Digital Commons Network^™

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This theme track examines the transformative role of food migration in shaping cultural identity, ecological systems, and practices of belonging through a food design lens. Building on The Transformative Nature of Food: Adaptation, Connectivity and Identity (Daou & Sarantou, 2026), it conceptualises food as a dynamic, designed system that evolves across geographies through processes of adaptation, connectivity and identities. As food travels, it connects people to both their original homeland and to the existing and emerging cultural identities, to develop a sense of belonging to local ecosystems. Food migration reinforces cultural continuity, political and social cohesion and belonging while influencing …

Designing More-Than-Human Climate Futures: Affect, Aesthetics And Relational Practices, Rachel E. Clarke, Michelle Westerlaken, Sara Heitlinger, Anton Poikolainen Rosén, Jaz Hee-Jeong Choi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This track brings together papers that explore more-than-human design practices that generate alternative, plural, situated, and relational approaches to climate futures through affect, aesthetics, and care. Framing climate crisis as a polycrisis of interconnected ecological, political, cultural, and epistemic conditions, the track foregrounds how designers are working across contradictory, incommensurable, and unevenly recognised and experienced impacts of climate change. The included papers examine how more-than-human design can attend to embodied, felt, and sensed worlds of multiple species and digital-material entities, infrastructures, and their environments. Across landscapes, waterscapes, governance, microbial growth, and multiple intelligences, the contributions reveal both the possibilities and …

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The role of language in designing is manifold, including but not limited to representing all aspects of design, enacting roles in design processes, and establishing shared meaning. With the advent of large language models (LLMs), the role of language has further expanded, affording new ways to perform and represent design. This theme track presents five papers that explore how designers use language and language models. We identify themes that cut across these papers to show how language can be used, constrained, adapted, and supplemented in different stages, processes, and domains of designing.

What Is Regenerative Design, Anyway? Foundations, Lexicons, And Interdisciplinary Intersections, Angela Kilford, Inge Panneels, Iohanna Nicenboim, Sonya Withers, Rob Phillips, Chris Speed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This theme track seeks papers that establish foundational understanding of Regenerative Design as an emerging paradigm in design research and practice. Moving beyond sustainability approaches focused on harm reduction and consequences, regenerative design actively fosters ecological and cultural renewal through relational, more-than-human perspectives. Recent work across biodesign, materials research, and ecological design demonstrates growing interest in regenerative approaches, yet the field lacks conceptual coherence and metrics of success. Existing papers span diverse domains—living materials, Indigenous design methodologies, multispecies interaction design, and data practices that challenge extractive digital economies and ecological restoration—often using inconsistent terminology and theoretical frameworks. This fragmentation limits …

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This track aims to investigate the epistemological and ethical framework of scientific publishing in design research, from a pluriversal perspective, that challenges dominant and Western models of knowledge production and dissemination. The track aims to approach some of the current tensions in the design publishing landscape as starting conditions for the discussion. We observe that technoscientific advancements (digital infrastructures, open access platforms, business models) are transforming academic publishing by enabling more transparent, collaborative and accessible models of dissemination. At the same time, the design research community continues to rely on traditional publishing models that are shaped by ethnocentric editorial norms …

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This theme track examines how participation is conceived and practised within systemic design for complex challenges. Designing for interwoven systemic crises requires the participation of those who both affect and are affected by these systems. Participation is reframed here not as a discrete event, but as a dynamic, ongoing meta-process that reconfigures power relations and influences what is recognised as meaningful data. Synthesising fifteen papers across three sessions, this editorial explores the tensions between care, justice, and ethics, moving beyond performative co-creation toward sustained, power-sharing partnerships.

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This theme track builds on emerging research that foreground time as relational, situated, and plural, while examining how a shift towards more-than-human temporalities could reshape design practices, material engagements, and ethical responsibilities. The track proposes five areas of exploration: a) experimental representations of entangled temporalities; b) material transformations, geological formations, and temporal scales of planetary life; c) accounts on practices of noticing, attuning, and orchestrating more-than-human times; d) designerly ways of negotiating and coordinating rhythms; and e) etico-onto-epistemological reflections on time and design. The contributions engage these areas across contexts such as coastal ecologies, plant systems, and bio-based materials, framing …

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The DRS2026 track titled “Design and the Public Sector: Contemporary Methods and Practices” examines the expanding relationship between design and the public sector, situating design as an active process in shaping public services, institutional change, and governance practices. Building on a trajectory established across DRS2022, DRS2024, and now DRS2026, this third Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group (PoGoSIG) hosted track reflects a shift from foundational and integrative concerns toward a more systems-based orientation. The following contributions are organised around four central themes: AI and New Technologies, Design and Infrastructure, Hope and Imagination, and Participation in Policymaking. Drawing on …

Design Research During And After Artificial Intelligence, Matthew Lee-Smith, Jesse Josua Benjamin, Mafalda Gamboa, Stephan Wensveen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The shift in design research caused by the escalation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking considerable space in the field. In a mixture of potential and undeniable risks, we looked for a blend of critique and practice, of analysis and foresight. In the set of papers to be published, we see a span of precisely that: reflexive re-orientations in the evaluation of what AI is doing to design, mirrored in current practices; and speculations on the after (en)during AI. In this editorial, we contextualize the research in the world it was produced in, exposing the during that unfolded hand-in-hand with …

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Textiles have long nurtured philosophical positions and metaphors, inquiries, as well as investigations of making and everyday life aesthetics and processes. Performing ontologically and epistemologically at different scales, textiles are often used as case studies in interdisciplinary research. This track presents a varied selection of papers that take textiles as starting points for critical and theoretical investigations of our world, our modes of production and conditions of living, as well as their intersections. These papers focus on the way that practice, perception, usability and critical inquiry are theorized through the lens of textiles, and the way that textiles inform and …

Play Design Materials: Entangled Matter And Making, Helle Marie Skovbjerg, Mathias Poulsen, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Sofie Kinch, Hyunjae Daniel Shin, Ricardo Conçalves Dutra, Eun Sun Park, Louise Ravnløkke, Jennifer Ann Skriver

DRS Biennial Conference Series

To design for play is to engage with materials, whether physical, virtual, symbolic, or ephemeral. In design for play we don’t just select materials; we shape and are shaped by them. Yet within design research, we must explore how materials do play, not merely support it. This theme track invites contributions that consider materials not as passive tools, but as active collaborators in a relational field where matter, mood, meaning, affect, and politics entangle. We are interested in how materials act not only as substrates for play, but as collaborators, provocateurs, and agents in the making of play, relationships, and …

Designing Preventive Health Technologies And Practices, Ayşe Özge Ağça, Teresa Almeida, Armağan Karahanoğlu, Anna Vallgårda

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This track explores how design influences preventive health technologies and practices, considering them as spaces for care, negotiation, and future planning. While preventive health is often examined through medical and technological lenses, design offers a unique perspective by focusing on lived experiences, care relationships, and the processes of making sense of things. In this editorial, we outline five contributions that investigate preventive health across diverse contexts, including behavior change, immersive care technologies, critical perspectives on healthcare systems, health communication, and bio-inspired design frameworks. These findings together show that designing for preventive health goes beyond just predicting or reducing future problems …

Counter Design: Changing Perspectives In Design Action, Yekta Bakırlıoğlu, Claudia Garduño García, Nicola Morelli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design continues to operate through assumptions inherited from its industrial and epistemic origins, yet the contributions gathered here unsettle those defaults and propose alternative orientations for practice. They examine how design problems are framed, how publics are organised, and how designers themselves are produced under specific historical and political conditions. Spanning urban governance, feminist methodologies, grassroots archival infrastructures, digital representation, relational approaches to AI, and critiques of universalised design expertise, the papers illuminate how counter-practices cultivate alternative publics and expand the epistemic boundaries of design. Counter Design appears not as a unified method or approach but as a constellation of …

Design Principles, Bianca Kóczán, Bianca Herlo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The theme track “Design Principles” includes twelve papers that frame design research as a situated and relational practice. Across the papers, design is understood as a way of generating meaning, mediating emotions, negotiating power, and shaping collective learning and action. Through collage, play, activism, empathy, process models, and rural cultural co-creation, the two sessions inquire how design frameworks, methods, and metrics actively produce relations between people, environments, institutions, cultures, and forms of knowledge. Together, the papers challenge neutral or universalising accounts of design, showing how design meaning emerges through language, context, bodies, affect, participation, and lived experience.

Bodies In Design: Rethinking Norms, Materials, Technologies, And Methods, Gözde Göncü-Berk, Sarah Kettley, Elif Ozden-Yenigun, Theodore Hughes-Riley

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The Bodies in Design track deals with the ways design engages with the human body with an emphasis on critical and creative investigations into the role of the body in contemporary design. While the body remains implicitly central to design thinking, it can be rendered invisible by a focus on the rational user or the cognitively motivated actor, and unreflexively normalized through forms of conservative and market-driven design agendas. Advancements in wearables and soft systems however, are reshaping design as a practice that engages the body in more considered and complex ways. We therefore sought contributions across material domains that …

Design Technologies, Beatriz Itzel Cruz Megchun, Michael Stead

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The theme track, ‘design technologies’, includes eleven papers covering a wide range of approaches to human-AI collaborations, reflections, and resistances in the design realm, process, and outcomes. In this editorial, we identify two broad themes, human-AI design collaborations and critical discourse on AI in design, to unfold the different design stances and intents with regard to AI in praxis and education. We want to ignite a conversation in which we reflect on our stances as designers, while respecting and honouring the poise of other humans, on the AI emerging landscape, and question how each of us uses design-AI exchanges in …

Regenerating The “Sustainability Project”: Transitioning Design And Sustainability Research Into The 21st Century, Michael Stead, David Sánchez Ruano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design has been a key protagonist in the story of the “Sustainability Project.” Yet, with capitalism, emissions, biodiversity loss and social injustice increasing, it might be argued that ‘the project,’ and design’s role in it, have failed to engender the sustainable transitions the planet and its people urgently require – and indeed deserve. This theme track aims to counter this defeatist narrative. Emphasising the ever-evolving relationship between Design and Sustainability, the track reflexively recognises that although design can often find itself a main driver of environmental unsustainability, it can similarly be harnessed as a critical conduit for positive planetary change. …

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 …

Factors Impacting Healthcare Utilization Among African American Young Adults, Deebari Barisi

Symposium of Student Scholars

The aim of our research is to examine how everyday discrimination, experiences with health care, medical mistrust, and health literacy are related to the postponement and utilization of healthcare service in young African American individuals. The question we're trying to answer is if the occurrence of medical mistrust affects the postponement of medical care in African American young adults. Our hypothesis is that higher levels of medical mistrust and postponement of medical care will have a positive correlation. Previous research has shown that there is an inverse relationship between perceived racism, medical mistrust, low health literacy, previous negative experiences and …

Evaluation Of Lidar, Rgb, And Thermal Sensors For Uav Detection, Dheeraj Kondragunta, Akshat Chitta, Sai Prannav Murali, Joseph P. Stanziano, Owais Ahmed, Daniel Byers

Symposium of Student Scholars

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating without authorization pose a serious risk, especially in areas like airports, military installations, and other critical infrastructure. UAVs are difficult to detect due to their small size, speed, and low altitude flight capabilities. While LiDAR, RGB imaging, and thermal sensing technologies are widely used in surveillance and object detection, limited research has directly evaluated their effectiveness in detecting UAVs of varying size at different distances. This research aims to systematically evaluate LiDAR, RGB, and thermal sensors to determine which detection modality has the highest detection accuracy for intruder UAV identification. In this project, a controlled …

Ai For Mental Health: A Design Science Approach, Amaya Ballard, Ewaoluwa Jaiyesimi

Symposium of Student Scholars

AI-based mental health chatbots are increasingly being introduced to expand access to psychological support, especially where stigma, cost, scheduling constraints, or limited availability make traditional therapy services difficult to use. Many people are beginning to turn to these tools for immediate, low-threshold assistance when experiencing stress or emotional distress. However, we still know relatively little about the situations in which individuals feel comfortable relying on AI for support, or when they would prefer human help instead, creating uncertainty about how such systems should be designed and deployed responsibly. This study examines how users evaluate AI-based mental health support compared with …

Research Barriers And Mentorship Quality, Amelia Baker, Fernanda Herrera-Candanedo, Abeer A. Kayser, Coraima Perez

Symposium of Student Scholars

Undergraduate research is widely acknowledged as a high-impact educational practice, contributing to students’ academic success, professional readiness, and retention (Bhattacharyya et al., 2018). However, disparities persist in access, mentorship quality, and institutional support with many students’ reporting uncertainty about how to access opportunities (White et al., 2023). Prior research has found that stipends significantly influence participation, especially among underrepresented students (Edwards et al., 2024; Messier et al., 2013). Other studies underscore the critical role of mentor accessibility and supportive research environments (Behar-Horenstein et al., 2010; Byars-Winston et al., 2023). Little research has examined the impact of these identified barriers on …

Design With Purpose: Implementing Human-Centered Design Through Locks Focus Groups, Brianne Opoku-Agyemang, Ria Reddy

Symposium of Student Scholars

Firearm injuries are a leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States, with firearm access primarily occurring within the home (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2026). Secure firearm storage is key to preventing firearm-related injuries, yet 309 many parents lack access to education and resources that support safe storage practices. Evidence-based home visiting (EBHV) programs aim to address this issue by conducting ongoing visits and working directly with families. This study explores how parents prefer to interact with a web-based educational component of a program called Learning to Create Kid-Safe Spaces (LoCKS), a secure firearm …

Evaluating The Agreement Between Body Composition Measures With Changes In Hydration Status, Holt A. Schadler, Bret M. Schadler, Alexis Lewis

Symposium of Student Scholars

Purpose: Dual-energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) and InBody (IB) machines are commonly used in research to measure body composition. We sought to evaluate the agreement of these two devices with a change in hydration status. Methods: Twenty-Three (12 females) (mean ± SD; age, 22.6 ± 2.3yrs; height, 169.1 ± 9.2cm; weight, 80.4 ± 35.03 kg) participants were recruited for a hydration intervention study. Each participant collected their urine over a 24-hr period to assess osmolality (UOSMO) and volume (UVOL), as well as body composition assessments using DEXA and IB before (PRE) and after (POST) the intervention. Body composition variables included Fat …

Towards Bounding The Behaviour Of Neural Networks, Emmanuel Nwankwo

Symposium of Student Scholars

Modern neural networks are typically considered black-box systems: while they are able to achieve state-of-the-art performance in many domains, it is difficult to elicit the reasons behind their decisions. From this, a sub-field of artificial intelligence called eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) arose to fill this gap. One approach to XAI is based on the symbolic compilation of a neural network's behavior to a logical formula. However, such approaches are limited in scalability, due to the fundamental difficulty of the problem. This research instead proposes an incremental and anytime approach to explaining the behavior of a neural network, for image recognition. …

The Influence Of Relative Back Squat Strength On Countermovement Jump Performance In College-Aged Males, Holt A. Schadler, Bret M. Schadler, Jacob Grazer

Symposium of Student Scholars

Purpose: Countermovement Jump (CMJ) performance can provide insight into the force production capabilities relative to the individuals ability during a dynamic task. In conjunction with power output during a CMJ, few investigations have looked to identify the influence of relative strength on these types of tasks. This research aims to establish a link between the relative strength (RS) of an athlete and CMJ performance in jump height (JH) and force production values that were surveyed. Methods: Seventeen males (mean ± SD; age, 23.2 ± 3.8yrs; height, 1.78, ± 6.10m; weight, 84.8 ± 13.2kg) were recruited for this study. Each participant …

Closing Keynote: Publishing In 2026: How We Got Into Such Trouble And How We Get Out Of It, Virginia (Ginny) Barbour

FORCE 2026

It would be hard to find anyone who is currently involved in scholarly publishing who think it works well for them, or who think that the system is underpinned by the values they care about. And all of this is at a time when trust in what is published has never been more important.

We are at a time when what we do now will shape the future of scholarly publishing, and the choices we make will shape how open, trustworthy and reproducible that future system is. These choices provide both opportunities and challenges for everyone involved in the system …

How Systems Use The Research Organization Registry (Ror) For Research Integrity, Maria Gould, Adam Buttrick

FORCE 2026

As scholarly publishers strive to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record, verified author affiliations have become a key metric to assist with assessment of manuscript submissions. For instance, a recent article in Nature used author affiliations to identify problematic research practices at particular institutions, and a recent STM report on Trusted Identity in Academic Publishing points out that a verified author affiliation valuable as it links an individual to an organisation, providing a route for accountability where there would otherwise be none.

Knowing that there is a confirmed link between an author and a reputable research organization is a …

From National Pid Strategies To A Global Pid Standard: Defining What Counts As A Pid, John Chodacki

FORCE 2026

Over the last two years, national and regional PID strategies, including the US National PID Strategy, have helped communities to adopt and integrate persistent identifiers into research workflows. These strategies have highlighted a crucial next step: reaching a shared understanding of what actually constitutes a PID.

Building on the momentum of these strategies, NISO and RDA-US have launched a working group to develop a formal standard defining the characteristics of a persistent identifier system. This standard will help funders, institutions, infrastructure providers, and policymakers make consistent decisions about which identifiers to mandate, support, and integrate into workflows. This presentation will …

Edge Ai And Iot-Based Intelligent Smart Irrigation System For Sustainable Agriculture, Afra Alshamsi

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

Traditional agriculture faces several challenges, including excessive water consumption, inefficient irrigation practices, and the increasing demand for sustainable food production. The rapid advancement of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides opportunities to develop intelligent agricultural systems that improve resource management and support precision farming. This thesis presents an Edge AI and IoT-based smart irrigation system designed for real-time environmental monitoring, automated irrigation control, and intelligent irrigation prediction to support the optimal growth of arugula plants. The proposed system continuously monitors key cultivation parameters, including soil moisture, temperature, humidity, light intensity, pH, nutrient levels (NPK), and water …