Figurations As A Situated Counter-Device For Participatory Design: Exploring Time And Presence In Design Practice.,
2026
Independent researcher
Figurations As A Situated Counter-Device For Participatory Design: Exploring Time And Presence In Design Practice., Diana Maria Mahecha, Juan Alfonso De La Rosa, Juan Pablo Velasquez
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This article explores the notion of figurations as a theoretical and methodological concept to address tensions between time, presence, and practice in participatory design processes. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s and Rosi Braidotti’s work, we argue that figurations invite more situated practices that acknowledge the relational and material realities emerging in Global South contexts. Methodologically, the paper offers a situated ethnographic reading of participatory workshops conducted in Colombia, tracing the patterns and affections that shape collective action. We propose figurations as embodied, affective, and speculative counter-devices that foster political imagination and community agency in processes of social transformation. The paper contributes …
Grounding The Interspecies Playground: A More-Than-Human Framework For The Goccia Project,
2026
Department of Design - Politecnico di Milano
Grounding The Interspecies Playground: A More-Than-Human Framework For The Goccia Project, Francesco Vergani, Davide Fassi
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper describes and presents a workshop conducted with partners of a European research project that reinterprets a former industrial site – now a small urban forest – as an Interspecies Playground, a living lab of multispecies coexistence. Through systemic design, more-than-human perspectives, and transdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, experts, designers, the municipality, and local communities, the project introduces a theoretical framework of relational ecology that seeks to challenge anthropocentric urban models and promote a new conception of green urban areas. By showing the project framework – articulated along the three interconnected layers of agents, phenomena, and contexts – and the …
Historical Materials As Materials For Design,
2026
The University of Queensland, Australia
Historical Materials As Materials For Design, India Anderson, Skye Doherty, Ben Matthews
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Historical materials can support generative design work, however a tendency to focus on new and emerging technologies as design material mean the creative qualities of the past are underappreciated. This paper presents findings from four workshops that explore material and immaterial forms of history to better understand how the past might serve as material for design. Our findings illustrate how different material forms afford or limit relational connections to the present design context; that design references can hinder transformational experiences in practice; and how archival gaps and personal memory can also serve as design material. Our analysis underscores the need …
Sounding Territories: Dis/Identificatory Codings As Relational Worlding,
2026
Delft University of Technology
Sounding Territories: Dis/Identificatory Codings As Relational Worlding, Grace Turtle, Błażej Kotowski, Elisa Giaccardi, Roy Bendor
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents Sounding Territories, a sonic performance developed with Fundación Organizmo (Colombia) that explores dis/identificatory codings as a tactic for resisting and subverting algorithmic capture. Building on queer and more-than-human perspectives, the project reorients computational logics from stable classification toward relational and generative forms of identification. Through deep listening, embodied performance, and model training, datasets were composed as relational constellations: entanglements of sounds and situations (e.g., fire–conversation–bird–wind) that enact the liveliness of data beyond representational frames. Rather than seeking legibility within existing taxonomies, dis/identification becomes a methodological reorientation–a performance of politics–that disturbs predictive logics and embraces illegibility as generative …
The Atmospheric Jukebox - A Sonic Boundary Object For Multi-Sensory Exhibition Design,
2026
Kolding School of Design, Sonic College - UC SOUTH DENMARK
The Atmospheric Jukebox - A Sonic Boundary Object For Multi-Sensory Exhibition Design, Jonas Rasmussen Kirkegaard
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Museums increasingly aim to create multisensory, immersive experiences, yet exhibition design still tends to privilege visual-first ideation and communication, risking outcomes that are photogenic rather than atmospherically coherent for visitors. This paper introduces the Atmosphere Jukebox, an interactive soundscape playback device that enables heterogeneous teams of curators, designers, architects, historians, and educators, to listen to, discuss, and negotiate sonic atmospheres in the design process. In doing so, it supports multimodal attention and a shared imagination of the affective affordances that unfold across the visitor journey. The Atmosphere Jukebox is therefore proposed as a boundary object for atmospheric staging. The contribution …
Learning Through Relationality: A Curated Conversation Between Popular Education And Design Pedagogy,
2026
Strate School of Design, France
Learning Through Relationality: A Curated Conversation Between Popular Education And Design Pedagogy, Estelle Berger, Françoise Blanchard, François Chabré, Tom Hébrard, Emna Kamoun
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between a French design school and a food-producing farm engaged in peasant struggles, conceived as a “rural third place”. Each year, design students immerse themselves on-site, testing their knowledge through collective experimentation. Our heterogeneous pedagogical team—composed of design professors, the farming couple, and a collaborating designer—is in a continuous learning position, exchanging perspectives on education. Because relationality is central to this experience, and to equiponderate all voices, we decided this paper should take the form of a curated conversation. We explore the intersections and tensions between popular education practiced on the farm …
Body Class, The Grand Museum And The Queer Archive,
2026
Royal College of Art
Body Class, The Grand Museum And The Queer Archive, Tadeas Riha
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Tělák, a Czech slang term for physical education (PE) that also echoes tělo - body, is a theatrical exhibition, developed by an interdisciplinary team of educators, activists, architects, and theatre professionals, introducing expressions of gender as a spectrum for teenage audiences. The exhibition unfolds across two layers. The first is a scenography evoking the familiar spaces of PE; corridors, changing rooms, bathrooms, gyms, reassembled within the museum’s own charged normative setting. The second is an archive of personal stories: fragments of experience retold by actors in sound, and others inscribed in situ by a local artist. This practice-based paper traces …
Co-Designing Co-Design Workshops With Adhd Adults,
2026
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
Co-Designing Co-Design Workshops With Adhd Adults, Patrick Brundell, Emily Thorn, Teresa Castle-Green, Paul Tennent, Juan Martinez Avila, Sachiyo Ito-Jaeger
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The increased recognition that minoritised people should play a more significant role in the research and design of technologies aimed at them is welcomed. Though Interaction design research has begun to address the needs of neurodivergent people, the epistemic framing of the research aims, and practical co-construction of technologies are still infrequently from a lived-experience perspective. This work sought to address some of these concerns through a series of interaction co-design workshops with ADHD adults framed as technological design for wellbeing. This paper reflects on our adaptive use of Soma and Co-design workshop methodologies to account for and speak to …
Keeping It Real With Responsible Futuring: Reflecting On The Epistemic And Political Ambition Of A Transdisciplinary Approach For Societal Transitions,
2026
University of Twente, Netherlands, The
Keeping It Real With Responsible Futuring: Reflecting On The Epistemic And Political Ambition Of A Transdisciplinary Approach For Societal Transitions, Cristina Zaga, Julieta Matos Castaño, Mascha Van Der Voort
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Amidst the upheaval of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the threat of the Sixth Extinction, designers focus on approaches that help communities connect and imagine alternative, desirable futures. Transdisciplinary approaches promise more sustainable and just transitions by valuing and integrating diverse forms of knowledge to co-shape more equitable design interventions. However, these ambitions often fall short. Transdisciplinary practices may be reduced to justice-washing or corporate co-optation, frequently failing to achieve epistemic and social justice. This paper introduces Responsible Futuring, a transdisciplinary design-led approach that enables communities to actively shape their future trajectories, embracing collaboration and diverse perspectives as catalysts for …
Caring For Memory: A Neuroscientific Framework For Commemorative Exhibition Design,
2026
Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy
Caring For Memory: A Neuroscientific Framework For Commemorative Exhibition Design, Caterina Vettraino
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Contemporary memorial exhibitions presume emotional intensity produces durable memory, employing affective saturation strategies that neuroscientific research reveals as counterproductive. Emotional arousal consolidates central affective impressions whilst compromising contextual understanding: visitors retain visceral sensations but lose historical processes. This paper develops a theoretical framework integrating Assmann's cultural memory theory, neuroscience of memory consolidation, and care ethics to inform commemorative exhibition design. A four-modality taxonomy, individual, collective, spatial, and sensory, translates psychological memory categories into operationally distinct design approaches. Digital mediation constitutes a transversal narrative apparatus serving memory transmission across all four modalities, functioning as infrastructural support. Design parameters specify spatial configurations, …
Co-Speculating Future Design Research Opportunities In Community Sharing With Local Sharing Communities,
2026
Univerisity of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Co-Speculating Future Design Research Opportunities In Community Sharing With Local Sharing Communities, Haili Wu, Bettina Nissen, Susan Lechelt
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Sharing communities challenge traditional models of ownership by allowing their members to temporarily access resources such as DIY tools, workshop spaces, and musical instruments. Although designers and design researchers have previously involved sharing communities in design, there are additional opportunities to engage sharing communities in speculating about their possible futures. This study invited 13 participants from various local sharing communities in Scotland to collaboratively speculate on how developments in technology, infrastructure, the economy, politics, and social and cultural aspects might influence their community sharing practices in the long term. By examining their future scenarios, we gain insight into the possible …
Appropriating Edinburgh’S Dead: Exploring The Potential Of Edinburgh’S Historic Burial Grounds As Sites For Designerly Conversations About Grief And Loss,
2026
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Appropriating Edinburgh’S Dead: Exploring The Potential Of Edinburgh’S Historic Burial Grounds As Sites For Designerly Conversations About Grief And Loss, Richard Thompson, Diane Willis, Kirstie Jamieson
DRS Biennial Conference Series
There are five unique historic burial grounds within the proximity of Edinburgh’s city centre. Cross-sector consultations with police, heritage and council officials decry the decline of these spaces. Each is at risk; erosion, limited resources, and perceived anti-social behaviour obscure their value as social spaces apt to explore, share and process grief. The potential of these historic sites has been limited to imagining convivial and heritage-aligned uses of graveyards. This case study explores their potential as unique spaces to publicly discuss bereavement, mortality and grief through design workshops. It argues that designing provides an appropriate process to scaffold these conversations …
From Waste To Opportunity, Upcycling Innovation In The South African Context: The Case Of Clothes To Good,
2026
Glasgow Caledonian University, United Kingdom
From Waste To Opportunity, Upcycling Innovation In The South African Context: The Case Of Clothes To Good, Jennifer Murray, Lindsey Carey, Desiree Smal, Adelaide Sheik
DRS Biennial Conference Series
South Africa is a country which is facing significant textile waste problem. High volumes of second-hand products are entering the marketplace and represent an opportunity to SMEs and micro-businesses. Clothes to Good (CTG), a South African charitable organisation, are working to offset this challenge by creating upcycling programmes which repurpose these products through micro-business models designed to empower mothers of neurodivergent children. Neurodiversity is rising in South Africa and sensory stimuli products are an opportunity to repurpose second-hand clothing to products to support these consumers. This research represents the pilot study of a larger project investigating micro-business programmes creating weighted …
Situated Knowledge In Rural Craft Practices: A Context-Sensitive Approach To Craft–Design Collaboration In Fife, Scotland,
2026
The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Situated Knowledge In Rural Craft Practices: A Context-Sensitive Approach To Craft–Design Collaboration In Fife, Scotland, Peining Sheng, Ayaan Ahmed
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores how craft, as an unselfconscious design practice and embodied knowledge, contributes to situated design research, based on an ethnographic field study in Fife, Scotland, and a co-creation workshop in Edinburgh. The study points out that existing studies and practices promoting craft–design collaboration tend to focus on urban contexts and designer-led methods, often resulting in a lack of context-sensitive consideration and the presence of imbalanced relationships. Thus, this study underscores that understanding the local knowledge of rural-based craft practitioners and the distinct attributes of rural settings can respond to the challenges of rural craft practices and the barriers …
Design, Territory And Gastronomy: Relational Practices In Local Transformation Processes,
2026
Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil
Design, Territory And Gastronomy: Relational Practices In Local Transformation Processes, Dafne Rivadeneira Griner, Laura De Souza Cota Carvalho Silva Pinto, Marcelo Silva Pinto
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Relational design practices, grounded in the collaboration among local producers, public institutions, and designers, have strengthened cultural identity and promoted new forms of economy based on values of sustainability and belonging. This article presents the development of a gastronomic festival as a living laboratory of transformation, carried out in the municipality of São Gonçalo do Rio Abaixo, Brazil, by the Design, Territory, and Gastronomy extension project of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). Based on the theories of relational design and design for transitions, the study highlights how design mediates local tensions, overcomes institutional challenges, and helps the reconstruction …
From Discontent To Touchpoints: Analysing Art Festival Experience Design Through Participants’ Critical Feedback On Social Media,
2026
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
From Discontent To Touchpoints: Analysing Art Festival Experience Design Through Participants’ Critical Feedback On Social Media, Wanchun Ye, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Yijia Jiang, Izzy Yi Jian
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This study examines critical feedback shared by arts festival participants on social media. These posts, as a unique form of reflective user experience data, can spark dialogue and spread widely, helping to identify potential needs and key service touchpoints in the design of cultural and creative activities. Using purposive sampling, 104 relevant posts were collected and analysed thematically based on Buchanan’s four orders of design as a framework. The findings indicate that participant discontent stems from overlapping conflicts across different design orders, characterised by a lack of authenticity, value conflicts, and service limitations. Furthermore, the study emphasises the pivotal mediating …
Careful Configurations: An Exploration Of Smart Technologies In More-Than-Human Innovation,
2026
New Design University, Austria;
Loughborough University London, United Kingdom
Careful Configurations: An Exploration Of Smart Technologies In More-Than-Human Innovation, Ruth Neubauer, Verena Fuchsberger
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Smart technologies promise efficiency and sustainability, yet their intelligence remains narrow – confined to optimising isolated human needs rather than nurturing the wider ecologies in which lives unfold. This paper explores how design may shift from smart technologies to more careful configurations: systems that participate in human–material–environmental relations rather than merely processing data. Drawing on Barad’s framework of intra-action, we reimagine technological innovation as distributed and relational. Through a series of eco-social prototypes – from modular heating and communal hydration to wooden fridges and moss bathrooms – the paper demonstrates how care, reciprocity and participation may re-enter the logic of …
Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions,
2026
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile;
Fab City Foundation;
Tongji University
Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions, Tomas Vivanco, Tomas Diez
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This article explores mapping as an experimental design practice that emerges from the intersection of ecosystems, technologies, and communities. Grounded in the Powers of Ten model and the Fab City Full Stack framework, our approach combines multi-scale observation- ranging from local infrastructures to bioregional systems- to capture ecological, material, and social data that reveal the interdependencies shaping territories. The work focuses on detecting weak signals of hyperlocal phenomena, often overlooked shifts in ecological or social systems, that can guide an iterative prototyping process. In this way, mapping becomes a generative act, tracing connections between citizens' behaviors, environmental conditions, and material …
Research On Integrated Immersive Interaction Design For Revolutionary History Museums: A Case Study Of The Hongyan Revolutionary Memorial Museum,
2026
Chongqing University, China, People's Republic of
Research On Integrated Immersive Interaction Design For Revolutionary History Museums: A Case Study Of The Hongyan Revolutionary Memorial Museum, Peng Lou, Yilin Wang, Xinyue Ru, Zhengyan Fan
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As digital interactive technologies evolve, visitors have higher expectations for narrative experiences in revolutionary history museums. This study uses the three stages of flow theory—conditions, experience, and effects—as a starting point, integrating user experience design with narrative communication theory. A mixed research approach is employed to explore how digital interaction design can trigger user flow states and enhance immersion. By transforming passive observation into actively engaging flow experiences, we focus on three dimensions: the operability of hardware interaction, the guidance of software interfaces, and the immersion of content narratives. An integrated immersive interaction design model, termed “Three-Dimensional - Four-Stage,” is …
Designing Inclusive Virtual Reality Experiences For Older Adults: Enhancing Digital Engagement And Challenging Digital Ageism,
2026
University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Designing Inclusive Virtual Reality Experiences For Older Adults: Enhancing Digital Engagement And Challenging Digital Ageism, Lian Pan, Xiao Wei, Yuanyuan Yin
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As global population ageing accelerates, virtual reality (VR) offers new opportunities to enhance older adults’ wellbeing, cultural participation, and social connection. Existing VR research concerning older adults has predominantly concentrated on medical or clinical applications. In contrast, this study investigates the potential affordances of VR for this population within cultural and entertainment domains. Through Participatory Design workshops with ten adults aged 60+ in UK, this study explores older adults’ user experience with VR and proposes recommendations for age-inclusive VR design. Results show that complex multi-step operations, dual-hand coordination, and complex menu structures create high cognitive load and reduce user confidence. …
