Tectonic Computation: Crafting Logic Through Material And Geometry,
2026
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Tectonic Computation: Crafting Logic Through Material And Geometry, Dimitris Papanikolaou
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper reframes computation as a design practice rather than a technological application. Through the construction of mechanical computing artifacts that harness environmental energy and material constraints, it demonstrates how designing can become a form of computational inquiry. The work positions architecture as a discipline capable of foundational contributions to computation by treating material, geometry, and energy as active agents of logic and memory. The study advances two main contributions: 1) It reconceptualizes computation as a physical and architectural phenomenon rather than a symbolic or digital one. 2) It demonstrates, through a pedagogical experiment, that computation can be enacted and …
Driving Public Service Innovation Through Internal Ecosystem Development: Reconfiguring The Internal Management And Service System Of Nanhai Bus Station,
2026
Beijing Jiaotong University
Driving Public Service Innovation Through Internal Ecosystem Development: Reconfiguring The Internal Management And Service System Of Nanhai Bus Station, Liwen Zhang, Yiqi Liu, Zheng Wang, Jingya Li, Yuexi Dong
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As public sectors worldwide increasingly adopt design-driven approaches to address complex public service and management challenges, existing research predominantly focuses on citizen-facing experiences while overlooking the critical importance of internal ecosystems as the core of service delivery. This paper examines the Nanhai Bus Station Design Consultation Project in China as a case study, exploring how systematic design interventions originating from within can drive holistic public service innovation through the internal ecosystem. The research conducted in-depth participatory action research through blended research, co-design, and stakeholder engagement methodologies. Addressing challenges such as fragmented internal workflows, ambiguous division of responsibilities, and outdated service …
Exploring Intentions And Use Scenarios Behind Geomatic Data Artefacts For Public Health Policies In Québec From A Co-Design Perspective,
2026
École de technologie supérieure, Canada
Exploring Intentions And Use Scenarios Behind Geomatic Data Artefacts For Public Health Policies In Québec From A Co-Design Perspective, Angélique Montuwy, Lorenz Herfurth
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores the production and intended use of publicly available Geomatic Data Artefacts (such as geo-repositories, maps, and dashboards) and their relevance in the context of public health policies. We are an interdisciplinary team of academics with backgrounds in geomatics and design who began discussing the role of accessing and visualizing geographic data to support participation in public healthcare policy. Specifically, this paper examines questions related to stakeholder involvement in the production and development of use scenarios for Geomatic Data Artefacts that inform public health policies. We reviewed existing artefacts, conducted a first round of conversations, and produced an …
Designing Digital Ghosts: Creative Access To Web Archives,
2026
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Designing Digital Ghosts: Creative Access To Web Archives, Dorsey Kaufmann, Andrea Kocsis
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents Digital Ghosts, a practice-based research project exploring how creative and tactile approaches to web archives can reimagine engagement with digital cultural heritage and GLAM collections. Using exploratory visualisation of metadata, the project transforms the digital into interactive multimedia installations. Operating within the “post-digital” condition of GLAM, the project investigates how design can mediate between the technical infrastructures of preservation, traditional archivist practice, and the experiential, interpretive needs of users. Rather than treating messy humanities data as a failure, the project frames absence and inconsistency as evidence of the web’s fluid temporality and of institutional decisions about what …
Reclaiming Embroidery: Uncovering The Potential Of Embodied Practice For Women’S Mental Well-Being,
2026
Tongji University, China, People's Republic of
Reclaiming Embroidery: Uncovering The Potential Of Embodied Practice For Women’S Mental Well-Being, Xinglin Sun, Caroline Claisse, Qi Wang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Women’s mental well-being is deeply intertwined with their bodily experiences across different life stages. While embroidery has long been associated with domestic femininity, little is known about how its embodied qualities can support women’s mental well-being. This paper presents a co-creation workshop titled Embodied Embroidery, followed by micro-phenomenological and semi-structured interviews. Eight female participants engaged with embroidery to reconnect with their bodies and translate embodied sensations into material expressions. The findings reveal how embodied making can nurture different dimensions of women’s mental well-being while opening up new design spaces for embroidery activities among women across diverse age groups and cultural …
Re-Voicing Identity: Care Ethics And The Politics Of Unsilencing After Total Laryngectomy,
2026
Virginia Tech, United States of America
Re-Voicing Identity: Care Ethics And The Politics Of Unsilencing After Total Laryngectomy, Gala Lucia Gonzalez Barrios
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Voice loss after total laryngectomy disrupts identity and quality of life yet current assistive technologies reproduce techno-ableist assumptions, prioritizing speech mimicry over identity restoration while systematic marginalization excludes laryngectomees from research and innovation. This paper presents a care-centred participatory design agenda bridging a propositional approach “Singing Without a Larynx”, a vowel-based vocal interface for singing, with cross-cultural photovoice research in the United States and Argentina. Grounded in care ethics, we operationalize attentiveness, responsibility, and relational accountability, positioning participants as co-designers whose embodied knowledge shapes technological imaginaries, and community challenges and assets. We propose: (1) a critical framework integrating care ethics, …
Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice,
2026
Interactive Technologies Institute, I.S.Técnico, Portugal
Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice, Marta Ferreira, Ana Henriques, Angelika Strohmayer, Valentina Nisi
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores how posthuman design researchers operationalise the values inherent to their research as an everyday practice of care, messiness, and partiality. Drawing on five in-depth interviews and employing diffractive analysis through posthuman and feminist care ethics lenses, the study highlights how practitioners enact plural, situated, and reflexive approaches to method. The findings distil theoretical commitments into actionable suggestions and everyday ethics, underscoring the significance of relational accountability in design research. Implications are discussed for legitimising care-centred methods, reframing design research, and supporting systemic change. In foregrounding posthuman approaches and ethics as ongoing attunement, this research offers practical strategies …
The Pen Or The Prompt: Investigating Novice Design Students' Use Of Sketching And Generative Ai For Initial Concept Visualisations,
2026
University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
The Pen Or The Prompt: Investigating Novice Design Students' Use Of Sketching And Generative Ai For Initial Concept Visualisations, Alexander “Freddie” Holliman, Rebecca Macfie, Kieran Gunn, Ross Brisco
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The pervasive use of AI in design continues to increase, affecting most, if not all, facets of design practice. This is reflected in the expectations and practices of design students, even at an early stage in their education. The integration of digital tools in sketching is nothing new, but the use of AI tools may see the outright replacement of this well-established skill. This study considers the experiences and perspectives of novice design students, examining their use of AI tools and whether GenAI could replace sketching for creating images of initial concepts, assessing both against the novice designers’ intentions using …
Design Philosophies,
2026
Edinburgh Napier University
Design Philosophies, Peter Buwert
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Responding to the DRS26 Design Philosophies Meta-Theme call to explore the past, present and possible futures of design’s theoretical articulations, this track presents six original contributions, diving unflinchingly into the realms of design philosophy to tackle questions of ontology, epistemology, cognition, ethics and aesthetics, each wrestling productively with timely and relevant topics which illustrate and bring to life the underlying philosophical ideas being presented for appraisal. Common themes emerging across all papers are the embrace of depth, complexity, uncertainty, fallibility and humility, critical respect for the past, earnest activity in the present, and hope for the future.
Plundergeist: Exploring Generative Ai Through Vibe Coding As Reflective Design Practice,
2026
The Open University, United Kingdom
Plundergeist: Exploring Generative Ai Through Vibe Coding As Reflective Design Practice, Christian Nold
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Generative AI (GenAI) has sparked intense media debate, yet design research has often echoed these narratives rather than examining how GenAI reshapes everyday design practices. This paper presents a year-long auto-ethnographic study involving 34 games and apps created through vibe coding, a GenAI-native approach that uses natural-language prompts to generate code. The study reveals distinct qualities that unsettle design processes: playful intervention, creative forgetting, spectral echoes, inventive excess, and fragile limits. Two key insights emerge: designing with GenAI requires deliberate engagement with cultural archetypes and treating AI as an unruly collaborator. Drawing on John Oswald’s 1985 concept of ‘plunderphonics’, the …
Making Futures With Textiles: Boundaries, Practice, Sustainability,
2026
Royal College of Art, United Kingdom
Making Futures With Textiles: Boundaries, Practice, Sustainability, Martin John Bonney
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores craft as a site of making and thinking, asking how practice-based ethnography can extend design theory amid ecological and social uncertainty. Drawing on apprenticeship-style fieldwork (2024-2025) with craft communities in London (UK) and Yogyakarta (Indonesia), the study engages practitioners working across textiles, silver, gold, stone, wax-resist batik, wool, and silk. While textiles provide a methodological thread, the research examines how diverse materials shape knowledge through constraints, resistances, and affordances. Grounded in design anthropology and practice-based interpretations of posthuman and new materialist thought, material agency is understood as the capacity of matter and process to influence decisions and …
Forking Futures: Fidelity And Resolution In Responsive Prototyping,
2026
University of Waikato, Aotearoa NZ;
University of Sydney, Australia
Forking Futures: Fidelity And Resolution In Responsive Prototyping, Ricardo Sosa, Clare Mary Cooper
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Prototyping offers ways to anticipate futures by supporting people to inhabit futures through hands-on experiences. Prototypes offer “invitations” to suspend disbelief and make believe. A canonical distinction is made between levels of fidelity in prototyping. Here, we critically re-examine “fidelity” by asking: How may fidelity inform prototyping practices and pedagogies? How may prototyping practices be more responsive, generative and ethical? How can fidelity in prototyping contribute to engagements with futures? Building on foundational ideas in prototyping and futuring, we put forward the FIRE (Fidelity/Resolution) map, a framework for distinguishing between fidelity and resolution and for navigating their spread and interplay …
Acknowledging The Blind Men And The Elephant In The Room,
2026
Independent Academic, India
Acknowledging The Blind Men And The Elephant In The Room, Arvind Lodaya
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Systemic design addresses complex, transdisciplinary challenges by integrating systems thinking and design methods. Yet, academic discourse remains limited to formal research and institutional methods, “invisibilizing” the rich, plural, and grounded practices of grassroots non-designer practitioners such as social workers, indigenous knowledge practitioners, and community facilitators. This paper challenges that narrow epistemology, and advocates restoring practice-centricity and incorporating plurality & pluriversality as essential ethical and political commitments to advancing the field. Mashing up the metaphors of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” and “The Elephant in the Room”, it highlights the need to proactively accommodate multiple perspectives for better reflexivity. The …
Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality In New York City,
2026
Independent Researcher
Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality In New York City, Yuchun Zhang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Hidden Constellations examines how queer sapphic spatiality in New York City is shaped through everyday negotiations rather than formal venues. While official data record only four lesbian bars, this paper argues that scarcity in data does not signify absence in lived experience. Drawing from qualitative interviews and participatory cognitive mapping, the study treats mapping as a queer design method that transforms memory, emotion, and silence into spatial knowledge. Informed by queer phenomenology, feminist and critical cartography, and data feminism, the research reframes mapping from representation to resonance. The paper shows how sapphic individuals tactically inhabit, sense, and remake urban space …
Reading Against The Grain: Ubuntu, Sankofa, And Rhythm As Pedagogical Infrastructures In First-Year Design Education,
2026
RMIT University, Australia
Reading Against The Grain: Ubuntu, Sankofa, And Rhythm As Pedagogical Infrastructures In First-Year Design Education, Yaw Ofosu-Asare
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) study examines how African philosophies can function as pedagogical infrastructures, not decorative add-ons, in first-year design education. Through a 12-week introductory studio with 25 students meeting twice weekly (2.5 hours per session), I embedded Ubuntu (relational being), Sankofa (retrieving wisdom from the past), and rhythm (cyclical temporality) into the course structure. Learning artefacts comprise studio materials, anonymised teaching feedback collected as part of routine class activities, and my own teaching observations reviewed thematically around space, time, and feedback relations. Observed teaching indicators suggested higher participation in critique (average peer comments per student rising …
Buying, Consuming And Discarding: Consumer Value And Furniture Lifetimes,
2026
Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom
Buying, Consuming And Discarding: Consumer Value And Furniture Lifetimes, Katryn Elizabeth Elizabeth Furmston
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The way consumers buy, care for, and discard their furniture reveals complex motivations that extend beyond cost and function. This paper examines the connection between consumer values, emotional attachment, and discard practices in determining the lifespan of furniture. Drawing on data from a mixed-methods approach that uses a survey, ethnographic observations, and object interviews, it analyses how consumers negotiate repair, justify replacement, and assign value to objects. It is argued that furniture consumption cannot be reduced to personal preference and market availability. Instead, it is influenced by cultural norms, consumer mobility, and access to durable goods. This paper proposes design …
Bodies In Play: Queering Ai, Sport, And Medicine Through Design,
2026
German International University Berlin, Germany
Bodies In Play: Queering Ai, Sport, And Medicine Through Design, Felix Kosok
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Queerness in design often operates from the margins, yet to remain transformative it must also confront the heteronormative hegemonies embedded in central societal infrastructures. This paper examines how queer design intervenes in the fields of artificial intelligence, sport, and healthcare, identifying three strategies through which design can challenge normative systems: disruption, subversion, and circumvention. Through a comparative analysis of three case studies – Christensen and Conradi’s AI/IA experiments with queer artificial intelligence, Gabriel Fontana’s sport design projects Multiform and Sidelined, and the queer-led digital health platform Every Health – the paper explores how design practices reconfigure infrastructures that regulate bodies, …
Función-Nepantla: The “Other” Functionality Inspired By Mexican Philosophy For Rethinking Industrial Design In Mexico,
2026
Pratt Institute, United States of America
Función-Nepantla: The “Other” Functionality Inspired By Mexican Philosophy For Rethinking Industrial Design In Mexico, José De La O
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design in Mexico, often disconnected from the local industry value chain, has long relied on arte popular as a self-referential cultural narrative to add value, establish identity, and find its “substance.” While this practice stems from a genuine search for rootedness and authenticity, it frequently leads to stagnation, raises concerns about cultural appropriation, neo-colonial dynamics between designers and craftspeople, neglect of functionality, and lack of innovation. This paper critiques this and proposes a framework for defining functionality, rooted in Mexican philosophy as an alternative value system. Drawing on thinkers such as Emilio Uranga and Grupo Hiperión’s work, it identifies parallels …
Empowerment For Aging Design: A Framework To Reframe The Design Of Solutions For Older Adults In The Global South,
2026
Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
Empowerment For Aging Design: A Framework To Reframe The Design Of Solutions For Older Adults In The Global South, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Mariana Ramírez
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design for older adults in Latin America remains strongly shaped by deficit-based and assistentialist assumptions that reduce aging to decline. Grounded in empowerment-oriented and resource-based design, this study explores how empowerment values can reframe the ideation of solutions for older people. Workshops conducted in five Colombian cities, supported by the Empowerment Nodes tool, enabled the identification of value expressions often overlooked in traditional design approaches. The findings culminated in the Empowerment Framework for Aging Design, a three-layered model composed of seven Silver Goals, fourteen Empowerment Values, and thirty-seven Enhancers, each paired with limiting counterparts that reveal how ageist paradigms subtly …
Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults,
2026
Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Tala Pedraza, Laura Sofía Riveros
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Café Séneca, the largest affinity chapter of the Uniandinos Alumni Association in Colombia, is dedicated to the wellbeing of older adults and led by retired members. Despite its popularity, the chapter lacked a strategic design structure, relying on inertia to shape its activities and limiting its ability to evolve sustainably. This paper presents a reflective case study of SenSilver, a situated participatory strategic design framework developed for organizations led by and for older adults. Combining business, positive, and empowerment-oriented design with biological, social, and psychological dimensions of aging, the framework was applied through a research-consultancy process with Café Séneca. The …
