculty of Design Science, Department of Product Development
Made To Misfit: Critical Design As A Tool For Pluriversal Thinking In Design Education, Kaat Kenis, Maud Gruyters, Stine Moons, Kristof Vaes, Leni Van Goidsenhoven
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper investigates how critical design can challenge universalist frameworks in design education and open up space for pluriversal perspectives. We explore the use of provocative probes as a concrete pedagogical method for cultivating pluriversal thinking and critical reflection. Our theoretical reflections are empirically grounded in a one-week workshop in which design students created and deployed provocative probes to surface experiences of those who ‘misfit’ and to initiate public interactions around these lived experiences. The notion of misfitting was used to introduce complexity and reflexivity. Findings show that while students began to delink from solutionist thinking and engage with plural …
Asymmetric Vr Design To Support Connected Care For Older Adults With Amd,
2026
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Asymmetric Vr Design To Support Connected Care For Older Adults With Amd, Soyoun Jang, Huijia Huang, Bryce E. Hanna, Xinran Wang, Susan Primo, Michael Nitsche
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Immersive technologies can assist older adults with visual impairments, but they require meaningful, context-specific design. In collaboration with an eye care provider, we present Macular Mailbox, an at-home Virtual Reality (VR) system that connects clinicians and family members in supporting older adults with Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD). The prototype combines Preferred Retinal Locus (PRL) vision training and monitoring (patient–clinician) with playful acts of making and sharing artefacts (patient–family) designed to foster emotional engagement and self-efficacy. Within an asymmetric VR environment, participants hold distinct yet interdependent roles that contribute to a shared outcome: connected care. We conclude by outlining directions for …
Should Sustainability Come Second? Artifact Analysis Toward More Positive Outcomes Through Design,
2026
Syracuse University - School of Design;
Cornell University - Department of Human Centered Design
Should Sustainability Come Second? Artifact Analysis Toward More Positive Outcomes Through Design, Michael C. Kowalski, Jungkyoon Yoon
DRS Biennial Conference Series
While academic research on design for sustainability and design for subjective well-being has grown for decades, application of these perspectives in professional practice remains underdeveloped. Professional designers often struggle to translate these objectives into their work due to conflicting demands, including tight project timelines, cost targets, and manufacturing constraints. Tools and methods developed in academic contexts have faced criticism for failing to consider these practical concerns, resulting in limited professional adoption. Studies indicate professional designers could benefit from concrete case-studies for existing products and systems that clearly demonstrate both processes and outcomes. This paper addresses this need through an artifact-analysis …
Embracing Complexity: Reimagining Design For Health Education,
2026
Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Embracing Complexity: Reimagining Design For Health Education, Stephen Reay, Ivana Nakarada-Kordic, Cassie Khoo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design for health (D4H) has emerged as its own context for practice, with a corresponding rise in universities offering courses and activities that implement D4H projects in various ways. For the most part, these tend to expose design students to health-related contexts and problems or facilitate interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities. This paper presents an overview of 10 years of D4H curriculum interventions in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. This culminated in the justification and development of a four-paper D4H minor as a strategic offering within a Bachelor of Design programme. The paper presents the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the D4H minor, …
Understanding Power At The Doorstep: Examining Interpersonal Power Of Smart Doorbells Through Speculative Design,
2026
TU Delft, The Netherlands
Understanding Power At The Doorstep: Examining Interpersonal Power Of Smart Doorbells Through Speculative Design, Sofie-Amalie Torp Dideriksen, Silke Snijder, Nazli Cila
DRS Biennial Conference Series
While Smart Home Surveillance Products (SHSPs), such as smart doorbell cameras, promise safety and convenience, they also reproduce asymmetrical power relations, privileging residents while exposing neighbours, visitors, and service workers to unconsented monitoring. Existing legal and technical responses focus on compliance and system design, yet overlook the interpersonal and affective dimensions of being watched. This paper presents a design-led inquiry into speculative re-imaginings of smart doorbells, aimed at surfacing and reflecting the hidden power dynamics embedded in everyday domestic interactions. We base this inquiry on an understanding of interpersonal power from the feminist theory of Matrix of Domination, allowing us …
Designing Emotionally Resonant Thermal Interactions For Public Speaking Support,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Designing Emotionally Resonant Thermal Interactions For Public Speaking Support, Guanhua Sun, Wei Wang, Ruixiao Zheng
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study explores how thermal interaction can support emotional expression and regulation in socially anxious contexts. Using participatory and body-mapping methods, participants recalled and visualized temperature-related experiences of comfort, which were translated into six emotionally resonant thermal patterns. These insights informed the design of TempReso, a sleeve-type wearable that delivers dynamic thermal cues on the forearm. A series of design experiments examined how warmth and coolness evoke affective memories, redirect attention, and foster emotional comfort during public speaking. The study highlights temperature as an expressive and emotional material, revealing how embodied experiences can inform the design of affective haptic interfaces …
Care Through Ambiguity: Findings From Participatory Health Design,
2026
School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
Care Through Ambiguity: Findings From Participatory Health Design, Xiran Mi, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Shujie Xie
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores how ambiguity can function as a condition for care in participatory health design. Through patient-centred interviews and a participatory workshop, it examines how uncertainty and emergent understanding shape the relational and ethical dimensions of care. The study finds that ambiguity enables participants to remain responsive within unequal structures and to negotiate care through hesitation, metaphor, and embodied expression, highlighting how relational sensitivity operates within asymmetrical power relations. Care is reframed not as a stable act of giving, but as a social process of continual adjustment and mutual dependency. By embracing indeterminacy in design practice, this research shows …
Unmaking Ai’S Classificatory Ontologies: Situated Annotation As Design Inquiry In Human–Ai Assemblages,
2026
Institute of Design (IDe), University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Mendrisio, Switzerland;
School of Design, RMIT Melbourne, Australia
Unmaking Ai’S Classificatory Ontologies: Situated Annotation As Design Inquiry In Human–Ai Assemblages, Antonella Autuori
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines how design research can unmake AI's classificatory ontologies through situated and embodied annotation practices. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical data epistemologies, it reframes bias not as a technical flaw but as a generative condition that reveals how knowledge is produced and negotiated within human–AI assemblages. An autotheoretical experiment grounds the inquiry. The researcher creates and annotates a dataset of self-representations using subjective, affective, and relational labels, training a small-scale model to probe classification as an interpretive encounter shaped by embodiment, ambiguity, and positionality. Building on the shift from debiasing toward reflexive data practices in design and …
From Passive List To Active Script: Menu Design As A Strategic Agent For Restaurant Sustainability Transformation,
2026
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
From Passive List To Active Script: Menu Design As A Strategic Agent For Restaurant Sustainability Transformation, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Yijia Jiang, Kin Wai Michael Siu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Restaurants face the challenge of lacking systematic integration pathways in their sustainability transition (ST), struggling to fully incorporate sustainable principles throughout their operational systems. In this context, menu design demonstrates significant potential as a strategic tool to drive comprehensive ST. This study employs Goffman's dramaturgical theory to conceptualize restaurants as "social theaters," examining how menus function as "scripts" to systematically drive ST. Through analysis of eight representative cases, the research: 1) develops an integrated framework comprising three strategic dimensions, including nine key design intervention tactics that provide concrete implementation pathways for restaurant ST; 2) reveals three agency mechanisms of menus, …
Sticky Vitalities: Developing Play Design Sensitivities Through Material-Affective Practices,
2026
University College Absalon; Denmark
Sticky Vitalities: Developing Play Design Sensitivities Through Material-Affective Practices, Jennifer Ann Skriver, Helle Marie Skovbjerg
DRS Biennial Conference Series
While design for play has shown how materials invite and shape engagement, less attention has been given to how material encounters may hold participation over time. This article examines how participation is sustained through material–affective dynamics in early childhood play. Drawing on Spinoza’s (1985) concept of potentia, Ahmed’s (2004a, 2010a, 2010b) notion of stickiness, and Slaby et al.’s (2019) affective arrangements, the study explores how capacities and orientations unfold in situated encounters. Based on design-based research in Danish daycare, the analysis centers on a vignette in which a child remains in shared play through engagement with tape. The analysis shows …
Care-Full Co-Production — An Aotearoa Case Study,
2026
Massey University of New Zealand, New Zealand
Care-Full Co-Production — An Aotearoa Case Study, Anjuli Clare, Anna Brown
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Embedding an ‘ethics of care’ into relational and collaborative design research practices benefits from a reflexive and reflective iterative approach. Through this process new ways of elevating multiple forms of knowing are developed, power asymmetries are disrupted, and inclusivity can be expanded. While care may often be included in our mindsets and principles for design research, care itself is often invisible or under talked about. Using the example of our project — Care-full Co-production — a practical perspective on co-producing research is taken. Through a case study of women’s health in Aotearoa New Zealand, this perspective highlights the everyday acts …
From Tool-First To Intention-First Pedagogy: A Framework For Evaluating And Selecting Empathy Tools In Design Education,
2026
MADA, Monash Univeristy, Australia;
IDC, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
From Tool-First To Intention-First Pedagogy: A Framework For Evaluating And Selecting Empathy Tools In Design Education, Akanksha Singh, Ilya Fridman, Purba Joshi, Daphne Flynn
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design education has embraced empathy, developing a diverse repository of tools and methods for cultivating empathic engagement. Yet guidance on how or why these tools should be selected remains limited. Current practices often conflate availability with appropriateness, with tools chosen based on familiarity or convenience rather than empathic fit or contextual suitability. This leads to shallow engagement, limiting the empathic understanding needed for effective design outcomes. This paper proposes a criteria-based framework for evaluating empathy tools, grounded in psychological theory and established empathic design frameworks. The proposed criteria offers a structured lens to assess how tools operate, for whom, and …
The Place Of Aesthetics In Museums,
2026
Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, The, University of Bergamo
The Place Of Aesthetics In Museums, Licia Calvi
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper addresses the question of aesthetics in museums. It does so starting from the work of Hilde Hein, a philosopher who posited that the shifts museums have gone through from classical to new museology has estranged them from their core role in society and brought them too close to other forms of entertainment. This assumption will prompt a discussion on the role technology plays in museums, beyond museum practice but more fundamentally into what the meaning of using technology in museums is and of what the implications of this use are, also from an aesthetical perspective.
Weaving Local Knowledge Into Design Education: Situated Learning In Ethnic Regions Of Western Sichuan,
2026
Minzu University, People's Republic of China
Weaving Local Knowledge Into Design Education: Situated Learning In Ethnic Regions Of Western Sichuan, Yao Tian, Xuan Liu, Xiaoyi Su, Ziyan Zeng, Tingxuan Zhou
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents a case study of the ‘Rural Fieldwork and Design Practice’ course at the School of Fine Arts, Minzu University of China, examining how situated learning in ethnic regions of Western Sichuan cultivates public design sensibilities. By engaging students in deep cultural immersion – from intangible cultural heritage documentation to community-based design interventions – the curriculum transforms local ethnic knowledge into plural pedagogical resources. The study analyses how students develop relational competencies through ethnographic fieldwork, collaborative design exhibitions, and cultural creative markets. Findings demonstrate that this situated approach fosters political sensitivity toward ethnic cultures, nurtures cross-cultural collaborative reflexes, …
