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2026

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Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt Jun 2026

Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The field of behavioral design uses insight into humans’ cognitive tendencies to help people make better, more rational choices. Yet individuals’ perceptions of what seems rational—let alone viable, or even conceivable—are not universally shared and are often informed by their embodiment as much as cognition. For example, fear of being scolded can inhibit overweight or obese individuals from seeking preventive healthcare, people with ‘invisible’ disabilities may feel pressured to pass as able-bodied to fit in, and Black individuals may avoid ordinary activities likely to prompt ‘birding while Black’ confrontations. Depicting cognition as the single site of judgment and decision-making therefore …

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Design For Healthy Ageing: Developing And Applying A Resource Model, Yumei Dong, Hua Dong, Tingting Wang, Richard H. M. Goossens Jun 2026

Design For Healthy Ageing: Developing And Applying A Resource Model, Yumei Dong, Hua Dong, Tingting Wang, Richard H. M. Goossens

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The sustainable development of an ageing society necessitates active participation of older people, requiring effective integration of their individual and collective resources into design. However, designers’ understanding of older people’s resources is rather limited. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of older people’s resources to support design for healthy ageing. Through literature review and interviews with 19 recently retired Dutch seniors, twelve resource types were identified, categorised into six dimensions: practical, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, and time. These categories were synthesised into a Diamond Model of Resources. The framework, encompassing both resource categories and the Diamond Model, was …

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Collaging Queer Decolonial Worlds: Applied Techniques In Design, Alexandra Eleazar, Cara Flores Jun 2026

Collaging Queer Decolonial Worlds: Applied Techniques In Design, Alexandra Eleazar, Cara Flores

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Collaging is a form of design that references, remixes, and transforms the past, while holding potential for queer decolonial imaginaries. Through bringing together decolonial and queer theories, we propose an exploration of collage as a design technique that seeks to tear through dominant imaginaries to create more emancipatory visualizations. To explore this, we first turn to feminist theoretical understandings of collage, and then ask: how does collaging show up as a distinctly queer and decolonial design practice? Then, we utilize examples from our field work to demonstrate how collage can function as a queer and decolonial design practice that shows …

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Responsible Retail And Branded Environments, Katelijn Quartier, Mia Münster, Bethan Alexander, Zakkiya Khan, Marina Ricci, Francesca Murialdo Jun 2026

Responsible Retail And Branded Environments, Katelijn Quartier, Mia Münster, Bethan Alexander, Zakkiya Khan, Marina Ricci, Francesca Murialdo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As spaces of consumption adapt to social, environmental, and technological shifts, design is emerging as a powerful agent of change. This track investigates the future of retail, hospitality, and other consumer-facing environments—including cafés, concept stores, and hybrid formats—through the lens of responsibility. Topics addressed include, but are not limited to: Restorative and regenerative approaches to consumption are gaining momentum, alongside wellbeing-driven design that recognises how the built environment can support mental, physical, and emotional health. At the same time, socially and environmentally sustainable practices—often grounded in circular economy principles—are redefining how we think about materiality, consumption, spatial design, and business …

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Participatory Design As Emotional Infrastructure: Supporting Collective Reflection And Resilience After The Pandemic, Xinyu Zhang Jun 2026

Participatory Design As Emotional Infrastructure: Supporting Collective Reflection And Resilience After The Pandemic, Xinyu Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

COVID-19 has left enduring emotional distress for many citizens even as public attention to the crisis has faded. In this context, participatory design (PD) is increasingly recognised as a dialogic and restorative practice that enables collective reflection and emotional recovery through shared meaning-making. This study examines how participatory design supports citizens in reflecting on pandemic-related psychological distress, with particular attention to war metaphors widely used in governmental and media communications during COVID-19. While these metaphors mobilised collective action, they also intensified perceptions of risk and vulnerability. The research is based on a year-long participatory design project, W&M, involving nine participants, …

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Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities, Austin Toombs, Seora Park, Tilar Manion, Xinyun Zhang Jun 2026

Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities, Austin Toombs, Seora Park, Tilar Manion, Xinyun Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design research in social computing has used the concept of care to describe how technologies help or hinder interpersonal support online. Yet opportunities remain to explore how the subtle, everyday forms of care that have long sustained communities can inform social technology design. Addressing this, we present a collection of design patterns that translate culturally specific, everyday social practices like passeggiata (Italian social stroll) and sobremesa (Spanish post-meal lingering) into design prompts for digital platforms. Our collection has five pattern families: Shared Habits and Routines, Atmospheric Qualities, Collective Identities, Facilitation Roles, and Boundary Practices. The patterns map these families to …

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The Language Of Reflexivity: Investigating Limitations And Opportunities For Reflexivity In Prevailing Design Process Models, Asa River Jackson Jun 2026

The Language Of Reflexivity: Investigating Limitations And Opportunities For Reflexivity In Prevailing Design Process Models, Asa River Jackson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Prevailing design methodologies and models tend to contain language specific to pragmatic and contextual foundations of design history and culture. Consequently, these models provide limited support for the diverse and constructive nature of contemporary design practice, and particularly, lack the presence of embedded reflexivity. This paper seeks to determine the predominant and excluded language of 66 design process models, which function as projections of instruction and value in design dissemination. In the analysis, special attention is given to omissions within these process models, as well as their differences among more recently documented methodologies. As a result, the paper explores reflexive …

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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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Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot Jun 2026

Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores a pedagogical intervention that leveraged speculative enactment as a portal to utopian futures. During a Blended Intensive Program, students were presented with a design challenge that addresses workplace inclusion by reimagining it as a “future otherwise.” The challenge was projected into a future temporality, allowing participants to respond to contemporary challenges with radical imagination. Drawing on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as method and Bloch’s (1986) notion of concrete utopias, this study investigates how engaging with these enacted visions as sensorial expression serves as a mechanism to unleash potentialities latent in the present. Situated at the intersection of Design …

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How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros Jun 2026

How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Aside from design theories and design methods, the design research field has built numerous methods for observing design practices. Most of them can be classified into two categories: ethnographies, which consist of sharing the daily lives of designers, and experimental approaches, which reconstruct design situations in the controlled environment of a laboratory. This study retraces the history of these methods, that exist almost independently from one another creating silos within the design research field. Throughout their respective developments, both ethnographies and experimental approaches indicate the same blind spot: the study of material traces of processes that have already taken place. …

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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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Buying, Consuming And Discarding: Consumer Value And Furniture Lifetimes, Katryn Elizabeth Elizabeth Furmston Jun 2026

Buying, Consuming And Discarding: Consumer Value And Furniture Lifetimes, Katryn Elizabeth Elizabeth Furmston

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The way consumers buy, care for, and discard their furniture reveals complex motivations that extend beyond cost and function. This paper examines the connection between consumer values, emotional attachment, and discard practices in determining the lifespan of furniture. Drawing on data from a mixed-methods approach that uses a survey, ethnographic observations, and object interviews, it analyses how consumers negotiate repair, justify replacement, and assign value to objects. It is argued that furniture consumption cannot be reduced to personal preference and market availability. Instead, it is influenced by cultural norms, consumer mobility, and access to durable goods. This paper proposes design …

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Projects As Actors In Design Education, Barak Pelman, Edith Bouton Jun 2026

Projects As Actors In Design Education, Barak Pelman, Edith Bouton

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how design projects function as actors within studio-based pedagogy, drawing on Actor-Network Theory. Data were collected over a nine-month fieldwork at a higher education institution, covering courses in architecture, industrial design, and ceramics design. The study was conducted as a Research-Practice Partnership, uniting education researchers and design practitioners to shift the focus away from practitioners' specialized knowledge and experiences by positioning them alongside critical perspectives from K-12 educational research. Our findings demonstrate how students and instructors view projects as active actors in the design process across three main dimensions: 1) Through language: instructors and students personify projects, …

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Constraints As Knowledge Amplifiers: Understanding How Research-Through-Design Makes Design Knowledge Visible, Amit Kundal, Tina Mangwani Jun 2026

Constraints As Knowledge Amplifiers: Understanding How Research-Through-Design Makes Design Knowledge Visible, Amit Kundal, Tina Mangwani

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Research-through-Design (RtD) continues to grapple with how prototypes can generate comparable design knowledge beyond stand-alone studies. This paper addresses that gap by studying how knowledge takes shape in constrained design settings, where limitations themselves become sources of insight. Using the case of affordable dental care in India, chosen for its material, spatial, and procedural limitations, the study shows how constraints can make tacit design understandings more visible. From this work, three categories of knowledge emerged: embodied negotiation of ergonomics, enacted hygiene, and modularity-for-resilience. These categories describe how designers learn through doing, maintaining, and adjusting within limitations. Rather than focusing on …

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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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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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Frame Excavation: Revealing And Critiquing Existing Problem Frames To Improve Migrants’ Awareness Of Public Services, Amir Pakpour, Ville-Veikko Minkkinen, Parnian Ghaderiazad, Oğuz Buruk, Thomas Olsson Jun 2026

Frame Excavation: Revealing And Critiquing Existing Problem Frames To Improve Migrants’ Awareness Of Public Services, Amir Pakpour, Ville-Veikko Minkkinen, Parnian Ghaderiazad, Oğuz Buruk, Thomas Olsson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The prowess of design to reframe complex sociotechnical issues has made it appealing for tackling wicked problems faced by the public sector. Effective reframing requires an understanding of the problem frames in use and their shortcomings to avoid past mistakes. Literature on this groundwork for reframing is sparse. To address this gap, we report a case study on assisting migrants’ awareness of public services, involving interviews with service coordinators working in a Finnish municipality and migrants, and a co-design workshop to surface assumedly problematic frames. We then concretized the frames through an investigation of solution artifacts, encompassing in-person services, websites, …

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Integrating Attachment And Social Identity Theories In The Co-Design Of A Hokkien Nursery Rhymes App, Kaiqing Chen Jun 2026

Integrating Attachment And Social Identity Theories In The Co-Design Of A Hokkien Nursery Rhymes App, Kaiqing Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study presents the co-design of Hokkien Nursery Rhymes, an educational app supporting intergenerational language learning and cultural transmission. Grounded in Attachment Theory, the design promotes parent–child co-use to strengthen emotional bonds and create a secure, trusting learning atmosphere. Social Identity Theory informs the app’s cultural framing, reinforcing children’s sense of belonging to their linguistic and cultural heritage. Using participatory methods creative workshops with children and interviews with families from diverse sociocultural backgrounds—the study translated insights into tangible design features: emotionally responsive virtual companions, collaborative parent–child tasks, culturally meaningful narratives, reward mechanisms, and personalized audio from caregivers. These elements foster …

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Agency In The In-Between: A Reflexive Civic Design Inquiry Into Agency Drift, Saskia Pouwels, Koen Van Turnhout, Gabriele Ferri Jun 2026

Agency In The In-Between: A Reflexive Civic Design Inquiry Into Agency Drift, Saskia Pouwels, Koen Van Turnhout, Gabriele Ferri

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Citizen participation initiatives often struggle to engage diverse communities meaningfully. 'In-between' spaces are celebrated as sites where power asymmetries can be renegotiated, yet this spatial metaphor obscures critical temporal dynamics. Through reflexive analysis of a ten-month design justice collaboration with Amsterdam's Stedelijk Team Participatie, this paper examines how temporal positioning shapes agency strategies within participatory processes. Applying temporal-relational agency theory, we identify a phenomenon we term "agency drift", the multidirectional movement across agency strategies as participants navigate institutional and community temporal orientations. Our findings show that making these temporal dynamics visible transforms in-between spaces from sites where drift simply happens …

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Living With Multimorbidity: How Design Might Support Older Adults Use Of Health Technology For Self-Management., Zhuoning Fu, Emilene Zitkus, Sharon Cook, Luke Harmer Jun 2026

Living With Multimorbidity: How Design Might Support Older Adults Use Of Health Technology For Self-Management., Zhuoning Fu, Emilene Zitkus, Sharon Cook, Luke Harmer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Older adults face complex challenges in managing multimorbidity. As the ageing population increases, digital health technology (DHT) offers significant potential to address these challenges while supporting independent living. However, current research remains largely condition-specific and technology-driven, providing limited insight into how digital health can support older adults with multimorbidity (OAwM) in self-management for independent living. This study investigates how digital health technologies can be inclusively designed to support older adults living with multiple and complex health conditions. Drawing on qualitative inquiries into older adults’ self-management practices, it develops an understanding of the challenges existing in multimorbidity management within independent living …

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Beyond Ephemerality: Boundary Objects And The Plasticity Of Listening In Collaborative Design, Stefano Delle Monache, Dave Murray-Rust, Elif Özcan, Nicolas Misdariis Jun 2026

Beyond Ephemerality: Boundary Objects And The Plasticity Of Listening In Collaborative Design, Stefano Delle Monache, Dave Murray-Rust, Elif Özcan, Nicolas Misdariis

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sound-driven design requires shared objects to bridge disciplinary divides and support collaboration between diverse expertise. Boundary Objects and Intermediary Objects typically fulfil this need, yet the ephemerality of sound is in apparent conflict with the stability needed for this boundary work. However, we argue for extending the object beyond the ephemeral sound wave to encompass tools, user interfaces, methods, and lexicons that provide material persistence. To support this we develop an analytical framework combining BO and IO properties and apply it to a selection of sound design tools in the literature. We argue that the required interpretive flexibility and perceived …

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Three-Eyed Seeing: A Framework For Regenerative Ecological Design, Korey Wetherell, Chris Speed, Laura Albareda Jun 2026

Three-Eyed Seeing: A Framework For Regenerative Ecological Design, Korey Wetherell, Chris Speed, Laura Albareda

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The design field is increasingly engaging with the challenge of regenerating Earth systems within planetary boundaries, yet the epistemic foundations of regenerative ecological design remain diffuse. This paper introduces Three-Eyed Seeing as a design framework that brings Western empirical methods, Indigenous relational knowledge, and futural imaginaries into accountable dialogue. The framework supports plural ways of knowing without collapsing them into a single worldview and positions designers as mediators across multiple ontological commitments. Drawing on an autoethnographic field encounter with pollinators at Kaʻena Point in Hawaiʻi alongside ecological systems-oriented design research, the study explores how these distinct ways of knowing can …

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Belonging Across Borders: A Framework For Transnationally Resonant Retail Design, Zakkiya Khan Jun 2026

Belonging Across Borders: A Framework For Transnationally Resonant Retail Design, Zakkiya Khan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As global cities become increasingly transnational, retail environments have become key sites where mobile publics negotiate belonging through spatial and commercial experience. While transnational consumers are widely theorised, the spatial implications of their participation in global retail remain underexplored. This conceptual paper draws from transnational and diaspora studies to argue that retail design operates as a transcultural interface where familiarity and difference coexist, shaping plural modes of belonging. It proposes the concept, ‘Transnationally Resonant Retail Design’, a conceptual framework outlining how affective resonance, cultural mediation, and social recognition foster civic belonging within commercial spaces. These principles are illustrated by the …

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From Metrics To Meaning: Enabling Iterative Design For Multi-Stakeholder Engagement And Behavioural Change In Systemic Climate Transitions With Quali-Quantitative Assessment And Sensemaking, Rohit Mondal, Sabrina Bresciani, Morgan Ricard, Ilenia Piergallini, Nikhil Chaudhary, Francesca Rizzo Jun 2026

From Metrics To Meaning: Enabling Iterative Design For Multi-Stakeholder Engagement And Behavioural Change In Systemic Climate Transitions With Quali-Quantitative Assessment And Sensemaking, Rohit Mondal, Sabrina Bresciani, Morgan Ricard, Ilenia Piergallini, Nikhil Chaudhary, Francesca Rizzo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Cities pursuing systemic approaches to climate neutrality increasingly leverage bottom-up strategies to foster multi-stakeholder engagement, enabling societal and behavioural transformations. However, assessing their impact through conventional quantitative indicators alone fails to capture the complexity of change. Design for systemic climate transitions enables cities to build pluralistic understandings of impact through mutual and reflexive learning that cultivates collective intelligence and shared insights. In this study, we analyse the quantitative indicators, qualitative data and collective sensemaking from 53 European cities participating in the EU Mission Cities: findings show that collective sensemaking has become a key enabler of reflexive learning, allowing cities to …

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Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective, Yan Yang, Zhaoyu Wang, Jia Ren, Tie Ji, Han Meng Jun 2026

Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective, Yan Yang, Zhaoyu Wang, Jia Ren, Tie Ji, Han Meng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite the advancement of sustainable design, a critical paradox persists: many practices remain embedded in industrial paradigms, failing to address deep-seated socio-natural contradictions. Grounded in the Eco-Marxist "metabolic rift" framework and informed by recent Agricultural Innovation Design (AID) research, this study proposes a key path for mending these rifts. The research offers a systemic framework for intervening in complex social-ecological systems. The primary conclusions are: (1) metabolic rifts are fundamentally rooted in relational alienation, characterized by the disruption of healthy and reciprocal metabolic relationships between society and nature; (2) structural sustainability requires reshaping metabolic relationships across social, ecological, and intergenerational …

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From Critique To City Council: A Design Framework For Inclusive Public Discourse, Piper Schuerman Jun 2026

From Critique To City Council: A Design Framework For Inclusive Public Discourse, Piper Schuerman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Using Fayetteville, Arkansas, as a primary case study, this paper frames city council meetings as dynamic systems of discourse, where a citizen’s ability to contribute is shaped by the design of institutional environments and mediating artifacts. Drawing on field studies and participatory design methods, the author dissects how the design of such meetings supports and hinders equitable participation. To address these challenges, the author turns to another structured form of discourse: the design critique. Contemporary critique practices offer participatory frameworks for exchanging feedback that redistribute power and invite diverse perspectives. Building on these parallels, the author prototypes a critique-inspired, multimodal …

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Care Through Ambiguity: Findings From Participatory Health Design, Xiran Mi, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Shujie Xie Jun 2026

Care Through Ambiguity: Findings From Participatory Health Design, Xiran Mi, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Shujie Xie

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how ambiguity can function as a condition for care in participatory health design. Through patient-centred interviews and a participatory workshop, it examines how uncertainty and emergent understanding shape the relational and ethical dimensions of care. The study finds that ambiguity enables participants to remain responsive within unequal structures and to negotiate care through hesitation, metaphor, and embodied expression, highlighting how relational sensitivity operates within asymmetrical power relations. Care is reframed not as a stable act of giving, but as a social process of continual adjustment and mutual dependency. By embracing indeterminacy in design practice, this research shows …

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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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From Passive List To Active Script: Menu Design As A Strategic Agent For Restaurant Sustainability Transformation, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Yijia Jiang, Kin Wai Michael Siu Jun 2026

From Passive List To Active Script: Menu Design As A Strategic Agent For Restaurant Sustainability Transformation, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Yijia Jiang, Kin Wai Michael Siu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Restaurants face the challenge of lacking systematic integration pathways in their sustainability transition (ST), struggling to fully incorporate sustainable principles throughout their operational systems. In this context, menu design demonstrates significant potential as a strategic tool to drive comprehensive ST. This study employs Goffman's dramaturgical theory to conceptualize restaurants as "social theaters," examining how menus function as "scripts" to systematically drive ST. Through analysis of eight representative cases, the research: 1) develops an integrated framework comprising three strategic dimensions, including nine key design intervention tactics that provide concrete implementation pathways for restaurant ST; 2) reveals three agency mechanisms of menus, …

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The Paradox Of Richness: A Discourse-Centered Framework For Equitable Visualization, Fangbo Wu, Canyu Jiang, Yanlin Yin, Yonghong Liu Jun 2026

The Paradox Of Richness: A Discourse-Centered Framework For Equitable Visualization, Fangbo Wu, Canyu Jiang, Yanlin Yin, Yonghong Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The proliferation of new technologies, notably GenAI, alongside augmented and virtual reality, has produced a paradoxical situation in visualization practice: while offering unprecedented multimodal richness, their complexity erects new barriers to entry, thereby exacerbating inequality and undermining design's democratic promise. Although research at the micro-level of visualization techniques abounds, a critical and systematic methodology for addressing the inherent power dynamics and design justice issues from meso- and macro-perspectives remains conspicuously absent. This paper intervenes by adapting an analytical framework from Critical Discourse Analysis to embed design justice within visualization practice. We propose a four-layer framework—Culture, Context, Meaning, and Expression (CCME)—as …

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