Exploring Current Understandings Of ‘Design Systems’: Toward A Conceptual Framework,
2026
LEGO Group, Denmark
Exploring Current Understandings Of ‘Design Systems’: Toward A Conceptual Framework, Margrethe Nielsen, Peter Vistisen, Nanna Inie, Michael Mose Biskjaer
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design systems are foundational in the design of user experience (UX) across platforms and products. Although design systems have become pervasive in design practice, the term remains ambiguous due to multiple definitions and conceptualizations. The lack of a shared definition can lead to misunderstandings and ill-aligned uses of design systems in practice, vulnerable to the same issues of parallel activities and inconsistencies that design systems are meant to prevent. This paper reviews the concept from the term’s origin in design theory and into its current practice and proposes a new frame of reference for researchers and practitioners, focusing on improved …
Crafting Semiotic Riddles: Materiality And Interpretive Play In Speculative Design,
2026
Kolding School of Design, Denmark
Crafting Semiotic Riddles: Materiality And Interpretive Play In Speculative Design, Jess Uhre Rahbek, Sofie Kinch
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper repositions speculative design artefacts as semiotic riddles, where materiality operates not merely as a carrier of speculation but as a vehicle for play. Drawing on Peircean semiotics and narrative theory, we extend Auger’s notion of the ‘perceptual bridge’ to show how speculative artefacts invite audiences into riddle-solving, assembling ‘fabula’ worlds from incomplete ‘syuzhet’ clues. Methodologically, we propose that speculative design can be understood as the crafting of riddles: designing with ambiguity, incompleteness, and interpretive openness. Through three design projects, we illustrate distinct ways in which designers structure the clues of semiotic riddles, whether singular artefacts, fragmented constellations or …
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., …
Seeing Systemic Design Through Policy Eyes: A Frame-Work To Navigate Complexities Of Policy Contexts,
2026
Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Seeing Systemic Design Through Policy Eyes: A Frame-Work To Navigate Complexities Of Policy Contexts, Elke Michel Wennekers, Geert Brinkman, Jotte I.J.C. De Koning, Arwin Van Buuren
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines why design practitioners experience tensions when ap-plying systemic design approaches within policy contexts. Drawing on Bekkers’ four analytical perspectives (rational, political, cultural, and institutional), we reinterpret the systemic design activities to reveal how each perspective places distinct, and at times conflicting, demands on design processes. By comparing the lenses across the dimensions of principles, framing, validity, appropriateness, and embedding, we develop a theoretical framework to shed light on how these tensions emerge. The framework also shows that each perspective puts different demands on a design process in the policy context. The framework helps both designers and policy …
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 …
Queering Empathy In/For/With/By Design,
2026
DePaul University, United States of America
Queering Empathy In/For/With/By Design, Jessica Meharry
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Empathy is widely used as the initial stage of the design process to understand users and meet their needs and desires. Recently these methods have been critiqued for commodifying empathy in commercial practice, centering the designer instead of the user, and failing to account for power dynamics. Empathy is also under attack in political spheres, increasing the dehumanization of others. To address these criticisms, we explore the value of empathy in design processes and examine how queer theory and queering methodologies can help designers move past “walking in someone else’s shoes” towards intersectional design processes rooted in political responsibility. Synthesizing …
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 …
More-Than-Human Oversight: Designing A Somaesthetic Space For High-Risk Ai Systems,
2026
Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria
More-Than-Human Oversight: Designing A Somaesthetic Space For High-Risk Ai Systems, Mariana Morais, Joaquin Santuber, Kristina Tica, Pablo Hermansen, Marcos Chilet
DRS Biennial Conference Series
European AI regulation (EU AI Act) has assumed that humans will remain in control of AI systems, thanks to human-machine interfaces and a stop button (Art. 14 of the EU AI Act) as two separate static entities. This ontological blindness in legal institutions leads to a problem of making illusory mechanisms through which people relate to the more-than-human agency of AI systems, foreclosing any possibility of coexistence. Against this context, somaesthetic and affective interaction design practices can offer new possibilities of inter-relations between the more-than-human AI-data operations and the human and social institutions’ fixations on representations. This paper provides an …
Designing For Dignity: A Method To Explore Emotional Lived Experiences Of Stigma And Dignity In Perinatal Mental Health Environments,
2026
University of Twente, Faculty of Engineering Technology, Netherlands, The
Designing For Dignity: A Method To Explore Emotional Lived Experiences Of Stigma And Dignity In Perinatal Mental Health Environments, Carmen Heuvelmans, Aslı Günay, Geke Ludden, Jodi Sturge
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Psychiatric care environments are intended to heal, yet their design is often experienced as stigmatizing. This paper presents the Uncovering and Designing for Dignity through Emotions (UDDE) method, a participatory approach designed to uncover the meaning of dignity for perinatal women in psychiatric care, explore lived experiences of stigma and dignity, and identify how care features can be re-designed to uphold dignity. While dignity is often defined as an inherent worth every person possesses, in everyday life dignity is experienced as a lived value shaped by interactions with others and the environment. Emotions act as biological signals that can reveal …
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 …
Narrativizing Care: Exploring Narrative Medicine For Designing Ai-Mediated Remote Patient Monitoring,
2026
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Narrativizing Care: Exploring Narrative Medicine For Designing Ai-Mediated Remote Patient Monitoring, Somayeh Ranjbar, Tara Capel, Peter Lloyd, Douwe E. Atsma, Somaya Ben Allouch, Jeroen Raijmakers
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines how care is enacted and understood within Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) systems, which promise efficiency and autonomy but fragment care into data flows. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Dutch hospital’s RPM program for myocardial infarction patients, we analyze how stories, reassurance, and contextual interpretation unfold alongside structured data, revealing the promise and limits of AI-mediated care. Using narrative medicine’s triad of attention, representation, and affiliation, we identify how extractive data models overlook patients’ lived realities and relational dimensions of care. We propose three design provocations for exploring the application of AI in RPM systems: narrative layers …
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 …
An Exploration Into The Value Of ‘Gap System’ Within Regenerative Design,
2026
Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology
An Exploration Into The Value Of ‘Gap System’ Within Regenerative Design, Ariane Camille Fourquier, Delfina Fantini Van Ditmar, Iohanna Nicenboim
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores the possible contribution of ‘gap system’ within the context of regenerative design, highlighting how ‘gaps’, as overlooked, unexplored, and unrecalled dimensions of creative practice, can provide critical opportunities for regeneration. Drawing on ongoing research into weave structures conceptualised through the holes in between yarns, and by presenting the outcomes of a workshop, we illustrate the potential of thinking through ‘gaps’ as a nuanced perspective for regenerative design. Here, ‘gaps’ become sites of reflection, emergence, and transition. We show how this approach reshaped participants’ ways of mapping systems by focusing on ‘gaps’ rather than existing linear knowledge, enabling …
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, …
