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Crafting Legacies With Care: Speculative Frameworks For The Digital Afterlife, Sara Bilić, Jessica Sorenson Jun 2026

Crafting Legacies With Care: Speculative Frameworks For The Digital Afterlife, Sara Bilić, Jessica Sorenson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Emerging grief technologies promise to preserve the dead through data, yet often neglect the relational, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of memory and identity. This paper proposes a care-centred framework for digital legacy design, grounded in the speculative concept of A Living Will, which uses augmented reality to enable co-created posthumous memories between the living and the deceased. Through autoethnography, participatory workshops, and theoretical analysis, the study critically examines how care ethics and co-authorship can transform digital legacy from an act of preservation to one of participation. By treating identity as distributed and legacy as relational, we reframe grief technology as …

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Is This The “Me” They Want To See? Exploring Near-Future Adaptations Of Ai For Professional Visibility And Self-Presentation, Forouzan Ebrahimi, Mahan Mehrvarz, Nazli Cila Jun 2026

Is This The “Me” They Want To See? Exploring Near-Future Adaptations Of Ai For Professional Visibility And Self-Presentation, Forouzan Ebrahimi, Mahan Mehrvarz, Nazli Cila

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As professional collaboration increasingly shifts to digital and asynchronous modes, workers use collaboration technologies not only to coordinate tasks but also to manage their professional visibility and reputation. To examine how these practices could evolve as AI becomes more embedded in the collaboration environment, a speculative design approach was adopted to make near-future scenarios experiential. We prototyped speculative AI systems that support visibility through employee self-report reflection, performance scoring, AI-enhanced meeting appearance, communication delegation, and AI-use disclosure as probes for a series of immersive and interactive scenario-based interviews. The findings uncover selective disclosure of AI use to manage professional image, …

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A Slow Ethos In A Fast World: Persistence And Compromise In Craft Commercialization, Shih Chieh Shen, Yueh Hsiu Giffen Cheng Jun 2026

A Slow Ethos In A Fast World: Persistence And Compromise In Craft Commercialization, Shih Chieh Shen, Yueh Hsiu Giffen Cheng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how a micro craft brand sustains its original sincerity toward craftsmanship while confronting the challenges posed by industrialized production processes and economic constraints. Based on a fifteen-year practice-led case of craft entrepreneurship, it analyzes reflective negotiations between persistence and compromise, ideal and capital, craft and industry. Employing the Double Diamond model and Aristotle’s Four Causes, the research interprets the process of craft commercialization and examines the underlying motivations that sustain the existence of micro craft brands. The findings reveal that practical limitations can be transformed into drivers of creativity. “Compromise” no longer signifies failure but, when approached …

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Erased By Default: Reorienting Digital Welfare Systems With Care And Participation, Emma Holden, P.J. White, Aisling Tuite, Ray Griffin Jun 2026

Erased By Default: Reorienting Digital Welfare Systems With Care And Participation, Emma Holden, P.J. White, Aisling Tuite, Ray Griffin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The shift from analogue to digital-first government service delivery positions design as a central gatekeeper of welfare access and civic recognition. However, these systems frequently act upon blanket assumptions regarding trust, digital literacy, and engagement, inadvertently marginalizing the most vulnerable of society. This paper examines how digital welfare interfaces produce forms of non-response, interpreted both as user disengagement and systemic erasure. Grounded in a qualitative, design-led study with marginalized young adults in Ireland’s Youthreach programme, alongside the perspectives of frontline support and service providers. The study documents how these users navigate and resist platforms that presume universal digital competence. Their …

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Imagining Speculative Design Tools With A Capability Approach, Olga Barbara Lackner Jun 2026

Imagining Speculative Design Tools With A Capability Approach, Olga Barbara Lackner

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While the more-than-human is often made visible on the individual, contextual level, it is nevertheless vital to shape sustainable practices at policy and industry level to create sustained change. If it was a necessity to include non-human stakeholders in the creation of new buildings, in the manufacturing of new products and more, what could the needed design tools look like? This paper envisions design practices shaping a world where the more-than-human is already accepted and anchored in law through narration. Subsequently, an attempt is made to create tools that find practical application in this speculative scenario, creating a more-than-human practice …

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The ‘Cuteness Matrix’: Mapping Cuteness As An Affective Strategy For Purpose-Led Communication Design, Guo Yi Xian Yix, Mimi Nguyen, David Preston Jun 2026

The ‘Cuteness Matrix’: Mapping Cuteness As An Affective Strategy For Purpose-Led Communication Design, Guo Yi Xian Yix, Mimi Nguyen, David Preston

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Cuteness is often dismissed as trivial or decorative. Yet research across neuroscience, psychology, and cultural theory reveals it as a powerful affective force that captures attention, evokes empathy, and encourages prosocial behaviour and well-being. Cute’s affective potency also renders it ethically ambivalent, capable of manipulation as much as comfort. Despite its ubiquity, cuteness remains under-theorised in design research, a notable gap for a discipline concerned with communication, emotion, and human connection. Addressing this gap, this study conducts an interpretive systematic literature review of publications from 1943 to 2025, identifying 65 key scholarly sources. Interdisciplinary insights are synthesized into the ‘Cuteness …

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Toward Caring Urban Design: Developing Care Practices Through Thinking With Forno Vagabondo, Miriam Kreuzer, Flora Mammana Jun 2026

Toward Caring Urban Design: Developing Care Practices Through Thinking With Forno Vagabondo, Miriam Kreuzer, Flora Mammana

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Urban crises and power inequalities intensify processes of urbanization that reinforce exclusion, segregation, and displacement. Within urban design, care has recently been discussed as an ethical and political framework for addressing these dynamics. However, little attention has been paid to how care-ethical principles can be translated into concrete urban design practices. This paper responds to this gap by developing four caring practices for urban design. Using dialogical inquiry through conversation as a method, the research brings together feminist care ethics with situated, practice-based knowledge from the urban design project Forno Vagabondo – a mobile social oven traveling through a valley …

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Multispecies Convivial Learning: Art-Based Interventions At A Japanese Public Junior High School, Sakura Kotokawa, Tomohide Mizuuchi Jun 2026

Multispecies Convivial Learning: Art-Based Interventions At A Japanese Public Junior High School, Sakura Kotokawa, Tomohide Mizuuchi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examined the conditions under which multispecies convivial learning (MCL) can be established within the institutional setting of a Japanese public junior high school, and the kinds of transformations it enables. Integrating Participatory Action Research (PAR) and co-design, interventions A–E were conducted over 2023–2024. Reflexive thematic analysis revealed four interlinked elements—(1) self-understanding and expression, (2) sociality, (3) agency, and (4) co-creation with other species—which collectively transformed the classroom into an “ecological dialogic space” where humans and other living beings learn together. The study contributes by conceptualising MCL—previously under-theorised in public education—as a practice of redesigning relationships, and by specifying …

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From Boundaries To Bindings. Reframing Sound-Driven Design In Narrative Exhibitions, Micol Riva, Yi Zhang Jun 2026

From Boundaries To Bindings. Reframing Sound-Driven Design In Narrative Exhibitions, Micol Riva, Yi Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Digital technologies and human-centred design approaches have transformed the cultural heritage sector, shifting the focus towards the visitor experience and advocating for collaboration between designers and non-designers. This article draws on design research and museography to discuss the role of sound in the digital cultural heritage, focusing on sound-driven exhibition design practices. The ephemeral nature of sonic experiences challenges the concept of “boundary objects”, reframing them from blueprint-like physical or abstract schemes into an Ingoldian concept of “bindings", promoting mutual understanding and collaboration across different communities. We focus here on two narrative exhibitions we were directly involved in: a participatory …

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Making With Virtual Materials: Reframing “Making As Knowing” For Situated Narratives In Large-Scale Vr, Shijie Ming, Ziqiang He, Ning Zhao, Haopeng Yuan, Furui Sun, Ke Jiang Jun 2026

Making With Virtual Materials: Reframing “Making As Knowing” For Situated Narratives In Large-Scale Vr, Shijie Ming, Ziqiang He, Ning Zhao, Haopeng Yuan, Furui Sun, Ke Jiang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Classic “Making as Knowing” relies on tangible resistance from physical materials, but this framework is insufficient for intangible virtual materials in Large-Scale VR, often leading to the “problem of spectacle.” This research explores how “Making as Knowing” is reframed in this context, using a Research through Design (RtD) approach with a novel “Mandated Design Rationale Protocol.” The paper argues that “making” transforms into a rigorous epistemic practice of “systemic and experiential tuning” to generate “Knowledge of Experience” (K-OF). A reception study (N=31) confirmed a strong alignment between the designer’s K-OF targets and visitors’ takeaways. This work offers a traceable RtD …

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How Does Costume Illustration Sketching Mediate Between Visual Development Concept Art And The Practical Construction Of Film Costumes?, Sophie Fretwell, Jon Burgess Jun 2026

How Does Costume Illustration Sketching Mediate Between Visual Development Concept Art And The Practical Construction Of Film Costumes?, Sophie Fretwell, Jon Burgess

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sketching is a vital form of communication across creative industries. As an essential part of the filmmaking process, costume illustration functions as a mediating design practice where sketching translates concept art into wearable garments. Historically rooted in hand-drawn fashion illustration, contemporary costume sketching has evolved into a globalised digital practice that bridges artistic vision and physical construction. Through this lens of design mediation and embodied expertise, the study draws on industry interviews and reflective practice to examine the costume illustrator’s changing role as translator between the digital concept and physical costume. Costume sketching solves practical challenges based on knowledge of …

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‘Wet’ Policymaking: Exploring The Potential Of Open-Water Swimming In Agonistically Designing Affective Environmental Policies, Kseniia Obukhova, Jan Boon, Liesbeth Huybrechts Jun 2026

‘Wet’ Policymaking: Exploring The Potential Of Open-Water Swimming In Agonistically Designing Affective Environmental Policies, Kseniia Obukhova, Jan Boon, Liesbeth Huybrechts

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the dryland of environmental governance, design can help cultivate what we call ‘wet’ policymaking: an approach that embraces affect, emotional engagement, and more-than-human (MTH) relations as integral to ecological decision-making. Drawing on fieldwork with open-water swimming collectives and policy initiatives in Flanders, Belgium, we explore swimming as an agonistic inquiry into wet policy futures, revealing the tensions between the prevailing dryness and the potential wetness of environmental—particularly water-related—governance. Theoretically, the paper weaves together affective agonistic democratic thought, political design, and MTH perspectives to articulate wetness as both a political and design orientation. We argue that open-water swimming in Flanders …

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Perceived Quality And Future Applications Of Transparent Wood: Insights From An International Focus Group, Eva Vanessa Bruno, Beatrice Lerma, Doriana Dal Palù Jun 2026

Perceived Quality And Future Applications Of Transparent Wood: Insights From An International Focus Group, Eva Vanessa Bruno, Beatrice Lerma, Doriana Dal Palù

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Transparent wood (TW), obtained by removing lignin from natural wood and infiltrating it with bio-resin or bioplastic, has attracted renewed scientific and industrial interest over the past fifteen years as an effective alternative to plastics and glass. The research explores how this perceptual hybrid can be meaningfully presented in professional design contexts to support future use of TW. A twofold action was carried out during a focus group involving 12 international project professionals. On one hand, a sensory–perceptual analysis was conducted to identify the distinctive characteristics of the material; on the other, future application scenarios were explored through creative techniques …

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Creating A Regenerative Design Practice That Gives Back To People And Planet: Lessons From Stakeholder Interactions In Industrial Agriculture, Cecilie Baann, Birgitta Ralston, Jannike Falk-Andersson, Line Johanne Barkved Jun 2026

Creating A Regenerative Design Practice That Gives Back To People And Planet: Lessons From Stakeholder Interactions In Industrial Agriculture, Cecilie Baann, Birgitta Ralston, Jannike Falk-Andersson, Line Johanne Barkved

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper considers the development of a regenerative design practice as a grounded and participatory method that fosters sustainable design and solutions, sensitive to relational practices and values, even when these are thought to be negligible. We draw upon theories of ecological relationality, in combination with posthuman theory, to argue that holistic regenerative design should aim to foster ownership of the design processes amongst affected actors. To do so, our regenerative design practice allows participants to search for, promote, and expand existing practices of relationality, a focus we argue have been missing in the existing research on regenerative design. Drawing …

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Co-Speculating With Ai: From Prompts To Practices, Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Maria Luce Lupetti, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Dave Murray-Rust Jun 2026

Co-Speculating With Ai: From Prompts To Practices, Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Maria Luce Lupetti, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Dave Murray-Rust

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents a vocabulary for co-speculation with AI, developed through an experimental design studio with 55 postgraduate students who used generative AI tools to explore more-than-human design practices of decentering. The vocabulary spans multiple scales of interaction—from individual prompting acts to extended collaborative sessions—serving descriptive, analytic, and generative functions. Whilst it was developed through the specific context of decentering practices, we argue that this vocabulary is transferable to diverse design domains. It offers designers and researchers a framework for more reflective and intentional engagements with AI, contributing to emerging discussions on how design practice evolves when speculation becomes a …

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Toward An Ecology Of Imagination In Benwell, Ivan Pecorari, Clara Crivellaro, Usue Ruiz Arana, Ahmed Kharrufa, Vasilis Vlachokyriakos Jun 2026

Toward An Ecology Of Imagination In Benwell, Ivan Pecorari, Clara Crivellaro, Usue Ruiz Arana, Ahmed Kharrufa, Vasilis Vlachokyriakos

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates the emergence of imagination as a participatory ecological process among children and adolescents in a deprived post-industrial area of Benwell, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Responding to ongoing debates about representation and agency in More-than-Human design, we advance an ecology of imagination as a theoretical framework. We situate imagination as a dynamic, evolving network of relations among diverse and ephemeral spatial-temporal actors. Drawing on a summer of ethnographic fieldwork, the paper analyses three examples of imaginative play to illustrate how spatial, material, and affective interactions generate conditions for collective creative play between humans and non-humans. The discussion explores …

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Towards A Common Language For Representation Tools In More-Than-Human Design, Berre Su Demir, Aykut Coskun Jun 2026

Towards A Common Language For Representation Tools In More-Than-Human Design, Berre Su Demir, Aykut Coskun

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Representation tools in More-Than-Human Design (MTHD) are growing rapidly as researchers increasingly seek to include nonhuman perspectives in design. However, guidance for selecting, designing, and evaluating such tools is limited, leaving designers to navigate trade-offs in user-friendliness, empathy, and resources without a shared structure. While recent work has attempted to address this by introducing parameters for MTHD representation tools, their relevance and usefulness remain unexamined. We explore how these parameters resonate in practice through workshops with 12 MTHD researchers, demonstrating that the parameters serve as decision supports during design and use, as lenses for reflection, and as a shared vocabulary …

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Designing Digital Ghosts: Creative Access To Web Archives, Dorsey Kaufmann, Andrea Kocsis Jun 2026

Designing Digital Ghosts: Creative Access To Web Archives, Dorsey Kaufmann, Andrea Kocsis

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents Digital Ghosts, a practice-based research project exploring how creative and tactile approaches to web archives can reimagine engagement with digital cultural heritage and GLAM collections. Using exploratory visualisation of metadata, the project transforms the digital into interactive multimedia installations. Operating within the “post-digital” condition of GLAM, the project investigates how design can mediate between the technical infrastructures of preservation, traditional archivist practice, and the experiential, interpretive needs of users. Rather than treating messy humanities data as a failure, the project frames absence and inconsistency as evidence of the web’s fluid temporality and of institutional decisions about what …

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Winds, Sand, Companions, Humans: Attuning Bodies For Post-Antropocentric Worlds, Eliana Sánchez-Aldana, Laura Novik, Pablo Hermansen Jun 2026

Winds, Sand, Companions, Humans: Attuning Bodies For Post-Antropocentric Worlds, Eliana Sánchez-Aldana, Laura Novik, Pablo Hermansen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This Laboratorio de Futuros held in Mar del Plata (Argentina), brought together architecture and design professors and master’s students from Argentina, Chile, and Colombia to explore an Epimethean approach to design—acting after rather than ahead of action, embracing delay, reflection, and care. Rooted in voices and material practices from the Global South, participants engaged in embodied exercises fostering inter-learning through reciprocity and complementarity. We explored the territory holistically with our whole bodies, attuning to wind, sand, sea, and insects, and reframing design as the enactment of relational infrastructures through affective attunement and planetary excesses. Our bodies became sensors, registering the …

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Caring For Memory: A Neuroscientific Framework For Commemorative Exhibition Design, Caterina Vettraino Jun 2026

Caring For Memory: A Neuroscientific Framework For Commemorative Exhibition Design, Caterina Vettraino

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Contemporary memorial exhibitions presume emotional intensity produces durable memory, employing affective saturation strategies that neuroscientific research reveals as counterproductive. Emotional arousal consolidates central affective impressions whilst compromising contextual understanding: visitors retain visceral sensations but lose historical processes. This paper develops a theoretical framework integrating Assmann's cultural memory theory, neuroscience of memory consolidation, and care ethics to inform commemorative exhibition design. A four-modality taxonomy, individual, collective, spatial, and sensory, translates psychological memory categories into operationally distinct design approaches. Digital mediation constitutes a transversal narrative apparatus serving memory transmission across all four modalities, functioning as infrastructural support. Design parameters specify spatial configurations, …

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Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Tala Pedraza, Laura Sofía Riveros Jun 2026

Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Tala Pedraza, Laura Sofía Riveros

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Café Séneca, the largest affinity chapter of the Uniandinos Alumni Association in Colombia, is dedicated to the wellbeing of older adults and led by retired members. Despite its popularity, the chapter lacked a strategic design structure, relying on inertia to shape its activities and limiting its ability to evolve sustainably. This paper presents a reflective case study of SenSilver, a situated participatory strategic design framework developed for organizations led by and for older adults. Combining business, positive, and empowerment-oriented design with biological, social, and psychological dimensions of aging, the framework was applied through a research-consultancy process with Café Séneca. The …

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More-Than-Human Perspectives In Teaching Technology Design: From Research To Classroom, To The Real World?, Elisabet M. Nilsson, Rikke Hagensby Jensen, Wolmet Barendregt, Daisy Yoo, Anne-Marie Hansen, Eva Eriksson Jun 2026

More-Than-Human Perspectives In Teaching Technology Design: From Research To Classroom, To The Real World?, Elisabet M. Nilsson, Rikke Hagensby Jensen, Wolmet Barendregt, Daisy Yoo, Anne-Marie Hansen, Eva Eriksson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of considering more-than-human (MtH) perspectives in the design of technology, especially in academia. However, to cause real-world impact, it is essential that such awareness is translated into practical action. One way to do so is by educating new designers to apply MtH perspectives. Teaching MtH to design students requires teachers to develop educational materials on the role that MtH perspectives play in design. Currently, there are not many examples of educational materials that teachers can take inspiration from. This paper therefore presents a collection of practical teaching activities to introduce students to …

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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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Exploring Future Smellscapes With Smellwalks, Zuzana Neupauerová, Simone Ashby, Supraja Sankaran Jun 2026

Exploring Future Smellscapes With Smellwalks, Zuzana Neupauerová, Simone Ashby, Supraja Sankaran

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how present-day smell encounters stimulate participants to reflect on possible futures and those scents that are emergent or susceptible to becoming transformed or lost altogether. We describe our speculative design setup whereby participants assumed the persona of an olfactory researcher from the year 2100, armed with a smell passport and set of vials, and tasked with time-traveling back to 2025 to capture scent samples. Smellwalk observations span three themes: environmental awareness of scent, the functional role of future scents, and social and cultural dimensions of olfaction. We discuss those scents which participants found to be particularly salient …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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