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Exploring Design Thinking In Entrepreneurship Education: A Pre-Accelerator Programme For The Creative Industries, Billy Franks, Melissa Terras, James Newbery, Susan Lechelt Jun 2026

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 …

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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 Jun 2026

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 …

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Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice, Marta Ferreira, Ana Henriques, Angelika Strohmayer, Valentina Nisi Jun 2026

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 …

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Learnings From Peruvian Gastronomy For The Transculturalization Of Design Practices, Laura Salcedo Miranda, Juan Montalván Lume Jun 2026

Learnings From Peruvian Gastronomy For The Transculturalization Of Design Practices, Laura Salcedo Miranda, Juan Montalván Lume

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In recent decades, Peruvian gastronomy has experienced a higher exposure and production of culinary creations manifesting practices of transcultural mixture entangling diverse cultural influences. Nevertheless, there still remains a need for studies that discuss such cultural amalgamations, which could also inform strategies for transculturalization in other culturally sensitive practices like design. This paper analyses multiple variations of well-known Peruvian dishes to understand the historical and contemporary processes of cultural mixture that have fostered the current landscape. For this, a conceptual framework that draws from Latin American Transcultural Design Studies and Gastronomic Theory is proposed to enable transdisciplinary learnings entangling both …

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Toward A Culturally Situated Perspective: Rethinking The Role Of Ai In Intangible Cultural Heritage Pattern Creation, Xiaojing Yuan, Xiang Yuan, Sanyi Wang, Hao Li, Mengzhi He, Duoduo Zhang, Nick Bryan-Kinns Jun 2026

Toward A Culturally Situated Perspective: Rethinking The Role Of Ai In Intangible Cultural Heritage Pattern Creation, Xiaojing Yuan, Xiang Yuan, Sanyi Wang, Hao Li, Mengzhi He, Duoduo Zhang, Nick Bryan-Kinns

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Research on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in cultural design has primarily focused on generative control and creative efficiency, often overlooking the misalignment between AI task definition and cultural creation. This study explores how GenAI can be culturally adapted within traditional pattern-making practices. Using an ethnographically informed generative probe, field experiments were conducted in the Huayao cross-stitch community, which practices a form of Chinese intangible cultural heritage. The findings reveal how cultural practitioners negotiate creative logic and cultural judgment when collaborating with AI, identifying four key orientations: liveliness, locality, creation-in-progress, and community creativity. Building on these insights, the paper redefines AI’s …

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Bodystorming Through Disruption: Ai-Assisted Design Improvisation Pedagogy, Jiawei Li, Jiayue Wang, Lin Zhu, Jiaxuan Xu, Changran Zhao, Zhiyong Fu Jun 2026

Bodystorming Through Disruption: Ai-Assisted Design Improvisation Pedagogy, Jiawei Li, Jiayue Wang, Lin Zhu, Jiaxuan Xu, Changran Zhao, Zhiyong Fu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study presents an AI-assisted Design Improvisation Pedagogy integrating artificial intelligence with bodystorming in space design education. Built on a three-dimensional framework—Embodiment, Enactment, and Improvisation—an AI system was developed using Coze to generate emergent scenarios and guide improvisational performance. Validated over three semesters with 16 undergraduate students tackling extreme environment challenges, the system employed Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to deliver context-rich, adaptive prompts. Results showed strong correlation between AI support and enhanced improvisational creativity (r = 0.48), especially in spontaneous adaptability. Students often underrated their own performances, with significant gaps in Improvisation (p < 0.01). Material types influenced outcomes, with sound-based tasks producing the largest evaluation discrepancies. Findings highlight AI’s evolving role from tool to creative collaborator, offering a novel pedagogical model that merges embodied cognition, reflective practice, and AI to foster design thinking under constraints.

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The In-Situ Ai Pattern Merchant: A Speculative Intervention In Huayao Embroidery Futures, Hao Li, Duoduo Zhang, Siqi Chen, Nick Bryan-Kinns Jun 2026

The In-Situ Ai Pattern Merchant: A Speculative Intervention In Huayao Embroidery Futures, Hao Li, Duoduo Zhang, Siqi Chen, Nick Bryan-Kinns

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Research on AI and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) often reflects a static, object-centered perspective. This paper instead explores how generative AI can be embedded in the living practices of ICH. Through a speculative intervention in a Huayao embroidery community in Hunan, China, we reframe AI not as a tool for content generation, but as a social mediator within local craft networks. By performing as an “AI Cross-stitch Pattern Merchant” during the local festival, the study reveals how AI’s creative empowerment of young women sparked intergenerational tensions around legitimacy, labor, and authority. While youth embraced GenAI for playful self-expression, elder embroiderers …

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Making Worlds Thinkable: Design As Diffractive Sensemaking., Joan Vellvé Rafecas Jun 2026

Making Worlds Thinkable: Design As Diffractive Sensemaking., Joan Vellvé Rafecas

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Across contemporary design practice, an attitude has been consolidating design as diffractive sensemaking. It is not method- or outcome-oriented, nor even necessarily a discipline, but a habit of attention in which fragments, measures and memories, timings and routines, infrastructures and more-than-human traces are placed so they read through one another to develop conscious, situated practices. Often grounded in research practice, these approaches lead to diverse outcomes. In all of them, an ecosophic orientation keeps environmental, social and mental ecologies mutually in play without collapsing them into a single index or metric. In such practices, care appears as activism: framing, positioning, …

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Time Travelers: Bridging Generations In Boston’S Seaport, Robiya Sahibnazarova, Annika Kim Jun 2026

Time Travelers: Bridging Generations In Boston’S Seaport, Robiya Sahibnazarova, Annika Kim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This qualitative study examines social isolation among Boston's elders aged 65 and older. We explored ways to employ service design and interactive encounters to connect different generations around history. Our focus was on Boston’s Seaport—a district shaped by redevelopment and technology. This study involved four interviews with museum professionals, elders, and locals to understand how memories influence community connections. The Time Travelers app features an Interactive Memory Map of stories along with guided walks and collaborative memory threads that encourage intergenerational exchange. Complementing the app, a Seaport boardwalk installation features televisions from different decades displaying memories from each era. Visitors …

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Affective Epistemologies: Textile Teaching At University Of Chile, 1930-2000, Camila Vicencio-Pérez, Magdalena Cattan-Lavin Jun 2026

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 …

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Information Hierarchies For Better Health Communication: Mapping Expert-User Differences For Drug Instruction Design, Hengyi Shi, Hao Wang, Zhilong Luan, Chunxi Huang Jun 2026

Information Hierarchies For Better Health Communication: Mapping Expert-User Differences For Drug Instruction Design, Hengyi Shi, Hao Wang, Zhilong Luan, Chunxi Huang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designing drug instructions that communicate effectively to both experts and lay users requires understanding of their different information needs. This study examines how healthcare professionals and the public differ in their priorities and cognitive focus when interpreting drug instructions, offering design guidance for future instructions and labeling system. Using a two-stage approach, we conducted a survey of 111 professionals and 123 public participants to assess their perceived importance of 22 information items, followed by focus groups exploring perceptual and structural expectations. Professionals prioritized procedural accuracy and detailed guidance, while public users emphasized clarity and safety. Despite these differences, both groups …

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The Invisible Playground For Taboos: A Framework For Recognising And Designing For Inner Play To Engage With Death And Anticipatory Grief, Manuela Melo, Sofie Kinch, Andrew Tibbles, Allan Køster Jun 2026

The Invisible Playground For Taboos: A Framework For Recognising And Designing For Inner Play To Engage With Death And Anticipatory Grief, Manuela Melo, Sofie Kinch, Andrew Tibbles, Allan Køster

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Death and Anticipatory Grief remain culturally taboo, limiting opportunities for open dialogue and emotional preparedness. This paper explores how design can facilitate such conversations through play. Inner Play is a form of imaginative and introspective play that aids engagement with taboos in an empathic way, but lacks ways to understand and evaluate how to design for it. Employing a Research-through-Design approach, the papers presents a speculative design project that mediates communication between the bereaved and the deceased with a game kit resulting in a shared grief artefact. Ten participants in five workshops engaged in an iterative prototyping process, which resulted …

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Democratizing The Newsroom: A Participatory Design Approach To Empower Citizen-Participatory Journalism And Civic Knowledge, Sangyun Lee, Kyungho Lee Jun 2026

Democratizing The Newsroom: A Participatory Design Approach To Empower Citizen-Participatory Journalism And Civic Knowledge, Sangyun Lee, Kyungho Lee

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Local news sustains democratic life by connecting citizens to community issues and fostering public deliberation. Yet the global phenomenon of Local News Desertification—the decline of trustworthy local media—has weakened civic discourse, civic knowledge, and collective belonging in local areas. Citizen-participatory journalism enables citizens to report and interpret local issues; however, conventional newsroom hierarchies and insufficient support for community participants without formal journalistic training hinder its democratic potential. This study frames that tension as a Participatory Design (PD) problem concerning power and imbalanced agency in sociotechnical news systems. Through a PD process, the study develops a citizen–AI participatory journalism model that …

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Linking An Attention-Based View Of The Firm And Critical Design In Strategizing: Attention To Harmful Consequences, Tarja Pääkkönen, Satu Miettinen Jun 2026

Linking An Attention-Based View Of The Firm And Critical Design In Strategizing: Attention To Harmful Consequences, Tarja Pääkkönen, Satu Miettinen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article discusses an attention-based view of the firm ABV in the context of situated organisational decision making and strategising at the intersection of design and management. To encourage the articulation of contradictions among professionals in strategy making, a speculative approach is proposed with alternative games. An open conversation on the assumptions guiding attention in strategising may benefit from diverse design approaches that create attentional engagement to improve neglected user situations. Harmful consequences among (senior) users of modern technologies are used as examples.

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Reconfiguring Care: Envision Postpartum Support For Women In Southern China Through The Lens Of Home-Based Iot, Wentao Deng, Yunfei Chen, Yingying Luo, Ying Hu, Yiwen Wang Jun 2026

Reconfiguring Care: Envision Postpartum Support For Women In Southern China Through The Lens Of Home-Based Iot, Wentao Deng, Yunfei Chen, Yingying Luo, Ying Hu, Yiwen Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores design opportunities to support postpartum mothers during “zuòyuèzi,” a culturally significant confinement practice in southern China, through the lens of home-based Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Grounded in feminist ethics of care, the research employs a three-phase methodology combining digital ethnography, co-design workshops, and thematic analysis. Participants from multigenerational households shared experiences and envisioned the roles of IoT systems to facilitate postpartum transitions. Findings reveal that users expect technologies to function as empathetic intermediaries that foster emotional well-being, facilitate caregiving management and negotiate relationships. Distinct patterns emerged across care distribution, interpersonal communication, and interaction, underscoring the cultural …

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Queer/Cuir Methodological Approaches In Activist Design And Art Research In Contemporary Brazil., Guilherme Altmayer Jun 2026

Queer/Cuir Methodological Approaches In Activist Design And Art Research In Contemporary Brazil., Guilherme Altmayer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article explores the methodological approaches developed within the Tropicuir research project, an investigation of activist queer art and design practices in Brazil, started in the 2010s. Through a combination of activist research, sentimental cartography, and collaborative curatorial practice, the study examines how aesthetic-political actions function as strategies of micropolitical resistance, collective memory, and worldmaking. Drawing from fieldwork in exhibitions curation, archival practices, art auctions and activist networks, the research articulates a methodological framework that blurs the boundaries between design and art, embracing embodied, affective, and relational modes of inquiry. By engaging concepts such as anthropophagy, micropolitics, and localized knowledge, …

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Reflective Sociomaterialist Learning For Design For Sustainability (Dfs) In The Global South: Evaluations Of Students’ Product Service System (Pss) Design Projects At A Thai Design School, Hyunwook Hwangbo Jun 2026

Reflective Sociomaterialist Learning For Design For Sustainability (Dfs) In The Global South: Evaluations Of Students’ Product Service System (Pss) Design Projects At A Thai Design School, Hyunwook Hwangbo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how teaching service design through Product-Service System projects can encourage reflective sociomaterialist learning for Design for Sustainability in the Global South. It analyses 22 Product-Service Systems projects by undergraduate students at a Thai design school to examine how design education, aligned with Thailand’s bio-circular-green (BCG) economy initiative, helps develop students as social agents who drive sustainable innovation. Using ethnographic action research and thematic analysis, six case vignettes illustrate how participatory design methods and systems thinking in Product-Service Systems projects empower students to build sociotechnical systems and offer localized, community-centered solutions. Findings show that integrating Product-Service Systems practices …

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Restaging Doing And Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design, Tau Lenskjold, Li Jönsson, Alex Wilkie, Pablo Hermansen, Laura Forlano, Martín Tironi, Sissel Olander Jun 2026

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 …

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Central But Decentered: Repositioning The Practitioner In Design Research Involving Practice, Luis Vega, Julia Valle-Noronha Jun 2026

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 …

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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 Jun 2026

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 …

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Experience As Knowledge Contributions, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Camilla Groth, Spyros Bofylatos, Haian Xue Jun 2026

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 …

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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 Jun 2026

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 …

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The Transformative Nature Of Food – Adaptation, Connectivity And Identity, Dolly Daou, Claudia De Souza Libanio, Juan Montalván Lume Jun 2026

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 …

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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 Jun 2026

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 …

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Analysing Language Use In Designing: Practices And Performance, Senthil Chandrasegaran, Lisa Perez Elzey, (Eric) Heng Gu, Nathan Crilly, Terresa Hardaway, Vivek Rao, Peter Lloyd Jun 2026

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.

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Innovating Scientific Publishing Of Design Research: Promoting Plurality And Equity, Eleonora Lupo, Lorela Mehmeti Jun 2026

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 …

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Critical Reflections On Systemic Design Participation: Ethics, Care And Justice, Cecilia Landa-Avila, Josina Vink, Sine Celik, Simon Downs, Peter Jones Jun 2026

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.

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Temporalities Of More-Than-Human Design, Larissa Pschetz, Gizem Oktay, Valentina Nisi, Jiwei Zhou, Doris Kosminsky, Keili Koppel, Fiona Bell, Katharina Vones, Marta Ferreira Jun 2026

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 …

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Design And The Public Sector: Contemporary Methods And Practice, Scott Schmidt, Sabine Junginger, Marzia Mortati, Federico Vaz Jun 2026

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 …

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Making Theory With Textiles: Theories Of Designing And Designing Theory, Elaine Igoe, Anne Louise Bang Jun 2026

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 …

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