Designing Within The Clinic: A Situated Co-Design Approach For Healthcare Provider Engagement,
2026
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
Designing Within The Clinic: A Situated Co-Design Approach For Healthcare Provider Engagement, Neda Barbazi, Ji Youn Shin, Gurumurthy Hiremath, Carlye Anne Lauff
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Healthcare providers’ participation in the design process is essential for developing effective care interventions. However, engaging them through traditional design methods is challenging due to heavy workloads, unpredictable schedules, and hierarchical roles within care teams. Traditional co-design approaches, such as synchronous workshops, are often less effective in capturing clinical realities and may not fully embody participatory principles of collaboration and shared ownership. Our study addresses these challenges through a situated, self-paced co-design approach created with provider input and embedded within clinical workflows. Conducted in a pediatric cardiology clinic, fifteen providers participated over one month to refine a hybrid educational intervention …
Affective Epistemologies: Textile Teaching At University Of Chile, 1930-2000,
2026
Pontificia Universidad Católica, Chile
Affective Epistemologies: Textile Teaching At University Of Chile, 1930-2000, Camila Vicencio-Pérez, Magdalena Cattan-Lavin
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study analyses textile teaching at Universidad de Chile (1930-2000), the first institution to incorporate it as an academic discipline in the country, as a case of theory-making through practice. Drawing on archives, oral testimonies, and material objects (looms, notebooks, works), we reconstruct how textiles operated simultaneously as technical knowledge, affective space, and pedagogical practice. In dialogue with Catherine Dormor, we approach weaving as material thinking and "theory-making" through making; following Elvira Espejo, we situate it as a matrix of relational knowledges. This case inscribes itself within institutionalization of textiles in 20th-century art and design schools, with influence from foreign …
Producing Knowledge For Whom? Parallel Knowledge Worlds In Chinese Doctoral Education In Design And International Design Research,
2026
North Carolina State University, United States of America;
Cornell University
Producing Knowledge For Whom? Parallel Knowledge Worlds In Chinese Doctoral Education In Design And International Design Research, Linghao Li, Wangda Zhu, Tingxin Zheng
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Since the first programs were established in 2011, China's design doctoral education has expanded to 37 institutions by 2024, yet Chinese scholars remain marginalized in international venues like DRS (3.6% of papers, 2012–2024). Through mixed-methods analysis of 426 dissertations, 95 conference papers, 6,239 citations, 40 author trajectories, and 9 interviews, we reveal systematic divergence rather than exclusion. Citation analysis demonstrates a 50.9 percentage point shift: scholars cite 54.5% Chinese-language sources in dissertations but only 3.6% in DRS papers. Author tracking shows 72.5% became one-time participants with no subsequent first-author international publications, evidencing strategic credential-seeking over sustained engagement. Keyword analysis confirms …
Design For Trust: A Study On The Emotional Design Method Of Ai Educational Robots For Children With Autism,
2026
School of Design, Hunan University, People's Republic of China
Design For Trust: A Study On The Emotional Design Method Of Ai Educational Robots For Children With Autism, Shanhao Fang, Han Yu, Xiang Yuan
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Amid the integration of AI into special education, establishing trust between AI educational robots and children with autism through emotional design is a critical challenge in HCI. While emotional design benefits general educational robots, systematic frameworks and empirical evidence for autistic children remain scarce. This study applies the three-level emotional design model (Instinctive, behavioral, reflective) to examine how multimodal elements—voice (volume, speed), appearance (color, form), and emotional expressions—affect attention, interaction willingness, and trust. A controlled experiment (N=12) revealed that higher volume, slower speech, warm colors, and positive expressions significantly improve engagement and trust. Based on the results, a design evaluation …
The Wicked Problem Of Ai Policy Design,
2026
The University of Queensland, Australia
The Wicked Problem Of Ai Policy Design, Awais Hameed Khan, Saarim Saghir, Paul Henman
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Development of policy tools and instruments has always trailed behind technological innovations. More recently, the rapid advancement of AI technologies has resulted in significant widening of this policy gap — a genuine wicked problem. To address this we developed a participatory AI Policy Design toolkit, engaging 23 technology researchers and practitioners to (1) critically evaluate existing AI use cases to identify key considerations for policy; (2) generate a catalogue of current and near future AI use-cases in their domains of expertise; and (3) collaboratively develop AI policy intervention proposal artefacts, and foster a shared vocabulary for AI policy design. Results …
Designing Integrated, Trauma-Informed Care Pathways For Co-Occurring Addiction And Trauma: Insights From Two Interrelated Co-Design Workshops,
2026
Monash University, Australia
Designing Integrated, Trauma-Informed Care Pathways For Co-Occurring Addiction And Trauma: Insights From Two Interrelated Co-Design Workshops, Troy Mcgee, India Read, Leah Heiss, Sara Daly, Katrin Oliver, Ali Cheetham, Irina Hart, Cathryn Pilcher, Anne-Laure Couineau, Shalini Arunogiri
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Co-occurring trauma and substance use disorder (SUD) are common and clinically consequential. Evidence supports concurrent, integrated responses within trauma-informed systems, yet implementation remains uneven. This study aims to identify design principles for integrated, trauma-informed care pathways by examining current service pathways and workforce capabilities across mental health (MH), alcohol and other drugs (AOD), and community health. We report insights from two interrelated co-design workshops (n>40) that included AOD/MH clinicians, hospital staff, peer and lived-experience practitioners, and community partners. Workshops used personas to surface barriers, enablers, and attributes of an enabling environment. Thematic analysis yielded five themes: Consumer experience; Workforce …
Design Considerations For Effective In-Vehicle Interaction: The Effects Of Icon Type And Individual Heterogeneity,
2026
Hunan University, China, People's Republic of
Design Considerations For Effective In-Vehicle Interaction: The Effects Of Icon Type And Individual Heterogeneity, Weiqi He, Meiyan Leng, Chunxi Huang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Icons are essential visual elements in vehicle cabins, serving as key conduits for presenting information. As in-vehicle infotainment systems grow increasingly complex, it becomes critical to understand how different types of icons influence the interaction effectiveness across different user groups. This study investigates the effects of icon type and individual cognitive differences on in-vehicle interaction effectiveness, employing a 2×2 mixed experimental design with two independent variables: icon type (i.e., abstract versus concrete) and drivers’ construal level (i.e., high versus low). Results show that icon type significantly affects reaction time, perceived matchiness, and cognitive fluency, while construal level independently modulates cognitive …
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 …
Critical Reflectors, Bridge-Builders, And Sense-Makers: How Designers Intervene In Ai’S Reproduction Of Gender Inequality,
2026
University of Sydney, Australia
Critical Reflectors, Bridge-Builders, And Sense-Makers: How Designers Intervene In Ai’S Reproduction Of Gender Inequality, Sanita Budihardjo, Kazjon Grace, Josie Young, Yiying Wu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In recent years, AI has become increasingly entangled with design practice, whether as a tool, a design material, or a collaborator. Alongside these opportunities, it is necessary to recognise AI as a socio-technical system that reproduces existing gender hierarchies. Treating design as a political site of intervention; this paper examines how designers can ground their practice in addressing gender bias in AI. Drawing on a scoping review of gender bias in AI, feminist design perspectives, and existing interventions in design research, we argue that designers occupy a consequential role as critical reflectors, bridge-builders, and sense-makers, uniquely positioned to question how …
Designing With Country: Relational Infrastructuring Beyond Technocratic Urbanism,
2026
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia
Designing With Country: Relational Infrastructuring Beyond Technocratic Urbanism, Kimberley Harding, Jennifer Seevinck, Marcus Foth
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The design of both physical and digital layers of the built environment is increasingly shaped by the pursuit of “smartness,” often privileging efficiency and control over the cultural, ecological, and ethical dimensions that sustain life in cities. Resisting this technocratic urbanism and reimagining infrastructuring through Australian Aboriginal principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) – including relationality, responsibility, and reciprocity – offers ethical and sustainable directions for design. This paper proposes relational infrastructuring as a situated design practice that enacts and sustains cultural and ecological relations rather than merely delivering technical functions. Drawing on design scholarship, Indigenous knowledges, and urban studies, …
“Everything That No Longer Relates To Anything”: Discard Studies For Thinking Through Waste In Design,
2026
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
“Everything That No Longer Relates To Anything”: Discard Studies For Thinking Through Waste In Design, Timothy Cowlishaw, Joan Soler Adillon, Laia Blasco Soplon
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Existing attitudes to waste in sustainable design treat it as a quantity to be minimized: reduced, reused, or recycled. However, according to the field of Discard Studies, waste, and the act of wasting, are shaped by wider social, political, and material systems of interest to design (Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2022), therefore working with waste can have broader implications for design practice. We introduce the principles and methods of Discard Studies, through a report on the participatory project "L'Arxiu de Rastres Tecnològics de Vic", carried out in Vic, Catalonia, in autumn 2025. The project used Discard Studies methods to encourage participants …
Interface Cultures, Forever: Speculative Prototypes For Technological Awareness,
2026
Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy
Interface Cultures, Forever: Speculative Prototypes For Technological Awareness, Mario Ciaramitaro, Pietro Costa
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As artificial intelligence increasingly takes over the designer’s role in shaping interfaces for services and platforms, a key challenge is how to teach young designers to critically reflect on how design mechanisms shape users and their everyday lives. Interface Cultures, Forever was a design workshop that challenged the conventional notion of the digital interface. Participants were asked to design critical interfaces - concepts that reveal tensions, paradoxes, and invisible mechanisms within digital life. Through speculative and ironic prototypes, students explored how interfaces shape behavior, emotion, and identity. The projects articulate a landscape of cultural critique, where the interface becomes both …
Disrupting Walking: Rethinking The Practice Through A Podal Extension,
2026
Istanbul Technical University, Turkiye
Disrupting Walking: Rethinking The Practice Through A Podal Extension, Zeynep Gul Bagan, Yaren Hazal Erman, Gulten Nur Bilgic
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Walking is approached not merely as a bodily act but as a phenomenon shaped by its historical, cultural, and spatial meanings, along with its relationship to the ground. Its historical continuity has made walking a constitutive element of social norms and bodily behavior patterns. The study seeks to reconceptualize walking not as rhythmic, standardized motion but as a relational experience, foregrounded through its intentional disruption. Such disruption prompts a questioning of biological and cultural codes, as the body becomes fragile when departing from the habitual. The first phase, conducted in Istanbul, explored the disruption of walking through body-movement experiments using …
Toward Caring Urban Design: Developing Care Practices Through Thinking With Forno Vagabondo,
2026
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Zukunfts*archiv
Toward Caring Urban Design: Developing Care Practices Through Thinking With Forno Vagabondo, Miriam Kreuzer, Flora Mammana
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Urban crises and power inequalities intensify processes of urbanization that reinforce exclusion, segregation, and displacement. Within urban design, care has recently been discussed as an ethical and political framework for addressing these dynamics. However, little attention has been paid to how care-ethical principles can be translated into concrete urban design practices. This paper responds to this gap by developing four caring practices for urban design. Using dialogical inquiry through conversation as a method, the research brings together feminist care ethics with situated, practice-based knowledge from the urban design project Forno Vagabondo – a mobile social oven traveling through a valley …
Dilemmas Of Institutionalizing Human-Centered Design In Startups,
2026
Tongji University, People's Republic of China
Dilemmas Of Institutionalizing Human-Centered Design In Startups, Wenlin Zhang, Jin Ma
DRS Biennial Conference Series
While business and strategic design scholarship widely acknowledges the benefits of Human-Centered Design (HCD), limited research noted that implementing HCD may produce intricate challenges in real-world business contexts—especially in startups constrained by resource scarcity and limited time for trial and error. Drawing on institutional theory, we examine how HCD permeate into organizational culture, strategy making, and daily operations. Our case study develops a framework of “HCD Institutionalization Dilemma”. The framework encompasses four themes. First, overcommitment to HCD, where organizational members deeply adhere to HCD tenets. Second, operational predicament perception, where high investments fail to deliver tangible, actionable design outputs. Third, …
A Study On The Transfer Signage System In The Seoul Subway Network: Focusing On Persons With Reduced Mobility (Prm),
2026
Hongik University, Korea, Republic of (South Korea)
A Study On The Transfer Signage System In The Seoul Subway Network: Focusing On Persons With Reduced Mobility (Prm), Kyulim Kim, Injeong Kim, Yujin Bae, Younjoon Lee
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study addresses the inadequate wayfinding signage system in the Seoul subway, which causes significant delays for people with reduced mobility (PRM), particularly wheelchair users, during transfers. We examined the information structure and visual accessibility of transfer signage from the PRM perspective. Using a shadowing method, we observed the movement of 30 unfamiliar wheelchair users across 10 transfer stations. The evaluation focused on information continuity, visual accessibility, location identifiability, and information hierarchy. Results indicated frequent information gaps and unrecognised signage due to structural obstructions and visual clutter. Crucially, inconsistencies and confusion surrounding lift locations were repeatedly observed. Based on these …
Multispecies Convivial Learning: Art-Based Interventions At A Japanese Public Junior High School,
2026
Kyoto Institute of Technology
Multispecies Convivial Learning: Art-Based Interventions At A Japanese Public Junior High School, Sakura Kotokawa, Tomohide Mizuuchi
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study examined the conditions under which multispecies convivial learning (MCL) can be established within the institutional setting of a Japanese public junior high school, and the kinds of transformations it enables. Integrating Participatory Action Research (PAR) and co-design, interventions A–E were conducted over 2023–2024. Reflexive thematic analysis revealed four interlinked elements—(1) self-understanding and expression, (2) sociality, (3) agency, and (4) co-creation with other species—which collectively transformed the classroom into an “ecological dialogic space” where humans and other living beings learn together. The study contributes by conceptualising MCL—previously under-theorised in public education—as a practice of redesigning relationships, and by specifying …
Questioning One’S Body: Overtrusting In Body-Sensing Technology,
2026
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Questioning One’S Body: Overtrusting In Body-Sensing Technology, Piyakorn Koowattanataworn, Margo Lengua, Anders Sundnes Løvlie, Steve Benford
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Body sensors render human bodies as digital data, promising better self-knowledge. Yet, as people trust and learn to attune to these representations, system breakdowns expose tensions between embodied knowing and digital authority. Through Research through Design and Critical Design, this paper investigates how trust, control, and self-perception are negotiated in bodily interaction with data. Breathe Kritisk is a critical artefact that externalises breathing via an inflatable system linked to the user's solar plexus. Designed for estrangement, it resists attunement through a sensitive sensor and deceptive outputs — sometimes following the user’s breaths, other times acting on its own. We discuss …
Designing For The Working Body: Challenges In The Development Of Occupational Exoskeletons,
2026
Chair of Industrial Design Engineering | Dresden University of Technology
Designing For The Working Body: Challenges In The Development Of Occupational Exoskeletons, Emese Papp-Schmitt, Christian Wölfel, Torben Söker, Jens Krzywinski
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Exoskeletons exemplify intimate body-technology entanglements, where user experience is inherently corporeal. Despite their increasing presence in industrial and emerging consumer markets, current development methods often neglect the embodied dimensions of these devices. This paper explores what it means to design for the working body in the context of occupational exoskeletons. Drawing from our design practice and qualitative interviews in automotive and logistics, we identify tensions across three areas: (1) user and context research, inclusive and (2) body-sensitive development processes, and (3) the semiotics and social meaning of exoskeletons. We highlight challenges such as normalized risk and harm, limited attention to …
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 …
