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Design As A Distributed Capability For Organizational Strategies Of New Product Development, Caterina Dastoli, Gabriele Goretti Jun 2026

Design As A Distributed Capability For Organizational Strategies Of New Product Development, Caterina Dastoli, Gabriele Goretti

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study positions Design as a distributed capability for New Product Development through ecosystems knowledge. While the strategic role of Design in local productive systems is well established, new technology affordances often necessitate the design and implementation of organizational strategies—beyond traditional business strategies—across SMEs from diverse industrial clusters. Consequently, technological evolution calls for a system-level positioning of Design interventions and a clear articulation of Design capabilities within the organizational dimension of an ecosystem, where multiple actors participate in strategic and operational decision-making for New Product Development. By conceptualizing Design as an organizational intelligence, this research highlights its potential to enable …

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Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall Jun 2026

Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores and unpacks aspects of relationality by examining design engagements in a Swedish municipal care setting. Our exploration of relational perspectives on homecare is grounded in home care workers’ (HCWs) use of a workday scheduling and planning app. This paper presents empirical data generated through interviews and participatory observations, and identifies three themes: Manifesting relationality, Affectionating relationality and Tensioning relationality. Based on our understanding of relationality as it is developed in social care and design research, we discuss how relationality develops in everyday care, by juxtaposing this with real-life accounts of relational care. Then, we deliberate on the …

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Nature-Centred Biodesign For Regeneration. Design Understandings In Europe., Nina Costa, Pierre Oskam, Helen Charoupia, Fátima Pombo Jun 2026

Nature-Centred Biodesign For Regeneration. Design Understandings In Europe., Nina Costa, Pierre Oskam, Helen Charoupia, Fátima Pombo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how design researchers in Europe understand and enact nature-centred biodesign for regeneration: an emerging approach that bridges design, biology, and ecology to foster regenerative futures. It proposes an evolutionary framework of design agency, mapping the transition from imitation to co-evolution and from instrumental ethics to ecological justice. The framework highlights four paradigmatic quadrants: Anthropocentric Planning, Emerging Bioeconomy, Socio-Ecology, and Regenerative Biodesign that capture how ethical, ecological, and material orientations shape practice. In parallel, it employs a qualitative analysis of a questionnaire with 32 researchers from COST Action DESIGNAE (2025), which investigates how design operates between scientific, material, …

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Making The Invisible Visible: Supporting Older Adults’ Expression Of Emotional Needs For Companion Robots Through Visual Co-Design Tools, Chuxuan Xu, Hua Dong, Mohammed Elsouri, Mingfeng Wang Jun 2026

Making The Invisible Visible: Supporting Older Adults’ Expression Of Emotional Needs For Companion Robots Through Visual Co-Design Tools, Chuxuan Xu, Hua Dong, Mohammed Elsouri, Mingfeng Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As populations age, companion robots are increasingly explored to support emotional well-being in later life. However, older adults often find it difficult to express abstract emotions or imagine interactions with unfamiliar technologies, limiting their participation in early-stage design. This study develops and validates a structured toolkit designed to support emotional articulation and co-design participation. The toolkit, consisting of companionship cards, robot role cards, and recording canvases, was refined through expert evaluation and user testing, and validated through comparative interviews with older adults (n=10). Results show that the toolkit supported richer emotional expression, smoother dialogue, and more sustained engagement, helping participants …

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Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking Wellbeing In Human–Ai Interaction From A Design Perspective, Boyu Zhang, Li Zhang Jun 2026

Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking Wellbeing In Human–Ai Interaction From A Design Perspective, Boyu Zhang, Li Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As AI increasingly enters everyday life in intimate roles of companionship and emotional support, established understandings of wellbeing in design research are being challenged. Conventional approaches tend to frame wellbeing as an optimizable experiential state, typically enhanced by means of emotional design. However, as AI becomes a medium for emotional engagement, wellbeing shifts toward a relational outcome that emerges from ongoing interactions.This paper introduces fictionalized affective relations to describe how users, despite knowing AI lacks genuine consciousness and emotion, nonetheless disclose vulnerability, invest affectively, and derive experiences of intimacy. It identifies three ethical tensions: emotional capitalization, loss of affective sovereignty, …

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Degree Of Anisotropy: A Textile Epistemology Of Making, Sheetal Agrawal, Joy Ko Jun 2026

Degree Of Anisotropy: A Textile Epistemology Of Making, Sheetal Agrawal, Joy Ko

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research demonstrates textiles as an analytical framework to encode forms of distributed intelligence inaccessible to computational modeling alone, challenging contemporary design's reliance on material homogeneity. Using 3D-printed Voronoi lattices on pre-stretched tulle substrates, we reconceptualize anisotropy (directional variation in material behavior) from engineering liability to design theory cornerstone. While conventional design favors isotropy for predictability, it has been long observed that biological textiles (skin, muscle tissue, tendons, spider silk, etc) have achieved adaptive functionality through engineered heterogeneity. By systematically varying infill patterns within Voronoi structures, we establish a methodology enabling textiles to hold contradictory mechanical states simultaneously and respond …

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Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers Jun 2026

Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Conventional participatory planning and design practice imply linear accumulation of data, facts, and representations, predicting meaningful futures through consensus-driven strategies. Transformation is framed as the transparent management of knowable information towards a providential destiny. By reducing participatory reasoning to factual transfer and discursive negotiation, reductionist approaches fail to address the systemic complexity and contingent character of socio-ecological challenges. They overlook disruptive shocks (financial crises, pandemics) that reorder systems. We propose disruption as a co-design method: a deliberately staged technique that exposes boundaries, surfaces dependencies, and fosters collective sense-making under uncertainty. Drawing on 4E cognition and relational design theory, we propose …

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Tangible Conversations For Uncertain Futures: A Design-Led Approach With Families Affected By Multiple Sclerosis, Alison Thomson, Hannah Scott, Ruth Dobson Jun 2026

Tangible Conversations For Uncertain Futures: A Design-Led Approach With Families Affected By Multiple Sclerosis, Alison Thomson, Hannah Scott, Ruth Dobson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Neurological prevention science is gaining traction, with implications for people at raised familial risk of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We examine how design can intervene in this emerging prevention space through Digesting Science (DS), a co-designed public engagement project that brings families affected by MS together through events and playful, hands-on activities in community settings. We analyse post-event open-ended evaluation forms and a follow up study using auto-photo-elicitation with semi-structured interviews with children and parents. Findings show that DS makes MS discussable without increasing anxiety, embodied activities create shared reference points and language for talking about symptoms, science and uncertainty. We …

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Not Just One "Best" Green: Soundscape Determines The Optimal Green Wall Form, Wenbo Li, Yihe Li, Hengji Wang, Yang Liu Jun 2026

Not Just One "Best" Green: Soundscape Determines The Optimal Green Wall Form, Wenbo Li, Yihe Li, Hengji Wang, Yang Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In high-density cities, window-view green walls (GWs) are implemented to improve psychological well-being, but their design often ignores context. Existing research overlooks how GW geometric forms interact with ambient urban soundscapes. This study investigates this critical audio-visual interaction. We conducted a 4 (sound: between-subjects) × 4 (visual: within-subjects) experiment in Virtual Reality (N=80). Participants were exposed to four visual forms (No-GW, Triangle, Square, Rectangle) within four dominating soundscapes (No Sound, Traffic, Conversation, Ventilation), reporting their Stress and recovery results. Results revealed a significant interaction effect, showing the optimal GW shape for psychological well-being was context-dependent: rectangular forms were best for …

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Becoming Humus: Embodied Ecological Literacy Through Designing, Ines Weigand Jun 2026

Becoming Humus: Embodied Ecological Literacy Through Designing, Ines Weigand

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper employs environmental humanities theories through design, translating them into a more-than-human experiential pedagogy. Drawing on Haraway’s (2016) concept of humans as “humus” and Braidotti’s (2013) notion of the subject as embodied and embedded, it presents an approach that uses the human body to cultivate ecological literacy and make ecological relations tangible through personal involvement. In two public workshops, participants produced phosphate fertiliser from their urine, revealing connections between bodily and planetary metabolisms. This linked the biogeochemical flow of phosphorus within the Planetary Boundaries framework (Rockström et al., 2009) to everyday routines, reframing urine from taboo to resource. The …

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Mapping Circular Design Pathways For Wearables: An Annotated Portfolio At The Intersection Of Material-Driven Design And Bio-Hci, Nicla Guarino, Venere Ferraro, Valentina Rognoli Jun 2026

Mapping Circular Design Pathways For Wearables: An Annotated Portfolio At The Intersection Of Material-Driven Design And Bio-Hci, Nicla Guarino, Venere Ferraro, Valentina Rognoli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the environmental impacts of wearable technologies intensify, exploring how material choices can enable circularity in such a waste-intensive sector has become critical for design research. In response to this challenge, materials are recognised as pivotal in emerging wearable alternatives, yet how they can actively support circular practices remains underexplored. The study addresses this gap through an annotated portfolio of 40 case studies situated in or informing the wearable domain at the intersection of Material-Driven Design and Bio-HCI. By foregrounding recurring materials, methods, and tools, the analysis aims to reveal how matter can act as a transformative agent in shaping …

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Contextualising Soil To Soil Textile Production In Aotearoa, Genevieve Rae, Gina Russell, Seonaid Burnie, Ngaio Cowell Jun 2026

Contextualising Soil To Soil Textile Production In Aotearoa, Genevieve Rae, Gina Russell, Seonaid Burnie, Ngaio Cowell

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Regenerative textile design begins in the soil, and ends in the oneone (soil). In this paper oneone is described and articulated by Papahoa Fibreworks (Papahoa or the organisation) as their context and guide for designing a textile production system in Aotearoa. The kaupapa (purpose, foundational approach) of context based design, alongside Hua Parakore has led Papahoa to offer organically grown linen, dye plants, and dye services for the local fashion industry. As a case study, Papahoa demonstrates both soil to oneone textile processes in Waitaha (Canterbury) historically, and looks into the future of how fibre production could be remodeled in …

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Incommensurable Durations: Fungal Time And The Limits Of Attunement In Multispecies Design, Nina Williams, Alia Parker Jun 2026

Incommensurable Durations: Fungal Time And The Limits Of Attunement In Multispecies Design, Nina Williams, Alia Parker

DRS Biennial Conference Series

An emerging dimension of multispecies design is the effort to attune to new sensory entanglements with the more-than-human world that foreground the alternative temporalities of multispecies life. Adding to such approaches, in this paper we want to emphasise that there is an incommensurability between the timeframes of organisms and those of human ways of thinking about time and of capitalist production. Indeed, multispecies design involves trying to work with alternative timeframes that necessarily disrupt dominant rhythms of design and production. Exploring a set of encounters with fungal time, we consider how such experiments have the capacity to plunge us into …

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Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes Jun 2026

Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Metaphors play a crucial role in how designers understand, communicate, and shape technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. This paper introduces Archipelagic AI (AAI), a speculative framework that employs metaphor-making as a design research strategy to challenge the colonial epistemologies that structure AI systems. Developed through collaborative autoethnography and fabulation in one of Europe’s richer ecosystems (Samouco in the Tagus Estuary), AAI draws on archipelagic studies and Caribbean decolonial thought to foreground a geosocial intelligence emerging through relational nodes of situated knowledge, where matter, forces, currents, and affects interweave in fluid assemblages. Structured around three metaphorical figures — …

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From Decoration To Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations In Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback, Yibo Meng, Bingyi Liu, Siyuan Li, Xinran Huang Jun 2026

From Decoration To Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations In Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback, Yibo Meng, Bingyi Liu, Siyuan Li, Xinran Huang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Office plants are ubiquitous in urban workplaces, yet they are often treated as disposable decoration rather than living co-inhabitants. This paper examines how interaction design can reconfigure this cultural framing. Using a research-through-design approach that combines interviews, the creation of an aesthetic biofeedback artefact, and a longitudinal deployment, we explore how plant vitality, expressed through light and sound, shapes everyday encounters between employees and plants. Rather than improving maintenance efficiency, the artefact functions as a relational probe. Participants described empathy, comfort, and companionship, alongside guilt, pressure, and resistance when the plant’s expressions demanded attention. These tensions show how care for …

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Designing Hospitality Through Sensory Workshops For Autistic People With Eating Disordered Behaviour, Sarah Kettley, Kyle Buchan, Abi Pickard, Ellen Maloney, Rebecca Allen, Callum Glasgow, Karri Gillespie-Smith Jun 2026

Designing Hospitality Through Sensory Workshops For Autistic People With Eating Disordered Behaviour, Sarah Kettley, Kyle Buchan, Abi Pickard, Ellen Maloney, Rebecca Allen, Callum Glasgow, Karri Gillespie-Smith

DRS Biennial Conference Series

We report on a series of sensory workshops and research interview training conducted with young Autistic people with lived experience of eating disordered behaviour. This under-researched co-occurence has been explored by a collaborative of clinical psychologists, peer researchers and participants through creative methods novel in this domain, led by a participatory design researcher. The paper outlines the design of the workshops, and discusses the insights generated around the key themes of environment, eating utensils and foods. It proposes a set of recommendations and creative opportunities for the hospitality industry to explore a range of approaches including ‘Autism-friendly days’ that may …

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Occupying The Sensors: Underwater Sound In An Urban River, Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Dietmar Offenhuber Jun 2026

Occupying The Sensors: Underwater Sound In An Urban River, Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Dietmar Offenhuber

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Although underwater soundscapes of urban rivers are understudied, they can reveal urban and biological processes across multiple scales. We present a case study of the Charles River’s underwater soundscapes in Boston, Massachusetts. We approach underwater acoustic sensing as a method to attune to infrastructural, non-human, and environmental dynamics. Given that water is an ideal medium for sound propagation, the river becomes a magnifier for ignored aspects of the city, such as the urban infrastructure’s impact on the river's soundscape or aquatic fauna activity. In the sensing process, the river’s underwater environment becomes a space where human, more-than-human, environmental, and infrastructural …

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Designing Under Uncertainty: How Novices Rationalize Prototype Choices Before And After Parallel Testing, Pa Chang Vang, Carlye Anne Lauff Jun 2026

Designing Under Uncertainty: How Novices Rationalize Prototype Choices Before And After Parallel Testing, Pa Chang Vang, Carlye Anne Lauff

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how novice designers justify prototype concept choices before and after parallel stakeholder testing in early-stage product development. Drawing on 99 survey responses collected across two checkpoints in a 16-week interdisciplinary design studio, we used an inductive-deductive coding approach to map emergent themes to innovation frames of desirability, feasibility, and viability. Six themes emerged: desirability (primarily perceived play value) dominated pre- and post-test reasoning, while feasibility (simplicity/modularity) and viability (production cost, market potential) shaped secondary trade-offs. Parallel testing prompted revisions when stakeholder engagement or client cues contradicted expectations; many students retained choices when testing validated initial impressions or …

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Meaning At A Distance: Redefining Aesthetics In The Age Of Intelligent Objects, Stefano Caggiano Jun 2026

Meaning At A Distance: Redefining Aesthetics In The Age Of Intelligent Objects, Stefano Caggiano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how the aesthetics of design is being redefined by the embodiment of intelligent and interactive technologies within the framework of cognitive semiotics. Interpretation—understood as semiosis—is conceived as the fundamental process of meaning-making, through which user and artifact dynamically co-produce sense. Two modes of semiosis are distinguished: motor interpretation, grounded in the embodied incorporation of objects as extensions of the body, and cognitive interpretation, based on inferential and cooperative meaning construction. In traditional design, aesthetics either supports functional embodiment or serves decorative representation. In AI-equipped artifacts, however, function becomes distal, executed at a cognitive distance. Consequently, affordance shifts …

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Designing Emotionally Resonant Thermal Interactions For Public Speaking Support, Guanhua Sun, Wei Wang, Ruixiao Zheng Jun 2026

Designing Emotionally Resonant Thermal Interactions For Public Speaking Support, Guanhua Sun, Wei Wang, Ruixiao Zheng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how thermal interaction can support emotional expression and regulation in socially anxious contexts. Using participatory and body-mapping methods, participants recalled and visualized temperature-related experiences of comfort, which were translated into six emotionally resonant thermal patterns. These insights informed the design of TempReso, a sleeve-type wearable that delivers dynamic thermal cues on the forearm. A series of design experiments examined how warmth and coolness evoke affective memories, redirect attention, and foster emotional comfort during public speaking. The study highlights temperature as an expressive and emotional material, revealing how embodied experiences can inform the design of affective haptic interfaces …

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Unmaking Ai’S Classificatory Ontologies: Situated Annotation As Design Inquiry In Human–Ai Assemblages, Antonella Autuori Jun 2026

Unmaking Ai’S Classificatory Ontologies: Situated Annotation As Design Inquiry In Human–Ai Assemblages, Antonella Autuori

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how design research can unmake AI's classificatory ontologies through situated and embodied annotation practices. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical data epistemologies, it reframes bias not as a technical flaw but as a generative condition that reveals how knowledge is produced and negotiated within human–AI assemblages. An autotheoretical experiment grounds the inquiry. The researcher creates and annotates a dataset of self-representations using subjective, affective, and relational labels, training a small-scale model to probe classification as an interpretive encounter shaped by embodiment, ambiguity, and positionality. Building on the shift from debiasing toward reflexive data practices in design and …

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Food Morphology: Food Forms Matter, Pedro Reissig Jun 2026

Food Morphology: Food Forms Matter, Pedro Reissig

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research is guided by the general question: Why do foods have the forms they do, and what is the best form for a particular food? The possible answers are multiple and complex, and involve a mix of factors, starting with ingredients and their transformative technologies, immersed in geographical and cultural contexts, informed by the customs, needs, tastes, and food functions of each place and time. These factors, and the interactions between them, constitute the determinants of a particular food's shape or form. Food morphology is defined by the author as the study of the generation, transformation and reading of …

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Transitional Materials And Collaborative Craft: European–Indonesian Design Practices From The Design Matters Lab Programme Toward A Resilient Future, Xingyu Tao, Samantha Vettese Jun 2026

Transitional Materials And Collaborative Craft: European–Indonesian Design Practices From The Design Matters Lab Programme Toward A Resilient Future, Xingyu Tao, Samantha Vettese

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design Matters Lab (DML) was a collaborative design programme that brought together ten emerging designers from Europe and Indonesia for an online and in-person design residency in Bandung, Indonesia. This paper explores the concepts, methods, and outcomes of DML, offering a potential blueprint for small-sized international businesses seeking to integrate crafting techniques and local, sustainable materials into their manufacturing processes. The project also proposes a methodology for teaching sustainability in design through meaningful environmental engagement rooted in local collaboration and applied practice. It emphasises the importance of working with local communities and using locally available waste and bio- materials. The …

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Cuia Colab: Toward A Design Across Species, Worlds And Relations, Andrea Bandoni Jun 2026

Cuia Colab: Toward A Design Across Species, Worlds And Relations, Andrea Bandoni

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Cuia Colab emerged from a design research project seeking to explore whether biodesign practices in the Amazon could foster equitable exchanges between traditional knowledge and contemporary design. The research combined theoretical and empirical methods, beginning with a literature review and a case study focused on the cuias of Santarém. Subsequent stages involved active field investigation through observation, collaboration with traditional cuia artisans, biodesign experiments integrating living organisms, and a co-created exhibition. Grounded in a situated, multispecies, and pluriversal approach, Cuia Colab revealed both the challenges and possibilities of establishing ethical and reciprocal relations between design and the Amazonian context. The …

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Scaffolding Oceans Futures: Design For Embedded, Embodied, And Emergent Thinking, Gillian Russell, Katherine Reilly, Jihyun Park, Lauren Thu Jun 2026

Scaffolding Oceans Futures: Design For Embedded, Embodied, And Emergent Thinking, Gillian Russell, Katherine Reilly, Jihyun Park, Lauren Thu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Citizen science and citizen data are widely used to engage with anthropogenic effects such as pollution and species loss. However, their focus on data gathering and objectivization can result in dispassionate learning. Futures scaffolding offers an alternative design approach that reimagines how environmental knowledge can be generated, experienced, and materialized. Positioned within co-speculative design, this practice uses design methods to make visible what data represents and to cultivate ocean futures. This paper mobilizes a workshop kit called Monsters of Marine Debris (MMD) as an object of design to illustrate futures scaffolding. MMD makes data a source of futures-making rather than …

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Play And Pilina: Reimagining Play Design Through Material Kinship And Cultural Practice, Corinne Takara Jun 2026

Play And Pilina: Reimagining Play Design Through Material Kinship And Cultural Practice, Corinne Takara

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Playful encounters at the intersection of familiar consumer materials and place-based natural matter are fertile terrain for speculative play world-building. This paper introduces bio-collaborative play, a design paradigm where materials and organisms are recognized as active collaborators and kin. This shifts play design away from the manipulation of objects toward a sustained dialogue with living systems. Grounded in Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) principles of pilina (reciprocal care) and kuleana (privileged responsibility), this framework reimagines speculative play as an act of communal care spanning biological scales and generational time. By treating plants, microbes, and everyday materials as co-authors, this approach analyzes …

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Co-Creating With Fungi: Mycelium Toys And Pedagogies For Regenerative Futures, Flavia Alice Mameli, Robbi Zidna Ilman Jun 2026

Co-Creating With Fungi: Mycelium Toys And Pedagogies For Regenerative Futures, Flavia Alice Mameli, Robbi Zidna Ilman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This practice-based research project presents BLX, a series of mycelium-based educational toys. Shaped like inflated building blocks, BLX invites children (early years to primary education) to construct playful structures whilst materialising biological and anthropogenic circularity through design. Unlike plastic toys that embody permanence, BLX can be played with, composted, or repurposed as plant pots—rendering regenerative processes tangible. Drawing on speculative design and material studies, the project positions mycelium as both educational medium and more-than-human collaborator. By embracing decay as (re-)generative, BLX challenges material cultures of permanence and offers children embodied encounters with temporality and transformation. This contribution is threefold: methodological …

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Understanding Sleep Challenges In Shared Dormitories: A Co-Design Inquiry, Zheng Wang, Adrian Gradinar, Lisa Thomas Jun 2026

Understanding Sleep Challenges In Shared Dormitories: A Co-Design Inquiry, Zheng Wang, Adrian Gradinar, Lisa Thomas

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Shared dormitories are the most common living arrangement for Chinese university students and have a crucial impact on their sleep and well-being. Most studies on sleep among this group primarily focus on the physical environment and the individual person, giving far less attention to the interpersonal and social aspects of living in shared dormitories. To address this gap, this paper presents the findings of a co-design workshop with 23 participants which explored their experiences of shared sleeping spaces and involved them in prototyping interventions for improving sleep experience. Findings reveal interpersonal interference as a major factor behind sleep disruption. Even …

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Design For Dignified Longevity: Olfactory-Enhanced Vr Meditation For Sustained Mindfulness Practice, Lei Xia, Xiaomei Li, Dan Li, Ling Fan Jun 2026

Design For Dignified Longevity: Olfactory-Enhanced Vr Meditation For Sustained Mindfulness Practice, Lei Xia, Xiaomei Li, Dan Li, Ling Fan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Mindfulness meditation supports psychological wellbeing and stress regulation—factors closely associated with healthy aging and longevity. However, practitioners often struggle to sustain attentional depth over time. While virtual reality (VR) has been explored as a tool for immersive meditation, most systems rely primarily on audiovisual stimuli and overlook olfactory cues despite their strong influence on emotion and environmental perception. This study introduces ScentSync, an olfactory-enhanced VR meditation system integrating AI-generated environments with synchronized scent delivery. A controlled experiment with 54 experienced meditators compared traditional meditation (Non-VR), VR meditation (VR), and olfactory-enhanced VR meditation (VR+Olfactory). Results show that the VR+Olfactory group achieved …

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Plural Epistemologies In Systemic Design: Bridging Eastern Wisdom And Western Traditions, Yi Song, Lei Zhang Jun 2026

Plural Epistemologies In Systemic Design: Bridging Eastern Wisdom And Western Traditions, Yi Song, Lei Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Systemic design is increasingly emerging as a foundational concept in contemporary design research, attracting growing scholarly attention. However, despite converging ambitions toward addressing complexity, the field remains characterized by diverse terminologies, conceptual framings, and methodological vocabularies. This plurality, while intellectually productive, often raises the entry barrier for new researchers and risks duplication of effort due to unclear conceptual boundaries and fragmented knowledge development. To address this challenge, this study traces the historical evolution and theoretical roots of systemic design, clarifying its conceptual scope, key constructs, and stages of theoretical formation. Building on this foundation, it further examines the historical trajectory …

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