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, …
Extending Futures Literacy To Speech Scientists And Technologists,
2026
Tilburg University, Netherlands, The
Extending Futures Literacy To Speech Scientists And Technologists, Sjuul Bos, Simone Ashby, Julian Hanna
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As speech technologies make rapid strides, facilitating multi-tasking, workflow automation, and cross-cultural collaboration, attention to the adverse effects of such technologies (e.g., legacy bias and inequities) continues to lag, exposing the need for non-designers, such as speech scientists and technologists, to critically assess the ethical implications of their work. In this paper, we present the art-based futuring methods used in a speech technology summer school we co-organized for guiding students in exploring the unintended consequences of speech technology outputs. By sharing our methods and pedagogical insights, we aim to help educators promote discussions on themes like fairness and inclusivity and …
Transitional Materials And Collaborative Craft: European–Indonesian Design Practices From The Design Matters Lab Programme Toward A Resilient Future,
2026
Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom
Transitional Materials And Collaborative Craft: European–Indonesian Design Practices From The Design Matters Lab Programme Toward A Resilient Future, Xingyu Tao, Samantha Vettese
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design Matters Lab (DML) was a collaborative design programme that brought together ten emerging designers from Europe and Indonesia for an online and in-person design residency in Bandung, Indonesia. This paper explores the concepts, methods, and outcomes of DML, offering a potential blueprint for small-sized international businesses seeking to integrate crafting techniques and local, sustainable materials into their manufacturing processes. The project also proposes a methodology for teaching sustainability in design through meaningful environmental engagement rooted in local collaboration and applied practice. It emphasises the importance of working with local communities and using locally available waste and bio- materials. The …
The Paradox Of Richness: A Discourse-Centered Framework For Equitable Visualization,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, Hunan, China
The Paradox Of Richness: A Discourse-Centered Framework For Equitable Visualization, Fangbo Wu, Canyu Jiang, Yanlin Yin, Yonghong Liu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The proliferation of new technologies, notably GenAI, alongside augmented and virtual reality, has produced a paradoxical situation in visualization practice: while offering unprecedented multimodal richness, their complexity erects new barriers to entry, thereby exacerbating inequality and undermining design's democratic promise. Although research at the micro-level of visualization techniques abounds, a critical and systematic methodology for addressing the inherent power dynamics and design justice issues from meso- and macro-perspectives remains conspicuously absent. This paper intervenes by adapting an analytical framework from Critical Discourse Analysis to embed design justice within visualization practice. We propose a four-layer framework—Culture, Context, Meaning, and Expression (CCME)—as …
Becoming Designers: Studio Instructors As Catalysts Of Designerly Identity Formation,
2026
Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Türkiye
Becoming Designers: Studio Instructors As Catalysts Of Designerly Identity Formation, Beril Gök
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Embodiment, affect, and symbolic modelling remain underexplored dimensions of designerly identity formation, despite its recognition as a central outcome of design education. While existing research emphasizes cognitive-skill acquisition, little is known about how studio instructors shape identity through aesthetic, relational, and performative means. This study examines the influence of instructors within the socio-aesthetic ecology of the design studio. Using abductive thematic analysis of focus group interviews with teaching assistants across architecture, industrial design, interior design, and fashion design, the study highlights shared cross-disciplinary patterns across international contexts. Findings reveal that instructors shape designerly becoming not only through teaching but also …
Play And Pilina: Reimagining Play Design Through Material Kinship And Cultural Practice,
2026
Okada Design, United States of America
Play And Pilina: Reimagining Play Design Through Material Kinship And Cultural Practice, Corinne Takara
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Playful encounters at the intersection of familiar consumer materials and place-based natural matter are fertile terrain for speculative play world-building. This paper introduces bio-collaborative play, a design paradigm where materials and organisms are recognized as active collaborators and kin. This shifts play design away from the manipulation of objects toward a sustained dialogue with living systems. Grounded in Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) principles of pilina (reciprocal care) and kuleana (privileged responsibility), this framework reimagines speculative play as an act of communal care spanning biological scales and generational time. By treating plants, microbes, and everyday materials as co-authors, this approach analyzes …
Reimagining Materiality: Responsible And Experiential Vr Design For Fashion E-Commerce In India,
2026
London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom
Reimagining Materiality: Responsible And Experiential Vr Design For Fashion E-Commerce In India, Prajwala Dasari, Min-Ji Seo
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This research explores how fashion brands can replicate touch and garment materiality through digital design strategies to engage Gen Z shoppers in India, addressing the sensory absence in e-commerce. Using an interpretivist, qualitative, multi-method approach involving eight semi-structured interviews and five participant observations, the study investigates how Virtual Reality (VR) can enhance emotional engagement and responsible consumption in fashion retail. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), findings show that gamification, interactivity, and personalisation—combined with transparency and brand trust—drive consumer acceptance. The study highlights the importance of inclusive and …
Reframing Design Through Events: Generative Events As Ontological Units In Object-Oriented Design Ontology,
2026
Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Reframing Design Through Events: Generative Events As Ontological Units In Object-Oriented Design Ontology, Fengjin Yu, Qiaozhi Zhao
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study confronts the theoretical challenges arising from the increasing practical overlap of Participatory Design (PD) and Co-Design. Existing research, largely confined to method comparisons, lacks an ontological perspective capable of explaining its underlying integrative mechanisms. To address this critical gap, this paper argues for a fundamental ontological shift. We introduce the concept of 'generative events' as the basic ontological unit of design, a concept constructed by synthesising Object-Oriented Design Ontology (OODO) with Process Ontology. This framework reframes design as a dynamic generative process where humans and non-human objects collaboratively construct relationships and meaning within specific contexts. The contribution of …
Minamata’S Ecological Encounters Codesheet: Designing Remembrance Lenses Through More-Than-Human And Media Archaeology,
2026
Keio University
Minamata’S Ecological Encounters Codesheet: Designing Remembrance Lenses Through More-Than-Human And Media Archaeology, Lucas Ogasawara De Oliveira, Kouta Minamizawa
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Consumer media devices routinely expose humans and environments to sensing and data capture while obscuring their own operations, supply chains, and ecological impacts. This paper asks how such devices might instead support planetary awareness with care and transparency. Working with Minamata, Japan, as a paradigmatic case, we combine more-than-human design, media archaeology, and research-through-design evidence-based fieldwork to develop the Ecological Encounters Codesheet (EEC): a granular method for coding encounters across temporal strata, containment forms, risk regimes, opacity sources, and care practices. Applying the EEC to Minamata’s infrastructures, memorials, archives, and tourist ecologies, we derive a set of Remembrance Lenses that …
