Using Design Artefacts To Transform Doctor-Parent Communication In Neonatal Care,
2026
Lincoln Institute for Rural and Coastal Health, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom
Using Design Artefacts To Transform Doctor-Parent Communication In Neonatal Care, Peiqi Wang, Laura Ferrarello, Tongyan Han
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper presents a design intervention study, conducted at Peking University Third Hospital (PUTH), which developed artefacts to support doctor-parent communication during neonatal care. Through a series of design interventions, a set of design probes and toolkits were developed to understand the current doctor-parent communication context within local care settings, and to prompt incremental changes in these communication practices. Field observations and evaluation interviews, based on these artefacts, demonstrated that the artefacts helped to change patterns of communication from consultative mode information delivery to collaboration by partner mode. They also increased parents’ confidence in their ability to maintain the health …
Designations Drift: Exodesign And The Epiphylogenesis Of Practice,
2026
Australian National University, Australia
Designations Drift: Exodesign And The Epiphylogenesis Of Practice, Chris Sutevski
DRS Biennial Conference Series
As design becomes increasingly automated and abstracted, the act of designation, once tied to human intentionality, appears to be lifting away from the human. In the era of exocapitalism, defined by Poliks and Trillo as a system unbound from the human condition and driven by self-replicating logics of value extraction, design too is being reconfigured through machinic and algorithmic processes. This paper introduces the concept of exodesign to describe this shift: the deterritorialisation of design’s human-centred agency amidst the rise of software stacks, machine learning, and cybernetic optimisation systems. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s notions of epiphylogenesis and general organology, alongside …
Winds, Sand, Companions, Humans: Attuning Bodies For Post-Antropocentric Worlds,
2026
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Winds, Sand, Companions, Humans: Attuning Bodies For Post-Antropocentric Worlds, Eliana Sánchez-Aldana, Laura Novik, Pablo Hermansen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This Laboratorio de Futuros held in Mar del Plata (Argentina), brought together architecture and design professors and master’s students from Argentina, Chile, and Colombia to explore an Epimethean approach to design—acting after rather than ahead of action, embracing delay, reflection, and care. Rooted in voices and material practices from the Global South, participants engaged in embodied exercises fostering inter-learning through reciprocity and complementarity. We explored the territory holistically with our whole bodies, attuning to wind, sand, sea, and insects, and reframing design as the enactment of relational infrastructures through affective attunement and planetary excesses. Our bodies became sensors, registering the …
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, …
Reframing Citylabs: Worldbuilding As Situated Pedagogy For Public Design Learning,
2026
Koç University, KUAR Research Centre for Creative Industries
Reframing Citylabs: Worldbuilding As Situated Pedagogy For Public Design Learning, Asim Evren Yantac, Cathal Mulry, Denis Linehan
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Urban design education increasingly calls for methods that prepare designers to act within complex public systems. This paper reframes the Malmö CityLab, an experimental module within a master’s program on post-industrial cities, as a situated pedagogy for public design learning. Combining worldbuilding, design fiction, and persona storytelling, the CityLab enabled students and stakeholders to collectively speculate on Malmö’s futures across themes of regeneration, migration, and climate transition. Drawing on student artifacts and expert interviews, the study explores how speculative storytelling cultivates political sensitivity, collaborative reflexes, and systemic awareness, key capabilities for acting as public designers. Findings show that worldbuilding supports …
Design For Care-Full Inclusion: Foregrounding The Voices Of Vulnerable Communities Through Vignettes In Co-Design,
2026
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Design For Care-Full Inclusion: Foregrounding The Voices Of Vulnerable Communities Through Vignettes In Co-Design, Daniel Campos-Muñiz, Yiming Yao, Tse Pei Ng, Celeste Seah, Givson Ong, Janghee Cho, Jung-Joo Lee
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Foregrounding the voices of vulnerable communities in future-oriented co-design workshops is a growing concern in design. Yet, their participation in multi-stakeholder settings may be limited by factors such as power imbalances, cultural differences, low self-efficacy or limited availability. In this paper, we present a case where a care-oriented approach to vignette making and use was adopted to foreground the voices of migrant care workers (MCWs) in a multi-stakeholder co-design workshop. Through this approach, vignettes (1) fostered our critical reflection and affective understanding, (2) supported the articulation of MCWs’ lived experiences, and (3) provided a medium to highlight the interconnectedness and …
Proximity, Technology, And Care: Towards Longevity-Friendly Urban Ecosystems,
2026
Department of Humanities, IULM, Italy
Proximity, Technology, And Care: Towards Longevity-Friendly Urban Ecosystems, Carla Sedini, Carolina Nina Bonato
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Social relationships, extending beyond the familiar and domestic spheres, play a crucial role in sustaining the healthy ageing of cities’ inhabitants. The urban ecosystem can support social participation and interdependence among its inhabitants by combining the design of hard and soft infrastructures that shape social engagement and urban attractiveness. Within this framework, a new dimension of care is emerging, one that transcends traditional healthcare and institutionalised models. How can technologies help generate the cornerstones of caring, inclusive, long-life communities? By examining a series of international case studies on technology, proximity, care, and ageing, the paper aims to offer actionable design …
From Scientific Publication To Scientific Impact: Designing Research For Reach And Engagement,
2026
University of Twente, Netherlands
From Scientific Publication To Scientific Impact: Designing Research For Reach And Engagement, Elisabeth Breden, Eveline Van Zeeland, Jörg Henseler
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Digital media offer transformative possibilities for sharing and experiencing research. These new options call for design researchers and publishers to rethink traditional publishing norms. Yet, expanding access alone is insufficient; making academic knowledge meaningful to diverse audiences can drive real impact. How to engage audiences beyond academia to ensure a broader impact? This study applies the design tools framing and analogical modelling to shift the perspective on academic knowledge dissemination. This allows us to recognize scientific outputs as designed products that need to be brought to ‘the market’ with a clear path for reaching and engaging audiences. This study introduces …
Design With Empowerment: Developing A Framework And Toolkit For Chronic Disease Management,
2026
Design Lab, University of Sydney, Australia
Design With Empowerment: Developing A Framework And Toolkit For Chronic Disease Management, Renxuan Liu
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Empowerment in chronic disease management (CDM) is often treated as an outcome delivered to patients, leaving limited attention to how empowerment is negotiated in practice. This study develops the Needs-Means-Values design empowerment framework and demonstrates how it can be materially enacted through a co-design toolkit. Drawing on literature review, interview, policy and case data, the framework conceptualises empowerment as a situated and relational process shaped by how needs, resources and values are interpreted across different actors in CDM settings. The resulting toolkit consists of four modules that support stakeholders in articulating multiple enactments of needs, exploring resource configurations and generating …
A Gentlewoman’S Agreement: Designing Relational Frameworks For Phd Supervision,
2026
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, The
A Gentlewoman’S Agreement: Designing Relational Frameworks For Phd Supervision, Helen Milne, Kristina Andersen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper examines the PhD onboarding process as a site of co-creation and relational design between supervisor and student. Drawing on first-person experience, we present a series of collaboratively annotated and devised documents - The Table of Supervisory Style, Competency Profile Form, Competency Development Trajectory, A Gentlewoman’s Agreement, and Marching Orders - as performative artefacts that structure dialogue, reflection, and trust-building in supervision. These practices have emerged within an industrial design context at a university of technology, where institutional expectations intersect with creative and emergent modes of inquiry. We argue that onboarding can function as a design-led intervention: a process …
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 …
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, …
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 …
The Didactic Body: Interdisciplinary Design Pedagogy In 1970s Denmark,
2026
Royal Danish Academy, Denmark
The Didactic Body: Interdisciplinary Design Pedagogy In 1970s Denmark, Christine Bjerke
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper explores alternative pedagogical approaches that centred the relationship between the human body and design in 1970s Denmark. Initiated by lecturers at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – School of Architecture (today Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation), a series of interdisciplinary ergonomics seminars (1974–78) at Institute 3C2 brought together more than a hundred students and lecturers from architecture, design, dance, and the medical and social sciences. Through archival research and oral history, I analyse these overlooked teaching practices and situate them within broader societal changes. Informed by disability studies, I examine how the seminars negotiated …
Translating Industry: The Reception And Evolution Of Industrial Thought In Early Modern,
2026
Royal College of Art
Translating Industry: The Reception And Evolution Of Industrial Thought In Early Modern, Chaolu Wang, Ruping Cao
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This paper investigates how the concept of "industry" was received, interpreted, and localized in early modern China from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. Drawing on historical accounts from the Self-Strengthening Movement to the New Culture Movement, it reveals how industrial ideas, initially tied to military and technological modernization, gradually evolved into a broader discourse on national progress and social reform. The study argues that this intellectual translation of "industry" laid the groundwork for the emergence of modern Chinese design consciousness. By examining the intersections between industrial policy, low-level industrialization, and cultural transformation, the paper situates China's …
Exploring Design Thinking In Entrepreneurship Education: A Pre-Accelerator Programme For The Creative Industries,
2026
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Exploring Design Thinking In Entrepreneurship Education: A Pre-Accelerator Programme For The Creative Industries, Billy Franks, Melissa Terras, James Newbery, Susan Lechelt
DRS Biennial Conference Series
For many years, design thinking has been recognised as an important process in creating and commercialising new digital products and services. Increasingly, design researchers are attending to design thinking applied in real-world, interdisciplinary settings for entrepreneurial activity. In this paper, we surface and interpret examples of design thinking in the setup and delivery of a multi-cohort education programme connecting Edinburgh’s creative industries with local expertise in digital product innovation and entrepreneurship. Through a thematic analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with programme educators and participants, we explore the role of design thinking in bridging siloed industries and ecosystems. We interpret design …
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 …
