Design For Wellbeing And Happiness,
2026
Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
Design For Wellbeing And Happiness, Leandro Miletto Tonetto, Siyuan Huang, Ann Petermans, Rebecca Cain, Tiiu Poldma, Anna Pohlmeyer
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This editorial presents the Design for Wellbeing and Happiness theme track at the DRS 2026 conference and reflects on how its contributions relate to the broader development of the field. Since DRS 2024, there has been a shift from establishing the relevance of design for wellbeing toward exploring how it can be put into practice across different contexts, populations, and scales. The papers included this year engage more deeply with wellbeing as what emerges through the interactions among environments, technologies, and the ensuing social relations. Grouped into three areas, namely designing environments, designing technologies and interventions, and rethinking wellbeing, the …
Central But Decentered: Repositioning The Practitioner In Design Research Involving Practice,
2026
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, School of Design, Hong Kong SAR China
Central But Decentered: Repositioning The Practitioner In Design Research Involving Practice, Luis Vega, Julia Valle-Noronha
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design research involving practice affords a unique mode of inquiry facilitated by acts of making, generative thinking, and iterative experimentation. The practitioner’s perspective is central because it foregrounds the significance of personal engagement with the research problem at hand. Current efforts in the field are nonetheless aiming to expand this inward-looking gaze by attending to the systemic and entangled dimensions of designing. With the increasing turn to relational, posthuman, and decolonial approaches towards that end, it becomes imperative to reconstrue what counts as ‘practice’ and reexamine whose perspectives are included in such a reconstrual. The present track brings together five …
Opening Up Design Impact Assessment: From Singular Metrics To Plural Understandings,
2026
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Opening Up Design Impact Assessment: From Singular Metrics To Plural Understandings, Cyril Tjahja, Barbara Predan, Joana Meroz, Petra Černe Oven, Harun Kaygan, Flavia Piancazzo, Ines Tolic, Annamari Vänskä
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The theme track Opening Up Design Impact Assessment: From Singular Metrics to Plural Understandings addresses the limitations of conventional approaches that rely on standardised and predominantly quantitative metrics. The ten contributions in this track therefore explore alternative ways of understanding design impact, considering it as a situated, relational, and interpretative phenomenon. Instead of proposing a single evaluative framework, the papers collectively demonstrate how impact emerges through diverse practices, contexts, and forms of knowledge. The track is organised into two complementary sessions: one that reconfigures structured approaches to assessment, and another that foregrounds lived experience and participatory processes. Together, they point …
Experience As Knowledge Contributions,
2026
OCAD University, Canada
Experience As Knowledge Contributions, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Camilla Groth, Spyros Bofylatos, Haian Xue
DRS Biennial Conference Series
“Experience” is at the forefront of the design and making process of artefacts in different ways. In this year’s conference session, we are interested in exploring all the various ways in which experience is informing design and craft practice and processes. Themes presented in the papers closely align with the call, and many refer to either the authors’ own experiences or those of participants or users in the research process for new designs. We could also detect three concurrent orientations and have consequently divided the presentations into these themes. The first orientation concerns sensory experiences and how they lead to …
More-Than-Human Design In The Real World: Resistance, Regeneration, And Radical Solidarity,
2026
University of Twente, The Netherlands
More-Than-Human Design In The Real World: Resistance, Regeneration, And Radical Solidarity, Cristina Zaga, Iohanna Nicenboim, Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Arne Berger, Claudia Garduño García, Laura Forlano
DRS Biennial Conference Series
In Capitalocene, humanity faces the intertwined crises of technological advancement and ecological collapse. These urgent challenges require us to question the power structures embedded in design, technology, and society. As a response, More-than-human design (MthD) recognizes the agency, sentience, and mutual influence of nonhuman species, materials, and environments, foregrounding principles of care, reciprocity, and collaborative co-shaping to foster multispecies cohabitation, ecological justice, and planetary well-being. Yet, it remains unclear how MthD can move beyond academia to influence policy, industry, and communities for ecological and social regeneration. Practicing MthD in the real world means proposing different ways of knowing and ways …
Restaging Doing And Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design,
2026
University of Southern Denmark
Restaging Doing And Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design, Tau Lenskjold, Li Jönsson, Alex Wilkie, Pablo Hermansen, Laura Forlano, Martín Tironi, Sissel Olander
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Guided by a deliberate undoing of design’s attachment to acceleration and forward progression, this theme track sets out to advance a practice of epistemic reuse, aiming to cultivate spaces for reflection, hesitation, and generative reuse. Returning and circling back to a previous proposition is not to be confused with trying to resurrect the past. Instead, it suggests the demand to insist on the value of remaining with unresolved tensions, feminist figurations and the complex entanglements of more-than-human worlds. The contributions to this track, in various ways, support the shift in attention from heroic innovation toward more careful, situated engagements by …
Design Philosophy: Amplifying The Unheard,
2026
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Design Philosophy: Amplifying The Unheard, Fernando Secomandi, Daniel Portugal, Virginia Tassinari, Philippe D'Anjou
DRS Biennial Conference Series
At a time of intersecting planetary, social, and epistemic crises, design philosophy must confront a central question: whose investigative ideas and knowledge count? This theme track, Amplifying the unheard, challenges the consolidation of design philosophy into predominantly North Atlantic and Anglophone frameworks. Rather than stabilising the field, it seeks to reconfigure it as a plural, contested, and situated space shaped by diverse cosmologies, practices, and epistemologies. The contributions gathered here move beyond inclusion toward transformation, foregrounding Indigenous, decolonial, posthuman, and practice-based approaches that reconfigure design’s conceptual and ethical conditions. Together, they demonstrate that amplifying unheard voices is not merely additive, …
The Transformative Nature Of Food – Adaptation, Connectivity And Identity,
2026
Cindrebay University
The Transformative Nature Of Food – Adaptation, Connectivity And Identity, Dolly Daou, Claudia De Souza Libanio, Juan Montalván Lume
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This theme track examines the transformative role of food migration in shaping cultural identity, ecological systems, and practices of belonging through a food design lens. Building on The Transformative Nature of Food: Adaptation, Connectivity and Identity (Daou & Sarantou, 2026), it conceptualises food as a dynamic, designed system that evolves across geographies through processes of adaptation, connectivity and identities. As food travels, it connects people to both their original homeland and to the existing and emerging cultural identities, to develop a sense of belonging to local ecosystems. Food migration reinforces cultural continuity, political and social cohesion and belonging while influencing …
Designing More-Than-Human Climate Futures: Affect, Aesthetics And Relational Practices,
2026
Design School, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, UK
Designing More-Than-Human Climate Futures: Affect, Aesthetics And Relational Practices, Rachel E. Clarke, Michelle Westerlaken, Sara Heitlinger, Anton Poikolainen Rosén, Jaz Hee-Jeong Choi
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This track brings together papers that explore more-than-human design practices that generate alternative, plural, situated, and relational approaches to climate futures through affect, aesthetics, and care. Framing climate crisis as a polycrisis of interconnected ecological, political, cultural, and epistemic conditions, the track foregrounds how designers are working across contradictory, incommensurable, and unevenly recognised and experienced impacts of climate change. The included papers examine how more-than-human design can attend to embodied, felt, and sensed worlds of multiple species and digital-material entities, infrastructures, and their environments. Across landscapes, waterscapes, governance, microbial growth, and multiple intelligences, the contributions reveal both the possibilities and …
Analysing Language Use In Designing: Practices And Performance,
2026
TU Delft, The Netherlands
Analysing Language Use In Designing: Practices And Performance, Senthil Chandrasegaran, Lisa Perez Elzey, (Eric) Heng Gu, Nathan Crilly, Terresa Hardaway, Vivek Rao, Peter Lloyd
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The role of language in designing is manifold, including but not limited to representing all aspects of design, enacting roles in design processes, and establishing shared meaning. With the advent of large language models (LLMs), the role of language has further expanded, affording new ways to perform and represent design. This theme track presents five papers that explore how designers use language and language models. We identify themes that cut across these papers to show how language can be used, constrained, adapted, and supplemented in different stages, processes, and domains of designing.
What Is Regenerative Design, Anyway? Foundations, Lexicons, And Interdisciplinary Intersections,
2026
Massey University
What Is Regenerative Design, Anyway? Foundations, Lexicons, And Interdisciplinary Intersections, Angela Kilford, Inge Panneels, Iohanna Nicenboim, Sonya Withers, Rob Phillips, Chris Speed
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This theme track seeks papers that establish foundational understanding of Regenerative Design as an emerging paradigm in design research and practice. Moving beyond sustainability approaches focused on harm reduction and consequences, regenerative design actively fosters ecological and cultural renewal through relational, more-than-human perspectives. Recent work across biodesign, materials research, and ecological design demonstrates growing interest in regenerative approaches, yet the field lacks conceptual coherence and metrics of success. Existing papers span diverse domains—living materials, Indigenous design methodologies, multispecies interaction design, and data practices that challenge extractive digital economies and ecological restoration—often using inconsistent terminology and theoretical frameworks. This fragmentation limits …
Innovating Scientific Publishing Of Design Research: Promoting Plurality And Equity,
2026
Politecnico di Milano
Innovating Scientific Publishing Of Design Research: Promoting Plurality And Equity, Eleonora Lupo, Lorela Mehmeti
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This track aims to investigate the epistemological and ethical framework of scientific publishing in design research, from a pluriversal perspective, that challenges dominant and Western models of knowledge production and dissemination. The track aims to approach some of the current tensions in the design publishing landscape as starting conditions for the discussion. We observe that technoscientific advancements (digital infrastructures, open access platforms, business models) are transforming academic publishing by enabling more transparent, collaborative and accessible models of dissemination. At the same time, the design research community continues to rely on traditional publishing models that are shaped by ethnocentric editorial norms …
Critical Reflections On Systemic Design Participation: Ethics, Care And Justice,
2026
Loughborough University, UK
Critical Reflections On Systemic Design Participation: Ethics, Care And Justice, Cecilia Landa-Avila, Josina Vink, Sine Celik, Simon Downs, Peter Jones
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This theme track examines how participation is conceived and practised within systemic design for complex challenges. Designing for interwoven systemic crises requires the participation of those who both affect and are affected by these systems. Participation is reframed here not as a discrete event, but as a dynamic, ongoing meta-process that reconfigures power relations and influences what is recognised as meaningful data. Synthesising fifteen papers across three sessions, this editorial explores the tensions between care, justice, and ethics, moving beyond performative co-creation toward sustained, power-sharing partnerships.
Temporalities Of More-Than-Human Design,
2026
The University of Edinburgh, UK
Temporalities Of More-Than-Human Design, Larissa Pschetz, Gizem Oktay, Valentina Nisi, Jiwei Zhou, Doris Kosminsky, Keili Koppel, Fiona Bell, Katharina Vones, Marta Ferreira
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This theme track builds on emerging research that foreground time as relational, situated, and plural, while examining how a shift towards more-than-human temporalities could reshape design practices, material engagements, and ethical responsibilities. The track proposes five areas of exploration: a) experimental representations of entangled temporalities; b) material transformations, geological formations, and temporal scales of planetary life; c) accounts on practices of noticing, attuning, and orchestrating more-than-human times; d) designerly ways of negotiating and coordinating rhythms; and e) etico-onto-epistemological reflections on time and design. The contributions engage these areas across contexts such as coastal ecologies, plant systems, and bio-based materials, framing …
Design And The Public Sector: Contemporary Methods And Practice,
2026
Georgetown University, United States
Design And The Public Sector: Contemporary Methods And Practice, Scott Schmidt, Sabine Junginger, Marzia Mortati, Federico Vaz
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The DRS2026 track titled “Design and the Public Sector: Contemporary Methods and Practices” examines the expanding relationship between design and the public sector, situating design as an active process in shaping public services, institutional change, and governance practices. Building on a trajectory established across DRS2022, DRS2024, and now DRS2026, this third Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group (PoGoSIG) hosted track reflects a shift from foundational and integrative concerns toward a more systems-based orientation. The following contributions are organised around four central themes: AI and New Technologies, Design and Infrastructure, Hope and Imagination, and Participation in Policymaking. Drawing on …
Design Research During And After Artificial Intelligence,
2026
School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Design Research During And After Artificial Intelligence, Matthew Lee-Smith, Jesse Josua Benjamin, Mafalda Gamboa, Stephan Wensveen
DRS Biennial Conference Series
The shift in design research caused by the escalation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking considerable space in the field. In a mixture of potential and undeniable risks, we looked for a blend of critique and practice, of analysis and foresight. In the set of papers to be published, we see a span of precisely that: reflexive re-orientations in the evaluation of what AI is doing to design, mirrored in current practices; and speculations on the after (en)during AI. In this editorial, we contextualize the research in the world it was produced in, exposing the during that unfolded hand-in-hand with …
Making Theory With Textiles: Theories Of Designing And Designing Theory,
2026
University of Southampton (Winchester School of Art), United Kingdom
Making Theory With Textiles: Theories Of Designing And Designing Theory, Elaine Igoe, Anne Louise Bang
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Textiles have long nurtured philosophical positions and metaphors, inquiries, as well as investigations of making and everyday life aesthetics and processes. Performing ontologically and epistemologically at different scales, textiles are often used as case studies in interdisciplinary research. This track presents a varied selection of papers that take textiles as starting points for critical and theoretical investigations of our world, our modes of production and conditions of living, as well as their intersections. These papers focus on the way that practice, perception, usability and critical inquiry are theorized through the lens of textiles, and the way that textiles inform and …
Play Design Materials: Entangled Matter And Making,
2026
Kolding School of Design. Denmark
Play Design Materials: Entangled Matter And Making, Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Mathias Poulsen, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Sofie Kinch, Hyunjae Daniel Shin, Ricardo Conçalves Dutra, Eun Sun Park, Louise Ravnløkke, Jennifer Ann Skriver
DRS Biennial Conference Series
To design for play is to engage with materials, whether physical, virtual, symbolic, or ephemeral. In design for play we don’t just select materials; we shape and are shaped by them. Yet within design research, we must explore how materials do play, not merely support it. This theme track invites contributions that consider materials not as passive tools, but as active collaborators in a relational field where matter, mood, meaning, affect, and politics entangle. We are interested in how materials act not only as substrates for play, but as collaborators, provocateurs, and agents in the making of play, relationships, and …
Designing Preventive Health Technologies And Practices,
2026
Universidade de Lisboa, ITI/LARSyS, Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal
Designing Preventive Health Technologies And Practices, Ayşe Özge Ağça, Teresa Almeida, Armağan Karahanoğlu, Anna Vallgårda
DRS Biennial Conference Series
This track explores how design influences preventive health technologies and practices, considering them as spaces for care, negotiation, and future planning. While preventive health is often examined through medical and technological lenses, design offers a unique perspective by focusing on lived experiences, care relationships, and the processes of making sense of things. In this editorial, we outline five contributions that investigate preventive health across diverse contexts, including behavior change, immersive care technologies, critical perspectives on healthcare systems, health communication, and bio-inspired design frameworks. These findings together show that designing for preventive health goes beyond just predicting or reducing future problems …
Counter Design: Changing Perspectives In Design Action,
2026
ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Counter Design: Changing Perspectives In Design Action, Yekta Bakırlıoğlu, Claudia Garduño García, Nicola Morelli
DRS Biennial Conference Series
Design continues to operate through assumptions inherited from its industrial and epistemic origins, yet the contributions gathered here unsettle those defaults and propose alternative orientations for practice. They examine how design problems are framed, how publics are organised, and how designers themselves are produced under specific historical and political conditions. Spanning urban governance, feminist methodologies, grassroots archival infrastructures, digital representation, relational approaches to AI, and critiques of universalised design expertise, the papers illuminate how counter-practices cultivate alternative publics and expand the epistemic boundaries of design. Counter Design appears not as a unified method or approach but as a constellation of …
