Small Ai: A Degrowth Imaginary For Designing With/For Artificial Intelligence,
2026
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Small Ai: A Degrowth Imaginary For Designing With/For Artificial Intelligence, Roy Bendor, Dave Murray-Rust, Rainer Rehak
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents Small AI as a conceptual lever for designers to resist the ‘bigger is better’ trend in the discourse and development of Generative AI. We explore different types of Small AI: initially in relation to the size of models, as smaller models require less computational resources for both training and inference, thus implying a smaller ecological footprint. However, we extend the meaning of smallness to apply to political, epistemic and cultural domains as well. In this vein, the paper posits Small AI as an imaginary-in-the-making, and a rallying concept for an alternative innovation agenda that holds, in the …
In Kinship With Harakeke Phormium Tenax: How One Plant And Its Materials Facilitate Transitional Knowledge Through Inter-Indigenous And Inter-Cultural Exchange.,
2026
Toi Rauwhārangi (College of Creative Arts), Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa (Massey University)
In Kinship With Harakeke Phormium Tenax: How One Plant And Its Materials Facilitate Transitional Knowledge Through Inter-Indigenous And Inter-Cultural Exchange., Angela Kilford, Sonya Withers, Faith Kane, Huhana Smith
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Abstract: This paper considers how one plant, harakeke (phormium tenax), native to Aotearoa New Zealand embodies the natural attributes to mitigate climate change and support transition to more sustainable and equitable material futures. Through interaction and collaboration, harakeke demonstrates how circular and regenerative textile design systems are manifested. In the interest of learning from harakeke the authors, working from multiple perspectives, position the plant as tohunga (knowledge expert) and themselves as tauira (learners) to share and reflect upon their engagements with the plant and its fibre. From harakeke we learn about familial relationships to whenua (land) and to each other, …
Understanding Designers’ Activities And Cognition In Co-Creation With Textual Genai: Do Prior Experience And Ai Literacy Matter?,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Understanding Designers’ Activities And Cognition In Co-Creation With Textual Genai: Do Prior Experience And Ai Literacy Matter?, Yulu Song, Ying Hu, Zihan Zhou, Yiming Bai, Xing Du, Ziling Liang, Yunxiang Shi, Wentao Deng
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Artificial intelligence is bringing comprehensive impacts to the approaches, methods, and efficiency of creation. As a result, designers are being driven to tackle more untried tasks, rather than engaging in work they have long been proficient in. This study organised a co-design experiment involving novice designers and Textual GenAI to investigate the influence of prior experience and AI literacy on collaborative design outcomes. We conducted a detailed coding of collaborative activities in the design process. This uncovered the activity characteristics, shifts, and collaboration patterns in the co-creation process. These findings deepen the understanding of the Human-AI collaborative design process and …
Visualisation For Citizen Participation: Data Practices In The Copenhagen Climate Citizens' Assembly,
2026
Aalborg University, Denmark
Visualisation For Citizen Participation: Data Practices In The Copenhagen Climate Citizens' Assembly, Daniele Dell'orto, Amalia De Götzen, Mathieu Jacomy
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The recent popularisation of data and their visualisation has offered new opportunities for spaces of citizen participation around contested issues, such as climate assemblies. The potential of data visualisation in opening and supporting discussions has been widely recognised, but so has the risk it carries of naturalising certain perspectives and delegitimising others. Still, the roles played by data visualisation in the specific context of climate assemblies remain unaddressed. This paper investigates those roles through field observation and desk research around a case study, the Københavnernes Klimaborgerting. The study explores which data were visualised, how, by who and why. What emerges …
The Transformative Nature Of Food And The Transition Of Traditional Desserts Into Industrial Products: A Case Study Through A Transformational Design Lens,
2026
İstanbul Ticaret University, Turkiye
The Transformative Nature Of Food And The Transition Of Traditional Desserts Into Industrial Products: A Case Study Through A Transformational Design Lens, Burcu Torum
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines the transformation of traditional Turkish desserts into contemporary industrial food products through the framework of transformational design. Grounded in the premise that food functions not only as a biological necessity but also as a carrier of cultural memory, identity, and social meaning, the study explores how traditional foods can be reinterpreted within modern production systems, consumption patterns, and sustainability expectations. Drawing on student projects from a food design course in an industrial design department during the 2024–2025 academic year, the research analyzes how desserts are redesigned according to industrial constraints and contemporary lifestyles. Using thematic analysis, findings …
The Fair Share Of Care: A Distributed Care Account Of Circular Design,
2026
TU Delft, Netherlands
The Fair Share Of Care: A Distributed Care Account Of Circular Design, Ida Krstulović
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores how the ethics of care can be applied to circular product design. Although the concept of care is compatible with circular design, individualistic models of care place excessive focus on single actors, such as designers, while approaches of shared or collective care risk the diffusion of responsibility, making it unclear who should act in order for certain needs to be met. These approaches fail to adequately address three interrelated problems: moral distance, influence (or lack thereof), and the diffusion of responsibility. Consequently, this paper introduces the concept of distributed care, an approach that focuses on assigning care …
In Vegetal Terms: Temporal Lenses In Human-Plant Interaction,
2026
School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
In Vegetal Terms: Temporal Lenses In Human-Plant Interaction, Clee Zhuo Wang, Jeffrey C. F. Ho, Bow Yiying Wu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper highlights temporality as an important more-than-human design strategy and expands multiple lenses for engaging with the temporal complexity of more-than-human. Reflecting on the dominance of anthropocentric and industrial notions of time in design, we choose plant as a paradigmatic case for otherly temporality. We take stock from interdisciplinary literatures and introduce six temporal lenses: rhythm, horizon, continuity, duration, genealogy, and incompleteness, to articulate how plants live, change, and relate through multiple overlapping temporalities. Connecting these lenses to human-plant interaction design practice, these temporal lenses enables designers to recognize temporal frictions, attend to vegetal rhythms, and cultivate responsive and …
From Speculation To Strategy Reflection: A Case Study Of Design-Led Foresight Workshops At Revigrés,
2026
ID+, DeCA, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
From Speculation To Strategy Reflection: A Case Study Of Design-Led Foresight Workshops At Revigrés, Gisela Pinheiro Agostinho, Teresa Franqueira
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This article presents a case-based investigation of design-led foresight in practice through a series of international workshops conducted in Denmark and China within a doctoral action-research programme with Revigrés, a Portuguese ceramic manufacturer. Grounded in a structured trend cartography clustered into fifteen domains, multidisciplinary teams employed lightweight foresight methods, including personas, rapid scenario visioning, and low-fidelity prototyping, to explore possible housing futures for 2070. Twelve speculative design visions emerged, ranging from bio-integrated habitats and privacy-legible smart homes to circular neighbourhood systems and programmable interiors. Rather than treating these visions as predictive outcomes, the study examines how workshop artefacts functioned as …
Olfactory Prototyping As Diplomatic Device: Codesigning A Morethanhuman ‘Us’ With Two Captive Pumas,
2026
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
Olfactory Prototyping As Diplomatic Device: Codesigning A Morethanhuman ‘Us’ With Two Captive Pumas, Marcela Mora, Pablo Hermansen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper extends cosmopolitical prototyping into the olfactory domain to examine how smell can operate as a diplomatic device for interspecies coexistence. Building on a longitudinal, autoethnographic research through design project, we report multi session fieldwork with two captive pumas—Huilo (older, methodical) and Maqui (younger, playful)—at Refugio Animal Cascada, Chile. The study sought not to apply enrichment as an external fix, but to co constitute a situated more than human we in which animal, designer, materials, climate and infrastructures jointly stage conditions for safe relationality. We designed textile olfactory braids (reused cotton braids and burlap sachets) infused with botanicals (e.g., …
Towards Equitable Participation Of Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing People In Co-Design Research: An Initial Working Framework,
2026
School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Towards Equitable Participation Of Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing People In Co-Design Research: An Initial Working Framework, Barbara Hein-Machado, Cecilia Landa-Avila, John Alexander Rey-Galindo, Carlos Aceves-Gonzalez, Rebecca Cain
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Research involving Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants remains limited in its ability to include and engage with diverse participants lived experiences, weakening research rigour, relationships with communities, and perpetuating existing inequalities. The use of co-design approaches to address these needs, by positioning lived experience as an additional form of expert knowledge, has increased in recent years. However, the ways in which practices genuinely empower DHH participants, enabling participation that advances justice within and beyond the research setting, have not been translated into co-design research. This paper proposes an initial participatory framework for exploring DHH engagement in research, examining how models of …
Co-Evolution In Practice: The Wolf's Disruptive Return To The Netherlands,
2026
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, The
Co-Evolution In Practice: The Wolf's Disruptive Return To The Netherlands, Laurens Kolks
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Dutchmen like to pride themselves on having ‘successfully conquered nature’ through engineering, management and design. Currently, however, this triumphant spirit has been dampened by global, regional, and local developments that expose established Dutch notions of malleability and control as fallacies. This paper uses the unsolicited return of wolves to the Netherlands as an explanatory case study to illustrate how in this unfolding controversy problem and solution spaces co-evolve and thus call for all-but-reductionist design and management approaches. Building on the crucial difference between problems (that can be solved) and issues (that can be stabilised), a model is proposed that explicates …
When Can Asmr Sound Improve Consumer Product Evaluation? Exploring The Joint Influences Of Asmr Sound And Visual Richness,
2026
Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China, People's Republic of
When Can Asmr Sound Improve Consumer Product Evaluation? Exploring The Joint Influences Of Asmr Sound And Visual Richness, Huan Chen, Peiyao Cheng
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As immersive media grows, brands increasingly adopt multisensory design, with ASMR emerging as a key auditory tool. How ASMR interacts with visual content to influence consumer product evaluation remains underexplored. Grounded in multisensory integration and processing fluency theory, this study employed three experiments (N=630) to examine their joint effects on immersive experience and purchase intention. Results indicate that ASMR generally enhances consumer evaluation, but its effect depends on visual richness. With low visual richness (color), ASMR adds sensory cues and enhances immersive experience. With moderate visual richness (3D), ASMR’s effect diminished. With high visual richness (close-up), ASMR may induce overload …
Reflecting With Eco Material Libraries: Bridging Material Experimentation, Teaching, And Sustainability Discourse,
2026
University of California Davis, United States of America
Reflecting With Eco Material Libraries: Bridging Material Experimentation, Teaching, And Sustainability Discourse, Beth Ferguson, Sam Edens, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Eco material libraries are emerging in design education as more than repositories of samples. We define them as pedagogical material infrastructures that combine samples, recipes, documentation, and situated curation to support hands-on experimentation and reflection. Drawing on two case studies at the University of California Davis and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we examine how these libraries are built, maintained, and engaged in practice through interviews with faculty curators and a preliminary student survey. Across both sites, the findings suggest that eco material libraries extend conventional material-library models by linking material selection to making, comparison, documentation, and student contribution. They …
Transforming A Precarious Equilibrium: Embracing Complexity In Public Design Practices,
2026
TU Delft, The Netherlands
Transforming A Precarious Equilibrium: Embracing Complexity In Public Design Practices, Thomas Van Arkel, Nynke Tromp, Deger Ozkaramanli
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines how design space for engaging with complexity was constrained, negotiated and expanded within a Dutch public sector organisation providing occupational disability services. While systemic design calls for transformation and embracing complexity, practical understanding of enacting this within a political-administrative context remains limited. Through critical analysis of a participatory action research project, we trace six key moments where possibilities for transformation were opened up or constrained: from processing the initial individual-centric framing, through recognising relational complexity, to translating insights into interventions. Our analysis reveals tensions between systemic aspirations and organisational realities: while the project successfully reframed reintegration from …
A Perceived Value Framework For Automotive Design Innovation: Rethinking Strategic Transition Of Incumbent Oems In The Post-Ice Era,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China
A Perceived Value Framework For Automotive Design Innovation: Rethinking Strategic Transition Of Incumbent Oems In The Post-Ice Era, Zikun Song, Shizhu Lu, Yaqin Peng, Lixin Song
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As the industry moves beyond the internal combustion engine, incumbent original equipment manufacturers (incumbent OEMs) need a systematic, experience perception-centred way to evaluate design. We introduce a Perceived Value Framework (PVF) derived from a 2015–2025 review that defines six dimensions: perceived functionality, performance, intelligence, aesthetics, brand, and sustainability, each linked to sensory indicators. These dimensions are mapped to the emotional design model’s visceral, behavioral, and reflective levels to connect first impressions, in-use experience, and long-term meaning. Comparative case analyses of four OEMs’ 2024–2025 products validate how these dimensions operate across distinct value orchestration and design transformation initiatives. Cross-case results reveal …
From Fragile Remnants To Regenerative Systems: Circular Design Through Eggshell Waste,
2026
Institute for Future Technologies, De Vinci Higher Education, Paris, France
From Fragile Remnants To Regenerative Systems: Circular Design Through Eggshell Waste, Hasti Valipour Goudarzi, Esther K. J. Clifford, Ramkumar S
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Eggshell waste, designated by the EPA as the 15th largest food-based pollutant, is reimagined here as a regenerative material through circular and reciprocal design practices. This research explores how discarded eggshells can be transformed into bioplastics, coatings, and modular construction elements. The project integrates ecological theory (Haraway’s “response-ability,” Kimmerer’s reciprocity) with hands-on material experimentation across diverse geographies, including India and Europe. Emphasizing student-led, non-hierarchical learning, it cultivates ecological care and interdependence between human and more-than-human worlds. Installations, workshops, and collaborations with local experts support regenerative construction practices rooted in local materials and needs. By challenging extractive, linear waste systems, the …
Older Adults As A Critical Group In The Design Of A Mobile Application For Hearing Screening And Monitoring,
2026
Loughborough University, School of Design and Creative Arts, United Kingdom
Older Adults As A Critical Group In The Design Of A Mobile Application For Hearing Screening And Monitoring, Emilene Zitkus, Leonardo Morgadona Tosi Rodrigues, Vinicius Dantas, Leticia Santos, Patricia Campos, Ana Laura Oliveira, Rikarla Sales, Lucas Vieira, Sheila Andreoli Balen, Deborah Ferrari
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The global population is aging rapidly. Hearing loss (HL) constitutes the leading cause of years lived with disability for individuals over 70. With 42% of the 430 million people experiencing disabling HL aged 60 or older, and the majority of them residing in less developed regions, accessible intervention strategies are essential. This paper details an initial study from an ongoing project to develop a digital health intervention (DHI) for hearing screening and monitoring, specifically considering the difficulties faced by older users living in Brazil. User needs revealed critical design requirements, including simplified language, the need for adding images for guidance, …
Crafting Legacies With Care: Speculative Frameworks For The Digital Afterlife,
2026
Independent Researcher, Denmark
Crafting Legacies With Care: Speculative Frameworks For The Digital Afterlife, Sara Bilić, Jessica Sorenson
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Emerging grief technologies promise to preserve the dead through data, yet often neglect the relational, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of memory and identity. This paper proposes a care-centred framework for digital legacy design, grounded in the speculative concept of A Living Will, which uses augmented reality to enable co-created posthumous memories between the living and the deceased. Through autoethnography, participatory workshops, and theoretical analysis, the study critically examines how care ethics and co-authorship can transform digital legacy from an act of preservation to one of participation. By treating identity as distributed and legacy as relational, we reframe grief technology as …
Systematic Material Experimentation With Photosynthetic Biomineralisation Across Waste Substrates For Circular Product Design,
2026
Living Systems Lab, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, London N1C 4AA, United Kingdom
Systematic Material Experimentation With Photosynthetic Biomineralisation Across Waste Substrates For Circular Product Design, Hyejo Shin, Lorraine Archer, Matt Malpass, Carole Collet
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In response to escalating planetary challenges, circular bioeconomy frameworks are increasingly vital for sustainable resource management. Biomineralisation, a natural process in which organisms produce inorganic materials, has been extensively studied in engineering but remains underutilised in circular product design. This paper investigates systematic material experimentation with photosynthetic biomineralisation across diverse waste substrates for circular product design. Through a practice-based biodesign methodology integrating biological protocols with design experimentation, the study developed a material sample collection of eleven waste substrates biomineralised by cyanobacteria. The findings reveal that the type of waste substrate influences material formation, consolidation, and aesthetic qualities, informing distinct design …
The Who Cares? Approach: Materializing Values In Community-Based Participatory Research,
2026
The Health Design Lab at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Canada
The Who Cares? Approach: Materializing Values In Community-Based Participatory Research, Logan Wilkinson, Collen Reid, Caylee Raber, Jon Hannan
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Emerging from a three-year arts-based participatory design and research collaboration, the Who Cares? Approach is a framework for social change developed to understand how a community in rural British Columbia could cultivate a system of support for aging. Through iterative cycles of team retreats, including creative engagement and group interviews, project members developed a framework grounded in values of trust, presence, creativity, storytelling, relationality, and acknowledgement of the unknown. By transforming value statements into diagrams, installations, and participatory events, the project demonstrated how design artifacts can act as mediators of shared meaning and catalysts for ethical reflection. The resulting visual …
