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2024

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Exploring The 'Defining-Finding Dilemma' In Design Research: Insights From A Series Of Speculative Co-Design Workshops, Mayane Dore, Joseph Lindley, David Green, Jesse Benjamin Jun 2024

Exploring The 'Defining-Finding Dilemma' In Design Research: Insights From A Series Of Speculative Co-Design Workshops, Mayane Dore, Joseph Lindley, David Green, Jesse Benjamin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper shares the results of a series of speculative co-design workshops that employed sketches and visual metaphors to facilitate collective discussions about a hypothetical Design Research database. The primary objective of these workshops was to explore the challenges related to documenting, sharing, searching, and discovering Design Research examples while simultaneously addressing underlying questions surrounding knowledge-making in the field. Following this approach, we identify six distinctive qualities that characterize Design Research, shedding light on what is referred to as the defining-finding dilemma. The paper finally suggests potential pathways for interaction design to navigate this issue through alternative modes of interaction.

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A Theory Instrument For Reimagining Embodied Practices, Ayşe Özge Ağça, Jelle Van Dijk, Jacob Buur, Harun Kaygan Jun 2024

A Theory Instrument For Reimagining Embodied Practices, Ayşe Özge Ağça, Jelle Van Dijk, Jacob Buur, Harun Kaygan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Embodied Sensemaking Theory describes how people make sense in ongoing interactions with the social and material world. It has potential in projects aimed at changing embodied practices. However, designers often find it challenging to use this complex theory. We build on recent research on tangible ‘Theory Instruments’ for designers. We designed a Theory Instrument for embodied sensemaking with design students who design for social interactions and with young people who investigate their energy consumption. Our analysis of 12 experimental sessions shows how Embodied Sensemaking Theory helps reimagine human practices towards more sustainable futures. Our contribution is two-fold: We show that …

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A Third Place As A Space To Foster Citizen Participation And Their Empowerment: The Case Of “La Ruche À Projets”, Louise Masciarelli, Maxim Lamirande, Isabelle Dalimier, Audrey Mertens, Catherine Elsen, Clémentine Schelings Jun 2024

A Third Place As A Space To Foster Citizen Participation And Their Empowerment: The Case Of “La Ruche À Projets”, Louise Masciarelli, Maxim Lamirande, Isabelle Dalimier, Audrey Mertens, Catherine Elsen, Clémentine Schelings

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This exploratory qualitative research underlines architectural properties of a res-idential house that was repurposed as a temporary creative space. Findings were compared against existing theory on third places (particularly creative spaces) and their relationship with citizen participation, empowerment, and social change. Overall, the “homey” character creates a sense of belonging and occu-pants seem eager to decorate and furnish with personal effects. Findings reveal tensions between large open and smaller closed spaces to reflect on how flow, accessibility, occupancy, and intimacy are affected. Occupant behaviors lead to wonder about the tensions between community, codesign, empowerment, and ownership. Findings help question how …

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Empowerment Through Participation? Three Case Studies Of Social Design Projects With Disadvantaged Female Communities In Hungary, Janka Csernák Jun 2024

Empowerment Through Participation? Three Case Studies Of Social Design Projects With Disadvantaged Female Communities In Hungary, Janka Csernák

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Participatory methods are widely used in design, but it’s important to take a critical stance towards how they impact vulnerable communities in the context of today's societal crisis (Juarez et al., 2008). This paper presents recent findings from the comparison of three social design research projects conducted in Hungary, which point towards evidence that empowerment by design can be beneficial for underprivileged women. This notion of empowerment is defined through developing embodied expertise, problem-solving skills, and agency in a design context. In order to understand how design can contribute to building such notions in participants, the author contextualizes the community’s …

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Pluriversal Design In One Situated Place: An Approach Rooted In The Interface Between The Local And The Global, Iris Y. Luo, Renata M. Leitao Jun 2024

Pluriversal Design In One Situated Place: An Approach Rooted In The Interface Between The Local And The Global, Iris Y. Luo, Renata M. Leitao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This essay posits that a Place-Based approach is the prerequisite for fostering fruitful and mutually-respectful form of social design in the emerging paradigm of pluriversality – contextualized within the contemporary global order. The concept of "Place" serves as the nexus between the Local and the Global: it's where intermediaries reside, translation unfolds, and power dynamics intensify. By examining four historical phases from the pre-colonial period through post-modernity, this work looks into the evolution of the concept of Place and its role in the construction of power. This discussion encourages designers to ground themselves in the local, embedded within communities, while …

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Training Designers In The Pluriverse: The Experience Of Studio Wudé With Leather Crafts In Senegal, Caroline Grellier, Cécile Ndiaye Jun 2024

Training Designers In The Pluriverse: The Experience Of Studio Wudé With Leather Crafts In Senegal, Caroline Grellier, Cécile Ndiaye

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article reflects on design and the training of designers from a West African perspective, based on the experience of Studio Wudé, a workshop which has been working in Senegal since 2006 to transmit endogenous knowledge about leather transformation. Through an analysis of the Studio's pedagogical design approach, the aim is to question in West African contexts the relevance of the historical dissociation between thinking and doing, at the genesis of a Western industrial capitalist design culture whose spread in West Africa has accelerated over the past five years via the emergence of higher design education based on a Western …

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Conversations, Intra-Views And Diffractions As Tools For Analysis: Design Research When Conducted By A Team, Bilge Merve Aktaş, Hazal Gümüş-Çiftçi Jun 2024

Conversations, Intra-Views And Diffractions As Tools For Analysis: Design Research When Conducted By A Team, Bilge Merve Aktaş, Hazal Gümüş-Çiftçi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design researchers develop methods that blend design expertise and theoretical knowledge. Hence, design research emphasizes the importance of explicating intuitive knowledge and hands-on experience. Collective research that relies on more than one designer’s endeavors has also been expanding. In this paper, we discuss how to make sense of data when collected by two design researchers in separate spaces, under different conditions. Our project centered on the materiality of repair and involved data collection in two contexts. One researcher facilitated repair workshops, engaging in repairs and consulting with participants, while the other conducted individual repair work. Through biweekly meetings and conversations, …

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Transformative Sketching: Unveiling Character Identity In Two Dimensions, Sanya Jain, Prasad Bokil Jun 2024

Transformative Sketching: Unveiling Character Identity In Two Dimensions, Sanya Jain, Prasad Bokil

DRS Biennial Conference Series

We understand this world through our sense perceptions and past associations. The main objective of the study was to sketch the face of a character with a specific identity, so that it aligns with its intended description, thus ensuring it is perceived as intended. The use of shapes and features of animals have helped to derive characters that represent an archetype. The digital representations of these characters find their place along two distinct axes: (i) transitioning from elaborate to minimal and (ii) shifting between animalistic and human features. The methodology harmoniously merges diverse character appearances, eliminating fragmentation. We place significant …

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Repositioning Design As The New Attractor In Sustainability, Clee Zhuo Wang, Yiying Wu, Laurent Gutierrez Jun 2024

Repositioning Design As The New Attractor In Sustainability, Clee Zhuo Wang, Yiying Wu, Laurent Gutierrez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design’s increasing participation in sustainability raises questions on what sustainability it serves and how. Contextualized in a cartography of sustainability discourse and its four typologies, we establish that design’s efforts on sustainability to date are largely affiliated to the mainstream socio-technological pathway, a continuation of the modernization project deepening the crises. This affiliation, while granting design access to the increasingly active field of sustainability, risks reducing its versatile epistemology to amusing representation. Drawing from Human-Nature Relationships (HNR) research, we propose the utilization of the "sustainability space" as an analytical tool. The processual, embodied, and affective qualities inherent in design are …

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Frame Journey: A Complementary Approach At Understanding Well-Being In Factory Environments For Labor Workers, Mathis Andreas Buchbinder, Victor Bittencourt, Remko Van Der Lugt, Daan Oldenhof, Niek Zuidhof, Sebastian Thiede, Daniel Saakes Jun 2024

Frame Journey: A Complementary Approach At Understanding Well-Being In Factory Environments For Labor Workers, Mathis Andreas Buchbinder, Victor Bittencourt, Remko Van Der Lugt, Daan Oldenhof, Niek Zuidhof, Sebastian Thiede, Daniel Saakes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

With a diversifying workforce well-being is an increasingly important topic to be addressed in manufacturing. Whereas mental well-being has been well studied in the HCI community for knowledge workers, well-being for factory workers has been mainly assessed in terms of ergonomics and task optimization. Concerns are about safety and accident prevention, but not about the tacit experience of the workers themselves. In this paper, we analyze an assembly line from two viewpoints: the HCI/Design, and the industrial engineering. We show the differences and commonalities in methods and identify both sides limitations. We present four themes of well-being which emerge from …

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Drifting By Friction: Playing With Ontologies Of Design, Mathias Poulsen Jun 2024

Drifting By Friction: Playing With Ontologies Of Design, Mathias Poulsen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper, I will trace the ‘drift’ that has happened in my PhD project, ‘De-signing for Playful Democratic Frictions’. I argue that it has been driven primarily by the friction that emerged between the diverse components in my ‘research-assemblage’. The aim is not to resolve the friction, but rather to enhance and fol-low it as far as I can. I suggest that a playful attitude is helpful for lingering with this friction, and that such a stance can allow us to see things otherwise ob-scured by tales of historical necessity. This notion of drifting by friction may in-spire strategies …

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Designing Through Ecological Soundscape To Foster Human-Nature Interaction, Francesca Valsecchi, Herun Chen, Qingyu Zhang Jun 2024

Designing Through Ecological Soundscape To Foster Human-Nature Interaction, Francesca Valsecchi, Herun Chen, Qingyu Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sense of hearing provides an effective, immersive and empathetic way to observe, map and explore places with a more-than-human approach. In our contemporary mediascape inundated by visual stimuli, the rediscovery of sound offers a different understanding of the world. By discussing two research-based sound design projects, this study discusses 1) the potential of using soundscape as an empathetic research tool in multispecies ethnography and 2) how soundscape as a communication media could stimulate more-than-human exploration and empathy. Such design outcomes develop an empathic and conscious understanding of human-nature interaction, even in an urban context. Intersecting science, research and creative practices, …

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“Feelings About The Other Body:” Caring Through And Forward In Design For Play, Ida Kathrine Hammeleff Jørgensen, Harun Kaygan Jun 2024

“Feelings About The Other Body:” Caring Through And Forward In Design For Play, Ida Kathrine Hammeleff Jørgensen, Harun Kaygan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper considers designers’ embodied engagements while designing for play from the lens of “care.” We consider such engagements as socio-material rela-tions of care, following recent theorizations of care within care studies. Relying on observations from a variety of activities undertaken by students during a two-week design workshop on embodied play design, we present a theoretical model that identifies two orders of care in design activities: First order, “care through,” indexes the immediate objects that designers attend to in the here-and-now while implementing procedures, practices and tools provided by diverse design methods. Second order, “care forward,” indicates the future beneficiaries …

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Designing In Argentina With Indigenous Groups, Catalina Lucía Agudin Jun 2024

Designing In Argentina With Indigenous Groups, Catalina Lucía Agudin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Indigeneity in Argentina has historically been oppressed. The project presented here is a collaboration between design researchers and students from Buenos Aires and Indigenous groups in Northern Argentina that combines anthropologi-cal and design methods. Participatory experiences are at the core of the pro-posal. Interactions within the communities led to various lines of work. The top-ics varied from textile production, natural coloring, traditional nourishment, and construction to didactic materials for schools within intercultural bilingual edu-cation. The results show not only material outcomes, but also how the project moved its participants. In light of the widely differing worldviews, the learning process became …

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Transitions To Multispecies Futures In The Design Classroom, İdil Gaziulusoy, Eeva Berglund Jun 2024

Transitions To Multispecies Futures In The Design Classroom, İdil Gaziulusoy, Eeva Berglund

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sustainability Transitions and Futures is a mandatory course of the Creative Sus-tainability master’s program in the Department of Design of Aalto University de-livered jointly by the co-authors. It aims to provide a basic understanding of how sustainability transitions projects unfold in practice and the ways through which designers can contribute to these projects as part of interdisciplinary teams. For two consecutive years, we focused on multispecies sustainability. We have pro-vided the students with the necessary theoretical and critical lenses through a curated selection of guest lectures from fields including law, philosophy, urban ecology and planning. For the practical part, the …

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Design Anthropology For Ethics Of Care And Emergence: Reflections From An Energy Transition Project, Gijs Van Leeuwen, Abhigyan Singh Jun 2024

Design Anthropology For Ethics Of Care And Emergence: Reflections From An Energy Transition Project, Gijs Van Leeuwen, Abhigyan Singh

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper describes a design anthropology approach toward design ethics, which understands design ethics in a relational and emergent manner. We characterize how ethical issues and judgments emerge from the continuous stream of social interactions, collaborations, and relations that constitute the design process. The approach recognizes that there is a fundamental uncertainty in how social engagements and associated ethical issues in a design process unfold. Design anthropology aims to remain open to such emergent understandings, and fosters a sense of empathy and practice of care towards collaborators. The approach is illustrated by reflecting on empirical findings from an interdisciplinary energy …

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Design And Transdisciplinary Learning In Community-University Collaborations For A Just Transition: The Case Of The Action Learning Course In Valencia, Spain, Ana Escario-Chust, Carlos Delgado Caro, Pablo Aranguiz, Guillermo Palau-Salvador, Álvaro Fernández-Baldor Jun 2024

Design And Transdisciplinary Learning In Community-University Collaborations For A Just Transition: The Case Of The Action Learning Course In Valencia, Spain, Ana Escario-Chust, Carlos Delgado Caro, Pablo Aranguiz, Guillermo Palau-Salvador, Álvaro Fernández-Baldor

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The Action Learning (AL) master course at the Universitat Politècnica de València endorses during 3 months the collaboration of the students and professors with community leaders from the vulnerable district of Orriols. By combining the diverse backgrounds of the students and the community leaders, it fosters a deeper and collaborative understanding of complex societal issues of the district. Through systems thinking and design thinking tools, they diagnose the context, envision a desired future, and take action to realize it in a transformative and creative way. It creates a bidirectional learning environment, engaging with real-world challenges and breaking down barriers between …

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Speculative Design Positions On Future Liveable Cities, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Emrah Baki Ulas, Densil Cabrera, Clare Cooper, Phillip Gough, Kazjon Grace, Luke Hespanhol, Marius Hoggenmueller, Wenye Hu, Kiran Ijaz, Yaron Meron, Andres Pinilla, Callum Parker, Ricardo Sosa, Yasemin Tekmen Araci, Jody Watts, Bow Wu, Mariana Zafeirakopoulos, Rohan Lulham Jun 2024

Speculative Design Positions On Future Liveable Cities, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, Emrah Baki Ulas, Densil Cabrera, Clare Cooper, Phillip Gough, Kazjon Grace, Luke Hespanhol, Marius Hoggenmueller, Wenye Hu, Kiran Ijaz, Yaron Meron, Andres Pinilla, Callum Parker, Ricardo Sosa, Yasemin Tekmen Araci, Jody Watts, Bow Wu, Mariana Zafeirakopoulos, Rohan Lulham

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designing for future liveable cities demands a spectrum of perspectives, each responding in some way to global and local challenges, from climate change to safe housing. However, enabling spaces for often juxtaposed, contradictory and cooperative voices, both hopeful and cautionary, can be challenging. This paper is a first step in harnessing pluralistic expression through design fiction as an approach to speculating on design’s role in future liveable cities. In presenting individual speculative positions, authors attempt to reconcile their personal experiences, disciplinary expertise, and vision. This collective voice represents disciplinary diversity including – but not limited to – artificial intelligence, co-design, …

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Paradigm Shifts In Research Assessment For Scientific Publishing: Emerging Models In A Pluriverse Perspectivs, Lorela Mehmeti, Elena Maria Formia, Eleonora Lupo Jun 2024

Paradigm Shifts In Research Assessment For Scientific Publishing: Emerging Models In A Pluriverse Perspectivs, Lorela Mehmeti, Elena Maria Formia, Eleonora Lupo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the realm of design, research publication undergoes a transformative shift in evaluation and emerging forms that prompt investigation into the distortive impact of the current assessment framework on publication diversity. The complexity of assessing research quality within institutional frameworks and career metrics hinders innovation, and globally, debates on impact factors drive a shift to qualitative, responsible evaluation. The article explores how collaborative methodologies enable new assessment practices for design communities in the Global South, challenging Western-centric peer-review norms to adopt a more pluriversal perspective. It includes an introduction problematising the status of publication assessment in the general scientific domain. …

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Coastliners Lab: Mapping For Environmental Spatial Justice At The Water’S Edge, Gokcen Erkilic Jun 2024

Coastliners Lab: Mapping For Environmental Spatial Justice At The Water’S Edge, Gokcen Erkilic

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Coastliners Lab is a trans-media critical mapping practice that focuses on the border conditions of bodies of water and how they shape socio-material processes of human and environmental relations in urban and extra-urban settings. The lab works with a deep cartographic layering of aerial photographs, historical maps, news reports, video footage, field notes, interviews, and more to explore embodied map-making methods that define new roles for design toward spatial justice. It highlights agencies and political ecologies underlying the contested anthropogenic impacts on the margins of transforming landscapes. Istanbul’s political and ecological struggles with the surrounding bodies of water have been …

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Participatory Design Research, Documenting The Experience Of Gainesville Local Drag Performers., Gilberto Corona Jun 2024

Participatory Design Research, Documenting The Experience Of Gainesville Local Drag Performers., Gilberto Corona

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This case study documents the process of research, identification, and co-creation —with members of the drag community— a visual ethnography of Gainesville's drag culture. This study documented drag performance as an integral element of public-facing queer communities and took place during 2021 and 2022. Drag GNV aim is to contextualize the importance and nuance of drag as an activity supporting LGBTQ+ individuals and communities and as a publicly visible format for sharing elements of LGBTQ+ community identity with broader audiences. This research focused on conversations with the queer community (performers and allies) and centered reflections on drag venues as safe …

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Cultivating Future-Oriented Responsibility In Design With Care, Irem Tekogul, Laura Forlano Jun 2024

Cultivating Future-Oriented Responsibility In Design With Care, Irem Tekogul, Laura Forlano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design futures -- as a subfield and as an approach -- responds directly to the precarity and uncertainty of our present. Within this context, the notion that "there will be no future" becomes the dominant vision. This paper argues that design, as a future-making praxis, should embrace ‘care’ to be able to respond to precarity. This paper draws on feminist care ethics and the concept of ‘matters of care’ to explore the theo-retical foundations for a care-informed approach to cultivate future-oriented respon-sibility in design. Care is situated, responsive and relational, and it resists reduction to step-by-step methods or toolkits. Thus, …

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Co-Creating Pluralistic Futures: A Systematic Literature Review On Participatory Speculative Design, Yingfei Ye, Duoduo Zhang Jun 2024

Co-Creating Pluralistic Futures: A Systematic Literature Review On Participatory Speculative Design, Yingfei Ye, Duoduo Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In an increasingly uncertain future context, participatory speculative design be-come a future probe for exploring complex socio-technical issues and a diverse world. Compared to speculative design, the focus of participatory speculative de-sign shifts from artifacts to process, empowering the public through multi-stakeholder participation. Building upon future prototypes and scenarios, partic-ipants and designers co-create potential pluralistic futures, and democratize im-agination. This paper, based on a literature review of recent research in this field, outlines three practical pathways of participatory speculative design, which are characterized as "technical speculation," "social speculation," and "integrated speculation," along with seven participatory methods that can be used …

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The Heritage Language And Graphic Landscape Of London's Chinatown, Robert George Harland, Angelina Hang Pan, Alison Barnes Jun 2024

The Heritage Language And Graphic Landscape Of London's Chinatown, Robert George Harland, Angelina Hang Pan, Alison Barnes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The preservation of minority heritage through language is widely recognised as an important means for safeguarding ethnic identity within multicultural settings. This paper investigates the visibility of "heritage language" through the lens of graphic heritage within the distinctive ethnic enclave of London's Chinatown. Located in the City of Westminster, Chinese identity is officially designated on street nameplates that demarcate geographic boundaries as well as depict a shift in the cultural influence of this migrant community. In this study, the visual analysis of 209 retail signs displays 313 instances of language. The research findings indicate the extent of retention of heritage …

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Prospective Design: A Structuralist Design Aesthetic Founded On Relational Qualities, Fernanda Botter, Frederick M. C. Van Amstel, Marco André Mazzarotto Filho, Cayley Guimarães Jun 2024

Prospective Design: A Structuralist Design Aesthetic Founded On Relational Qualities, Fernanda Botter, Frederick M. C. Van Amstel, Marco André Mazzarotto Filho, Cayley Guimarães

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Prospective design is a research program founded on critical dialogues between Global South and Global North philosophies of design. Prospective design expands the current work on designing sociotechnical transitions by including the contradiction between “forces of nature” and “human forces” as a structural feature of Western society, which generates patriarchal and feminist worldviews, colonies and metropolises, and capitalist and socialist economic systems. In prospective design, contradictions are sensed, expressed, and worked out through a structuralist design aesthetic founded on the concept of existential structures, i.e. an accumulated set of relationships needed to reproduce human life. Instead of changing them directly, …

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Workplace Wellbeing And Interior Design: A Systematic Literature Review, Nadine Fayyad, Busayawan Lam, Richard Evans, Youngok Choi Jun 2024

Workplace Wellbeing And Interior Design: A Systematic Literature Review, Nadine Fayyad, Busayawan Lam, Richard Evans, Youngok Choi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper offers a systematic review of the literature on workplace wellbeing and interior design, exploring the creation and evaluation of appealing environments that enhance employee wellbeing. This paper adopts a systematic approach to review using the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Multiple databases were searched. The final review included 55 studies out of 472 that examined factors related to workplace wellbeing. The findings of this study suggest that background noise and open-plan workspaces negatively affect workplace wellbeing, while visual connections with plants and natural objects enhance it. This paper extends the current literature …

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Story Seeds: Creating Interactive Narratives For Visitors Of Outdoor Heritage Sites, Saad Ahmed Maqbool, Debbie Maxwell Jun 2024

Story Seeds: Creating Interactive Narratives For Visitors Of Outdoor Heritage Sites, Saad Ahmed Maqbool, Debbie Maxwell

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The lack of interpretation when considering the outdoor cultural heritage sites has the potential to limit the engagement and educational potential of these sites, as well as presenting a missed opportunity for visitor engagement. We pre-sent an approach that explores the development of interactive stories specific to users that documents their journey through a physical site via a tangible artefact – The Abbot’s Book. We describe the Research through Design process, which in-cluded interviews with Museum and Heritage experts, and the creation of two design prototypes that acted as probes to explore the potential to provoke emo-tional, empathetic relationships with …

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Embedding Ethics In Practice: Preempting Ethical Issues In The Field By Reflecting On The Methodology Of Shadowing Within Cancer Care Services, Erika Renedo Illarregi, Yeray Sañudo, Laura Hartman, Marieke Bak, Jorge Sierra-Pérez Jun 2024

Embedding Ethics In Practice: Preempting Ethical Issues In The Field By Reflecting On The Methodology Of Shadowing Within Cancer Care Services, Erika Renedo Illarregi, Yeray Sañudo, Laura Hartman, Marieke Bak, Jorge Sierra-Pérez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers have been conducting research within healthcare with a limited ethical reflections, only considering aspects to get the approval from the corresponding ethics committee. That fails to reflect on the issues that may arise during fieldwork (ethics in the field), especially since designs involvement is precisely to understand intangible aspects such as personal values and experiences. In view of this and responding to the DRS 2022 conversation on Design+Ethics, we explore the knowledge gap in the intersection of ethics, design and healthcare, and present a case study in the context of service design within oncology carepath. Upon reviewing the existing …

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Cultural Transition By Digital Technologies: Invasion Or Empowerment?, Zhiming Liu, Han Sun, Zhijun Peng, Zhenyun Duan, Deng Pan Jun 2024

Cultural Transition By Digital Technologies: Invasion Or Empowerment?, Zhiming Liu, Han Sun, Zhijun Peng, Zhenyun Duan, Deng Pan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

With the growing influence of digital transformation on global communities, critically examining the interaction between digital technologies and traditional cultures is becoming more pressing, especially in minority groups. This paper explores the complex relationships between digital technologies and cultural landscape in Eastern Tibet based on a 34-day ethnography study by photographic materials from 28 counties and cities. Through looking into these visual materials, also including observations and interviews, the tension surrounding commercialization, public relations, creative expressions, and the environment are uncovered. We discuss the unintended and pervasive consequences of modernization, including cultural homogenization and the rise of individualism, imagining possible …

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Power Signifiers: The Subtle Forms Of Power In Design Practice With Marginalized Craft Communities, Seher Tabasum Mirza Jun 2024

Power Signifiers: The Subtle Forms Of Power In Design Practice With Marginalized Craft Communities, Seher Tabasum Mirza

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper discusses how craft practice may offer empowerment strategies for critically reflective spaces, that allow for social transformation, using the case of traditional textile communities of women in rural Pakistan where development opportunities are limited. It uses the reflective practice of its design researcher, to explore established power relations, and search for new dialogues that build meaningful relationships for creating new forms of power in interrelated social, development and design contexts. This practice-based discussion contends with the embedded layers of power arising from social constructs and those extending beyond. A combined methodology, ‘Power Signifiers’ is presented as a critically …

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