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Reciprocal Value Between Learning And Circular Practices, Franchesca Michaela De Moura, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Christina Breed Jun 2026

Reciprocal Value Between Learning And Circular Practices, Franchesca Michaela De Moura, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Christina Breed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigates how adaptive reuse servicescapes may contribute to sustainable transformation through learning, by leveraging circular practices as experiential learning tools. Research on circular economy rarely adopts a human-centred lens or explores its links to learning, especially in the Global South, where the value of alternative epistemologies and informal economies often remains unrecognised. To address this gap, a qualitative case study approach was employed, combining participant observation and semi-structured interviews at educational initiatives in an adaptive reuse precinct in inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa. The findings reveal a reciprocal relationship between education and circular practices in generating value for sustainable …

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Visualising Values In Women’S Digital Labour: Design Ethics For Assembling Social Justice, Li Zhang, Yujia Liu Jun 2026

Visualising Values In Women’S Digital Labour: Design Ethics For Assembling Social Justice, Li Zhang, Yujia Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how visualising values in women’s digital labour shapes recognition and justice in platform-driven environments. Visualisation is advanced as a design-ethics strategy for surfacing and negotiating undervalued work that remains obscured in digital economies. Grounded in Nancy Fraser’s justice framework and feminist epistemologies centred on situated and embodied experience, the study positions visualisation as a means to reveal and contest structural devaluation. A three-phase ethical practice is developed: ethical narration to make hidden value perceptible, ethical prototyping to question recognition mechanisms, and ethical interaction to build collective participation in decisions about representation. Insights draw on sociological and anthropological …

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Tracing Oppression Through Things: Facilitating A Slow Critique In Post-Anthropocene Design, Thanussayan Karunakaran, Dilina Nawarathne Jun 2026

Tracing Oppression Through Things: Facilitating A Slow Critique In Post-Anthropocene Design, Thanussayan Karunakaran, Dilina Nawarathne

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper reconsiders what it means to be critical in design studies under Post-Anthropocene conditions. It proposes slow relational critique as an orientation. In doing so, it stays with the fragile entanglements through which oppression is enacted by both human and more-than-human entities. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory, the paper revisits a case of a cradle in a caste-oppressed community in Sri Lanka to show how power and inequality are relationally produced through mundane associations of “things.” The analysis demonstrates how critique can remain empirical and attentive to objects while resisting the purification of problems into grand Anthropocene social explanations. Rather …

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Reciprocal Sensing: Expanding Body Mapping Through Lenca And Mestizo Ontologies Of Relational Embodiment, Thaís Alvarenga Medina, Michael Nitsche Jun 2026

Reciprocal Sensing: Expanding Body Mapping Through Lenca And Mestizo Ontologies Of Relational Embodiment, Thaís Alvarenga Medina, Michael Nitsche

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Reciprocal Sensing is an alternative way of body mapping that draws from Indigenous Lenca ontologies, which understand matter as animate and relational. It expands body mapping to account for culturally specific contexts and ways of knowing. The proposed method invites participants to (1) link each felt experience to a worldly source (the non-human agent or co-actor) and (2) visualize the direction of these sensory flows. Using an autoethnographic approach, iterative body mapping sessions revealed recurring patterns of exchange between the body and its material environment. This informed the development of Reciprocal Sensing as a culturally situated, more-than-human perspective to soma …

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Designing The Service Exposome: Applying The D4l Unclock Framework To Longevity Challenges, Sheng-Hung Lee Jun 2026

Designing The Service Exposome: Applying The D4l Unclock Framework To Longevity Challenges, Sheng-Hung Lee

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In an emerging longevity society, reimagining social infrastructure has become increasingly essential. The World Health Organization (2025) projects that the global population aged 60 and over will nearly double from 12% in 2015 to 22% by 2050, raising urgent questions about how people live and interact with services over time. This study introduces the service exposome, extending Wild’s (2005, 2012) exposome concept to consider the cumulative service-related exposures that shape well-being across the lifespan. Using the Design for Longevity (D4L) Unclock Framework—a tool that helps designers explore intersections across longevity, service, system, design, technology, and society—the research examines how early-stage …

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A Design Continuum For Autographic Sonification, Kajetan Enge, Dietmar Offenhuber, Sara Lenzi Jun 2026

A Design Continuum For Autographic Sonification, Kajetan Enge, Dietmar Offenhuber, Sara Lenzi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sonification and visualization practices usually take "data" as a given, without considering the complex ways in which data is collected or the complexity of the phenomena that data represents. Autographic design is an emerging field approaching this issue by starting the design process before data collection with the phenomenon itself, treating data as a material trace rather than an abstract reference. An autographic display uses a phenomenon's self-inscription, rather than its mediation and representation in symbolic encodings. While the existing framework of autographic design has a strong relation to the visual domain, a phenomenon may also reveal itself through its …

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From Citizen Innovation Labs To Social Transformation: Analysing The Conectando Cozinhas Case Through The Lens Of Infrastructuring, Laryssa Tarachucky, Diego Hernando Florez Ayala, Aksel Ersoy Jun 2026

From Citizen Innovation Labs To Social Transformation: Analysing The Conectando Cozinhas Case Through The Lens Of Infrastructuring, Laryssa Tarachucky, Diego Hernando Florez Ayala, Aksel Ersoy

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Citizen Innovation Labs (LabICs) have emerged as experimental infrastructures for collective design and civic transformation. Operating in close partnership with public institutions, these laboratories create collaborative spaces where urban publics co-design responses to issues of shared concern. Yet, little is known about how these laboratories operate as long-term supports for community-driven initiatives beyond their initial phases of experimentation or incubation. This paper investigates how LabICs mobilise processes of infrastructuring to support broader cycles of social transformation by analysing the case of Conectando Cozinhas, a citizen-led initiative developed within LabIC Novale (Brazil). Using a retrospective qualitative case study, the research reconstructs …

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Sketch-Based Ai: How Ai-Influence Levels Shape Perceived Authorship And Creativity In The Design Process, Byungsoo Kim, Haeyoung Kim Jun 2026

Sketch-Based Ai: How Ai-Influence Levels Shape Perceived Authorship And Creativity In The Design Process, Byungsoo Kim, Haeyoung Kim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Understanding perceived authorship and creativity is critical for novice designers to improve efficiency and engagement in human-AI collaboration. This study explores how different AI influence levels (100% = high human-drawing influence, 0% = low drawing influence) affect perceived authorship and creativity, and how these levels relate to design intents that shape authorship and support the process-oriented nature of creativity. Vizcom workshop post-surveys measured perceived authorship and creativity (N=45). Regarding authorship, when high AI influence (low authorship threshold), basic resemblance to the sketch was enough; when low AI influence, participants expected signature cues and minimal AI changes. Regarding perceived creativity, high …

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Cultivating A Teaching Mindset: Persuasive Strategies For Developing Design Thinking Skills, Min-Yuan Ma, Eric Chen-F Hsieh, Pin-He Huang, Jia-Chi Chih Jun 2026

Cultivating A Teaching Mindset: Persuasive Strategies For Developing Design Thinking Skills, Min-Yuan Ma, Eric Chen-F Hsieh, Pin-He Huang, Jia-Chi Chih

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study proposes a cognitive framework for design thinking education that translates expert-derived strategies into systematic, classroom-ready moves. Drawing on in-depth interviews with experienced design thinking educators in higher education, a reflective thematic analysis surfaced seven themes and sixteen persuasive strategies from teaching practices developed through university-level design thinking workshops and courses: simplifying processes, bridging gaps, constructing repetitive experiences, providing contextual empowerment, adding evaluation criteria, changing perspectives, and introducing breakthroughs. Three teaching mindsets anchor these strategies: lowering the entry threshold, expanding engagement with complex, public-facing issues, and foregrounding authentic, first-hand experience. Integrating these strategies with pedagogical content knowledge supports plural …

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Agreements For Collective Real-Time Sketching Practice In Design Research, Mafalda Gamboa, Elvia Vasconcelos Jun 2026

Agreements For Collective Real-Time Sketching Practice In Design Research, Mafalda Gamboa, Elvia Vasconcelos

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers often converse without speech, for example, through sketches and artifacts. These conversations transverse across layers through gestures, time, and materialities. In this paper, we report on a demonstration at a design conference, where we brought together the practices of two designers, into a collaborative real-time sketching environment. Through this unfolding exchange, we explore how sketching can move beyond individual expression to become a collective emergent record of thought and relation. The demo drew together digital and physical media while listening to a theoretical prompt, in a shared conversation with the audience. From this process and its tensions, we derive …

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The Hauntology Of Generative Ai In Design, Michael Heron, Klara Aune, Mafalda Gamboa, Sofia Thunberg, Negin Hashmati, Pauline Belford Jun 2026

The Hauntology Of Generative Ai In Design, Michael Heron, Klara Aune, Mafalda Gamboa, Sofia Thunberg, Negin Hashmati, Pauline Belford

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is a fundamentally hauntological technology. This paper interrogates that character of contemporary AI systems and explores why this feature undermines the goals of design research. We argue the need for an exorcism of GenAI, or at least a constructive rebellion against the ghosts it systematically produces. GenAI is convergence-driven and nuance-averse. It aims for reasonableness as a first-order output. Its training data reflects a profound anthropocentrism that extinguishes plurality. As a result, GenAI accelerates the foreclosure of possible worlds by preferentially reproducing that which is statistically probable and culturally dominant. By contrast, design relies upon idiosyncrasy, …

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Generative Ai In Digital Cultural Heritage Design Workflows: A Systematic Literature Review, Yuyao Zhang, Tuotuo Yang, Meng Li, Yun Wang Jun 2026

Generative Ai In Digital Cultural Heritage Design Workflows: A Systematic Literature Review, Yuyao Zhang, Tuotuo Yang, Meng Li, Yun Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Generative AI is increasingly shaping the workflows of digital cultural heritage design practice, introducing new approaches to creative production, interpretation, and collaboration. Existing research has examined how generative AI influences general design workflows and supports creative practices in different domains. However, limited attention has been given to how these technologies participate in the design workflows of digital cultural heritage. Compared with other design contexts, digital cultural heritage design requires balancing creative exploration with the accurate transmission of heritage knowledge, which makes its workflows more complex. To address this gap, this study conducts a systematic literature review to examine how generative …

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Make It So(Und): Speculative Sonic Metaphors As Boundary Objects For Design Research, Kc Collins Jun 2026

Make It So(Und): Speculative Sonic Metaphors As Boundary Objects For Design Research, Kc Collins

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates how speculative sound design can employ metaphors as boundary objects to mediate shared understanding across users and designers. Because sound is ephemeral and difficult to describe, participants often rely on metaphor, drawing on nature, human behaviour, or emotion. We surveyed 72 people online to respond to textual prompts with descriptions of futuristic sound objects, and analysed their responses using several methods. We present results and outline suggestions for re-deploying sonic metaphors as design prompts, and discuss their potential to support sound design.

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The Meandering Practitioner: When Research Emerges In Relational Resistance And Intentional Ambiguity, Markus Wernli, Kam-Fai Chan, Jonathan Yu, Josh Wolper Jun 2026

The Meandering Practitioner: When Research Emerges In Relational Resistance And Intentional Ambiguity, Markus Wernli, Kam-Fai Chan, Jonathan Yu, Josh Wolper

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper theorizes meandering as a dispositional heuristic in design research, foregrounding how researchers can encounter complexity through nuanced, situated journeying. Drawing on the case of SoilTrust nutrient-cycling praxis in Hong Kong, the study identifies four key dispositions – nimble resistance, contextual reasoning, temporal suppleness, and deliberate ambiguity – that enable practitioners to respond to structural challenges with humility, curiosity, and strategic indirection. Rather than pursuing fixed goals, meandering researchers cultivate relational awareness, embrace uncertainty, and reconfigure material and social systems through iterative, practice-led inquiry. Anchored in agential realism and indirect action, meanderability reframes design as a life-embedded mode of …

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Reconciling Values In Multidisciplinary Design Teams Through Structured Dialogue, Yijia An, Marina Bos-De Vos, Yihua Wang Jun 2026

Reconciling Values In Multidisciplinary Design Teams Through Structured Dialogue, Yijia An, Marina Bos-De Vos, Yihua Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Value has been conceptualized differently across disciplines, while the negotiation of values is inherent to design collaboration. In many multidisciplinary design projects, professionals struggle to articulate or align values due to disciplinary differences, limited value awareness, and imbalanced value prioritisation, which can lead to communication difficulties or even collaboration failure. Reconciling diverse values and underlying motivations is therefore essential. This paper explores how structured dialogue can help participants in multidisciplinary design teams work towards value reconciliation. Using a qualitative approach, six structured value dialogues involving twenty participants were conducted, followed by twenty post-dialogue interviews to capture participants’ reflections. The findings …

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Naming And Resisting The System Of Fatphobia In Design By A Fat, Queer Designer And Educator, Brooke Hull Jun 2026

Naming And Resisting The System Of Fatphobia In Design By A Fat, Queer Designer And Educator, Brooke Hull

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Within this paper, a white, fat, queer, trans nonbinary designer and educator uses a critical autoethnographic approach to examine the ways in which they have centered fat bodies. This is done through examination of two experiences: a design project creating fat letterforms and a pedagogical activity discussing bias in AI where they say fat in the classroom. By examining each narrative using a defined procedure, the author analyzes how fatphobia and other systems have negatively influenced the inclusion of fat bodies within design. Their analysis thus produces specific takeaways of how to name and resist this system. Using this approach …

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Cooking Rush: Designing And Evaluating A Cross-Cultural Dietary Board Game For Chinese International Students Through Research Through Design, Yuan Qin Jun 2026

Cooking Rush: Designing And Evaluating A Cross-Cultural Dietary Board Game For Chinese International Students Through Research Through Design, Yuan Qin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study addresses the dietary challenges faced by Chinese international students by developing Cooking Rush, a serious card-based board game. Using a Research through Design paradigm and Social Practice Theory, the project integrates Western nutrition with Traditional Chinese Medicine energetics. The game translates cultural beliefs into a quantified Balance of Thermal Intake (BTI) mechanism. Evaluation results from 14 participants show improved confidence in resource management and internalised dietary knowledge. Furthermore, the intervention shifts the perception of cooking from a burden to a practice of self-care. This research provides a scalable framework for cross-cultural health interventions by aligning local food logics …

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Changing Skills Of Industrial Designers In The Age Of Genai: A Systematic And Practice Based Study, Aybike Eser, Yener Altiparmakogullari Jun 2026

Changing Skills Of Industrial Designers In The Age Of Genai: A Systematic And Practice Based Study, Aybike Eser, Yener Altiparmakogullari

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores the changing skills of industrial designers in the age of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). It combines a systematic literature review covering 2020–2025 with a practice based investigation involving six designers who actively use GenAI in their design processes. Focusing on both novice and expert designers, the study examines how GenAI influences skill development through the lenses of upskilling, reskilling, and deskilling. The findings show that while GenAI enhances creativity, idea generation, and visualization, it also brings challenges such as increased cognitive load, information reliability issues, and a decline in production awareness. Differences between novice and expert designers …

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Biodiverse Design And The Ethics Of Bioempathy In Practice, Delphine Lewandowski Jun 2026

Biodiverse Design And The Ethics Of Bioempathy In Practice, Delphine Lewandowski

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates biodiverse design as a practice through which environmental ethics can inform architectural production. Drawing on the concept of bioempathy—understood as the recognition of the intrinsic value of the biotic community—it develops an ethical and operational framework for guiding design reasoning. This framework is then applied to a reflective analysis of biodiverse wall prototypes developed by the author with an interdisciplinary team, used as an empirical ground to examine how ecological intentions were translated into material and spatial decisions, and how observations of plant establishment and spontaneous colonisation contribute to reassessing the assumptions embedded in those intentions. The …

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Designing For Generativity And Wellbeing: Insights From Visitors At The Hong Kong Space Museum, Cerella Yueru Chen, Amy Law, Jiarui Cao, Xun Li Jun 2026

Designing For Generativity And Wellbeing: Insights From Visitors At The Hong Kong Space Museum, Cerella Yueru Chen, Amy Law, Jiarui Cao, Xun Li

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates how generativity, understood as showing care and contributing to the next generation's lives, shapes visitors’ engagement, experience, and psychological wellbeing in the Hong Kong Space Museum. We conducted fifteen semi-structured interviews to explore how generativity unfolds in museum interactions. Building on Fan and Luo (2022), we extend the generativity model by introducing bidirectional and recursive relationships among generativity, engagement, and experience. Our findings show that generativity can be understood as a designable, relational and temporal pathway to wellbeing. Thematic analysis further reveals that different types of installations scaffold generativity and wellbeing through distinct design features such as …

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Reframing Design Activism Through Affirmative, Relational And Pluriversal Practices, Rusaila Bazlamit Jun 2026

Reframing Design Activism Through Affirmative, Relational And Pluriversal Practices, Rusaila Bazlamit

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper challenges how contemporary design activism has been defined and practised. While Western frameworks have framed activism through countering narrative, raising awareness and social change, this paper proposes a move from a position of countering toward a position of affirming. By looking at the history and current practices of design activism and examining the deficit of the “unheard” paradigm, this paper highlights the limitations of oppositional logics that centre critique over creation. This paper then explores alternative understandings grounded in decolonial, Indigenous epistemologies, and the voices of the global majority. Through examples and case studies, the paper illustrates how …

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Material Agencies In Co-Design: A New Materialist Perspective On Workshop Practices, Gretchen Coombs, Leah Heiss Jun 2026

Material Agencies In Co-Design: A New Materialist Perspective On Workshop Practices, Gretchen Coombs, Leah Heiss

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the intersection of new materialism and co-design workshop practices, suggesting that design materials are not passive resources but active agents in collaborative meaning-making and future-making processes. Drawing on new materialist philosophy and care ethics, particularly the work of Barad, Haraway, and Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine how workshop artefacts such as canvases, sticky notes, tactile tools, and other ephemeral materials participate in and shape co-design processes and engender more care-focussed design futures. Through observations of co-design workshops in health futures contexts, we demonstrate how attending to material agency extends the value of workshops and forms sites …

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Evaluating Visual Accessibility Of Ai-Generated Interfaces, Mutong Rao, Jody Watts Jun 2026

Evaluating Visual Accessibility Of Ai-Generated Interfaces, Mutong Rao, Jody Watts

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Large Language Models are increasingly integrated into UX design. However, their effectiveness in meeting visual accessibility requirements is under-explored. This research evaluates ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to generate visually accessible interfaces using a Research through Design methodology. First, an accessibility scoring system was created from the Apple, WCAG 2.2, and Microsoft accessibility guidelines. Second, design experiments were conducted using ChatGPT and Copilot, and the outputs were evaluated using the new scoring system. Findings indicate ChatGPT and Copilot can respond effectively to well-structured prompts, but they demonstrate low competence in executing visually accessible interfaces. This research makes two valuable contributions to …

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The Fidelity-Flexibility Paradox: Student Creative Experience With Ai-Assisted Visualisation In Design Ideation, Wendy Zhang, Charlie Ranscombe, Euan Coutts Jun 2026

The Fidelity-Flexibility Paradox: Student Creative Experience With Ai-Assisted Visualisation In Design Ideation, Wendy Zhang, Charlie Ranscombe, Euan Coutts

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In design education, AI-assisted visualisation tools are challenging established sketching practices during ideation, influencing how students generate, iterate, and develop ideas. Empirical research on their impact on students’ creative processes is essential to guide pedagogical integration. Guided by the Design Tool Characteristics (DTCs) framework, this study analyses the survey data (n = 55) from two undergraduate design cohorts (2024–2025) using an AI sketch rendering tool during studio-based ideation. Findings reveal a central fidelity–flexibility paradox: AI’s high-fidelity outputs accelerated divergent visualisation, yet its perceived low flexibility and limited control constrained iterative refinement. This tension between rapid generation and limited creative agency …

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Design Knowledge Archaeology: Developing The Body Of Design Knowledge And Theory, Jan Michel Auernhammer, Hamid Bekamiri, Milan Drake Jun 2026

Design Knowledge Archaeology: Developing The Body Of Design Knowledge And Theory, Jan Michel Auernhammer, Hamid Bekamiri, Milan Drake

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The development of the foundational body of knowledge is a primary concern of Design Research. This body of knowledge is essential to design education and practice, which shape the human-made environment. This article presents Design Knowledge Archaeology, an emerging approach for systematically rediscovering and developing this foundation by analyzing the evolution of knowledge structures within design discourse. This article outlines and evaluates three distinct methods: the Focused approach, the Discourse approach, and the AI-enabled Semantic Similarity approach. The Focused approach reconstructs the intellectual lineage of a single perspective or recovers marginalized accounts. The Discourse approach maps competing perspectives and discontinuities …

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Beyond Binaries Of Reconciliation: Working Across Knowledge Systems At The Cultural Interface, Georgina Nolan, Nicola St John Jun 2026

Beyond Binaries Of Reconciliation: Working Across Knowledge Systems At The Cultural Interface, Georgina Nolan, Nicola St John

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designing and researching across multiple knowledge systems requires vigilant negotiation, reflexivity and care. These dynamics are heightened on the lands now called Australia, where settler-colonial researchers (such as the authors) engage with diverse Indigenous knowledge systems. We examine how our own ways of being and knowing come into relation with others, surfacing tensions that shape the role of pluriversal design within our situated practices. We critique reconciliation narratives that risk reaffirming colonial hierarchies by positioning reconciliation as a destination, or a reconciling between binaries of Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges. We argue, instead, for embracing generative tensions as openings for dialogue. …

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Friend And Foe: Characterising (Counter)Productive Prompting Of Generative Ai To Supplement Exploratory Sketching, Charlie Ranscombe, Linus Tan, Wendy Zhang, Nabila Afif Jun 2026

Friend And Foe: Characterising (Counter)Productive Prompting Of Generative Ai To Supplement Exploratory Sketching, Charlie Ranscombe, Linus Tan, Wendy Zhang, Nabila Afif

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Text-to-image Generative AI (T2I GenAI) tools have become commonplace in design practice and education, raising important questions about their role alongside exploratory sketching. This article explores T2I GenAI as an emerging visualisation modality that alters how designers create and explore ideas. Specifically, we examine the acute tensions between GenAI’s near-instantaneous, high-fidelity, text-driven outputs versus the ambiguous, iterative, and reflective act of traditional sketching. We report on a one-day ideation activity by 13 student designers, in which we analysed 1292 prompts, generated imagery, alongside reflective survey data to uncover patterns of productive and counterproductive T2I GenAI use. We outline prompting behaviours …

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Testing The Unbuilt: Design Studios As Research For Wicked Opportunities, Linus Tan, Justyna Karakiewicz Jun 2026

Testing The Unbuilt: Design Studios As Research For Wicked Opportunities, Linus Tan, Justyna Karakiewicz

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research examines the design studio as a form of architectural design research. Architectural and Urban Design studios have been operating as epistemic laboratories in which the processes of evaluating wicked problems, proposing design interventions, and iteratively testing the fit between the brief and design intersect to generate new knowledge. It is often impractical to evaluate the long-term implications of built works on complex, interrelated societal issues, as such assessments are time-consuming, costly, and rarely yield transferable insights. Hence, many architects and urban designers investigate design opportunities in design studios, allowing them to test, reframe and expand their understanding of …

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Critical Assembly: Exploring The Role Of Critical Making In Complex Technology Relationships, Chuan Khoo Jun 2026

Critical Assembly: Exploring The Role Of Critical Making In Complex Technology Relationships, Chuan Khoo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Critical making often assumes that practitioners possess or can acquire sufficient technical and fabrication skills to balance reflective inquiry with material engagement. Yet, as digital and networked technologies grow more abstract and complex, they risk constraining critical making by privileging technical proficiency over critical reflection. This tension raises questions about accessibility and the depth of engagement required for meaningful participation, as reliance on pre-integrated solutions may distance both practitioners and lay participants from interrogating technology’s societal roles. Still, uncovering the components of technological systems remains essential to critical engagement. This article proposes critical assembly as an extension of critical making, …

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Bio-Inspired Design For Preventive Healthcare: Translating Living Systems Into Design Knowledge, Xiuyuan Tu, Wei Liu Jun 2026

Bio-Inspired Design For Preventive Healthcare: Translating Living Systems Into Design Knowledge, Xiuyuan Tu, Wei Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates how bio-inspired design can contribute to preventive healthcare by learning from the adaptive intelligence of living systems. Through a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of 356 studies, it explores the translation of concepts like adaptation, cooperation, and self-repair from biology to design practice. The Design Knowledge Translation Model (DKTM) is introduced to illustrate the process by which biological insights are interpreted, abstracted, and applied to inform design knowledge. The findings indicate that leveraging nature-inspired reasoning can shift healthcare from a reactive to an anticipatory approach, fostering systems that enhance wellbeing and collective care. Furthermore, this work provides a guideline …

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