Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Discipline
Institution
Keyword
Publication Year
Publication
Publication Type
File Type

Articles 781 - 810 of 253795

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Redefining Design Practice As A Sensory And Decentred Experience, Azeem Hamid, Umar Hameed, Kristi Kuusk, Nithikul Nimkulrat Jun 2026

Redefining Design Practice As A Sensory And Decentred Experience, Azeem Hamid, Umar Hameed, Kristi Kuusk, Nithikul Nimkulrat

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how sensory focused practice can decentre the role of the design educator-researcher within design education, reframing learning as a relational and embodied form of practice-led design research. Drawing on a sensory workshop with foundation-year design students in Lahore, Pakistan, it explores how listening, movement, and tactile engagement foster reflective awareness and co-creation. Informed by theories of embodied cognition and relational pedagogy, the study considers how agency in learning environments extends beyond the educator to include materials, atmospheres, and collective experiences. Sensory practice is presented not as an adjunct to design but as integral to it, cultivating attentiveness, …

Go to article

Queer(Ing) Epistemology By Design: Tmi-Web—A Relational Knowledge System For Intersectional Data Science And Affective Queries, Jess Parris Westbrook, Coraline Ada Ehmke Jun 2026

Queer(Ing) Epistemology By Design: Tmi-Web—A Relational Knowledge System For Intersectional Data Science And Affective Queries, Jess Parris Westbrook, Coraline Ada Ehmke

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Queer(ing) is a practice of questioning, unsettling, and liberating that resists normative ways of knowing. This paper advances a Queer(ing) epistemology for intersectional data science and offers TMI (Too Much Information)-WEB as a working case. This open source, theory-driven qualitative data analysis ecosystem treats identity, lived experience, and power as relational, contextual, and co-constructed. Built on a human-centered graph data model, it reimagines databases as dynamic knowledge systems rather than neutral containers. Authentic, identity-driven personas emerge from participants’ own narratives, while affective queries invite researchers to explore (and experience) patterns of harm, coping, joy, and self-acceptance across intersectional lives and …

Go to article

Unwording Design: Demilitarizing The Imaginaries Of Design, Xaviera Sánchez De La Barquera Estrada, Sergio Dávila Urrutia Jun 2026

Unwording Design: Demilitarizing The Imaginaries Of Design, Xaviera Sánchez De La Barquera Estrada, Sergio Dávila Urrutia

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design’s vocabulary is saturated with metaphors of control (targets, strategies, impacts), revealing a militarized ontology that frames design as domination over problems, contexts, and futures. This paper examines the politics of wording and introduces Unwording Design as a practice of ontological care: dismantling violent grammars that sustain extractive imaginaries and cultivating vocabularies grounded in affection, reciprocity, and relational ethics. Drawing on Haraway’s insight that the thoughts we use to think matter (2016), Butler’s performativity (2006), and Escobar’s ontological design (2018), we argue that transforming language transforms the worlds design brings into being. Unwording shifts from languages of war to languages …

Go to article

Co-Designing Culture: A Grounded Theory Of Participatory Practice In Indian Folk Music, Abhinav Agrawal, Mudit Chaturvedi, Gaurang Agrawal Jun 2026

Co-Designing Culture: A Grounded Theory Of Participatory Practice In Indian Folk Music, Abhinav Agrawal, Mudit Chaturvedi, Gaurang Agrawal

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Prevailing accounts of co-design remain anchored in Western formal practice. This study repositions Indian folk music as a culturally embedded site of collaborative design. Drawing on Murphy’s anthropology of design and a grounded theory approach, we analysed 1,621 coded segments from interviews with 23 first-generation folk artists across 14 Indian states. We show that musicians function as cultural designers who translate lived experience and shared moral economies into adaptive musical forms through participatory routines: community observation, collective ideation, performance-based prototyping, and iterative calibration through audience feedback. We formalise these dynamics in the Cultural Co-Design Flow model, illuminating how layered semantics, …

Go to article

Plural Epistemologies In Systemic Design: Bridging Eastern Wisdom And Western Traditions, Yi Song, Lei Zhang Jun 2026

Plural Epistemologies In Systemic Design: Bridging Eastern Wisdom And Western Traditions, Yi Song, Lei Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Systemic design is increasingly emerging as a foundational concept in contemporary design research, attracting growing scholarly attention. However, despite converging ambitions toward addressing complexity, the field remains characterized by diverse terminologies, conceptual framings, and methodological vocabularies. This plurality, while intellectually productive, often raises the entry barrier for new researchers and risks duplication of effort due to unclear conceptual boundaries and fragmented knowledge development. To address this challenge, this study traces the historical evolution and theoretical roots of systemic design, clarifying its conceptual scope, key constructs, and stages of theoretical formation. Building on this foundation, it further examines the historical trajectory …

Go to article

The Spectral Right To The City: Cartographies Of Care Through Ethnographic Projection, Roni Mero, Jonathan Ventura, Eliyahu Keller Jun 2026

The Spectral Right To The City: Cartographies Of Care Through Ethnographic Projection, Roni Mero, Jonathan Ventura, Eliyahu Keller

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The smart city paradigm operates on data representation, meaning that communities not included in official datasets are not represented and therefore do not exist politically. This condition of systemic exclusion demands an ethical design intervention, mixing cartography, visual communication and graphic design. Our paper presents a dual methodological approach that constitutes a cartography of care. This methodological framework visualises undocumented functional dynamics, providing a data-driven basis for urban planning that reflects the actual, lived usage of the city. First, we introduce ethnographic projection, a participatory design methodology that creates protected representation within existing GIS systems. Second, we present chorematic visualisation, …

Go to article

Where Regenerative Design Theory Meets Ground: A Case Study Of Xreef On Weizhou Island, Chengjun Li, Valentina Rognoli, Fuqing Xu Jun 2026

Where Regenerative Design Theory Meets Ground: A Case Study Of Xreef On Weizhou Island, Chengjun Li, Valentina Rognoli, Fuqing Xu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the Anthropocene increasingly undermines natural systems, there is an urgent need for design to move beyond harm reduction toward active ecological restoration. Regenerative Design (RD) has emerged as a promising paradigm to complement sustainable design; however, fragmented knowledge and inconsistent terminology hinder designers’ systematic understanding. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, this study first reviews the philosophical stances and key approaches of RD, then examines its implementation in a coral reef restoration project on Weizhou Island. Reflection on the project revealed three major challenges: limited capacity for interdisciplinary collaboration, insufficient tools for stakeholder engagement, and inadequate dynamic …

Go to article

Lifting Threads, Piercing Fabrics, And Tracing Stories Through Stitches: An Embroidery Inquiry Into Analysing Empirical Material, Andreea Strineholm, Jennie Schaeffer Jun 2026

Lifting Threads, Piercing Fabrics, And Tracing Stories Through Stitches: An Embroidery Inquiry Into Analysing Empirical Material, Andreea Strineholm, Jennie Schaeffer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates how textile-based practices can open alternative modes of inquiry into research material. Through an exploratory workshop, a multidisciplinary group of creative professionals and design researchers engaged with photo-elicitation data by embroidering directly onto photographs printed on fabric and wallpaper. This tactile and embodied engagement enabled a slower, more reflective encounter with the material, where meaning emerged through touch, rhythm, and collective making rather than systematic analysis. By lifting threads, piercing fabrics, and tracing stories through stitches, participants enacted a form of textile thinking: one that performs epistemologically through material interaction. This approach situates embroidery as a methodological …

Go to article

Design Education Leadership As Constellation Practice: Moving Beyond The Heroic Leader, Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher Jun 2026

Design Education Leadership As Constellation Practice: Moving Beyond The Heroic Leader, Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design education is increasingly engaging with global challenges that extend beyond its traditional scope. This study adopts a constellation perspective to explore leadership as a pluralistic, relational, and interpretive practice suited to navigating complexity. A selective literature review spanning 25 years across design education, leadership, management, and research reveals six key provocations: systemic disruption, institutional constraints, commercial pressures, universalising narratives, dominant Western paradigms, and limited critical engagement. These highlight tensions that shape contemporary leadership discourse. The findings invite reflection on leadership as a capacity-building process, one that encourages abductive reasoning, material inquiry, evidentiary thinking, financial awareness, and ethical reflection through …

Go to article

The Studio Model - Creating Space For Continuous Change, Kees Dorst Jun 2026

The Studio Model - Creating Space For Continuous Change, Kees Dorst

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Problems are not what they used to be. The complexity and scale of today’s challenges require a fundamentally different response from organisations. In this paper we will argue that they effectively need to move from ’problem-solving’ to a design approach. And that they need to move away from a ’one-off’ approach to innovation to creating interventions that move complex system to a better state. This requires a space and infrastructure for continuous innovation. For a model on how to achieve this, we turn to the practices of directors of creative agencies, as they shape environments for ongoing creation. The dynamics …

Go to article

Experiencing The More-Than-Human Through Human Augmentation, Botao 'Amber' Hu, Danlin Huang Jun 2026

Experiencing The More-Than-Human Through Human Augmentation, Botao 'Amber' Hu, Danlin Huang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The recent more-than-human turn in design calls for attentiveness to nonhuman beings. Yet—as Thomas Nagel's famous "What is it like to be a bat?" thought experiment highlights—human experience is constrained by our own sensorium and an irreducible gap in phenomenal access to nonhuman Umwelten. Grounded in eco-phenomenology and eco-somatics, this paper proposes Experiencing the More-than-Human through Human Augmentation (MtHtHA, or ">HtH+"), a design approach that repurposes human augmentation technologies—typically aimed at enhancing human capabilities for human optimization—to create temporary, embodied, first-person experiences that modulate the human sensorium to approximate nonhuman sensory experiences, cultivating ecological awareness, empathy, and care across …

Go to article

The Culture Communications Model: Visual Sensemaking And The Everyday In Design Practice, Patrick Sundqvist, Åsa Wikberg-Nilsson, Lennart Pettersson Jun 2026

The Culture Communications Model: Visual Sensemaking And The Everyday In Design Practice, Patrick Sundqvist, Åsa Wikberg-Nilsson, Lennart Pettersson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The Culture Communications Model (CCM) provides a framework for structured sensemaking grounded in everyday visual culture. It assists designers and non-designers in navigating complex contexts through four interrelated domains – physical, social, commercial and media – each examined via interpretive filters such as norms, gender, class, power and capital. Through iterative processes of finding, understanding and synthesizing, the CCM structures visual inquiry as an embodied and dialogical practice. By translating observations through these filters and reconfiguring them with conceptual tools, users can reveal hidden relationships, challenge assumptions and generate new perspectives on context and identity. The model transforms diffuse contextual …

Go to article

Deep Materialities - Investigating The Complex Socio-Technical Entanglements Of Materials Towards The Designing Of Resilient Futures, Emile De Visscher, James Auger Jun 2026

Deep Materialities - Investigating The Complex Socio-Technical Entanglements Of Materials Towards The Designing Of Resilient Futures, Emile De Visscher, James Auger

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Each material production entails an ecosystem of interrelations linking geopolitical, economic, technological, cultural, social and sanitary dimensions, sometimes on a global scale. As designers, we are rarely conscious of these realities, and limit our actions to material selection at the scale of the artefact in constrained industrial and cultural settings. However, at a time of ecological crisis, tracking, revealing and understanding these complex systems is becoming an imperative if we are to transition towards resilient futures rooted in socio-economic realities. This article will present a pedagogical approach developed with Design Research MA students, where investigation and speculation stem from a …

Go to article

From Co-Design To Co-Execution: A Knowledge Map Of Real-Time User Participation In Service Settings (2008-2024), Yue Cao, Yihan Zhao Jun 2026

From Co-Design To Co-Execution: A Knowledge Map Of Real-Time User Participation In Service Settings (2008-2024), Yue Cao, Yihan Zhao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This bibliometric study analyzes 236 articles from Web of Science (2008-2024) to map the intellectual structure of real-time user participation in service encounters (RUP-SE). The field has transitioned from exploration (2008-2013) to maturity, with post-2020 publications averaging 29.5 annually. Three core research clusters emerge: real-time co-creation and participation, digitally-driven service innovation, and value creation-destruction dynamics. Theoretically grounded in service-dominant logic and value co-creation frameworks, the field addresses how technological advancement and COVID-19 have accelerated the shift from co-design to co-execution. However, platform architectures introduce governance logics that render co-execution inherently asymmetrical, and value co-destruction in algorithmic contexts may be structurally …

Go to article

Historical Materials As Materials For Design, India Anderson, Skye Doherty, Ben Matthews Jun 2026

Historical Materials As Materials For Design, India Anderson, Skye Doherty, Ben Matthews

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Historical materials can support generative design work, however a tendency to focus on new and emerging technologies as design material mean the creative qualities of the past are underappreciated. This paper presents findings from four workshops that explore material and immaterial forms of history to better understand how the past might serve as material for design. Our findings illustrate how different material forms afford or limit relational connections to the present design context; that design references can hinder transformational experiences in practice; and how archival gaps and personal memory can also serve as design material. Our analysis underscores the need …

Go to article

Sounding Territories: Dis/Identificatory Codings As Relational Worlding, Grace Turtle, Błażej Kotowski, Elisa Giaccardi, Roy Bendor Jun 2026

Sounding Territories: Dis/Identificatory Codings As Relational Worlding, Grace Turtle, Błażej Kotowski, Elisa Giaccardi, Roy Bendor

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents Sounding Territories, a sonic performance developed with Fundación Organizmo (Colombia) that explores dis/identificatory codings as a tactic for resisting and subverting algorithmic capture. Building on queer and more-than-human perspectives, the project reorients computational logics from stable classification toward relational and generative forms of identification. Through deep listening, embodied performance, and model training, datasets were composed as relational constellations: entanglements of sounds and situations (e.g., fire–conversation–bird–wind) that enact the liveliness of data beyond representational frames. Rather than seeking legibility within existing taxonomies, dis/identification becomes a methodological reorientation–a performance of politics–that disturbs predictive logics and embraces illegibility as generative …

Go to article

Design, Territory And Gastronomy: Relational Practices In Local Transformation Processes, Dafne Rivadeneira Griner, Laura De Souza Cota Carvalho Silva Pinto, Marcelo Silva Pinto Jun 2026

Design, Territory And Gastronomy: Relational Practices In Local Transformation Processes, Dafne Rivadeneira Griner, Laura De Souza Cota Carvalho Silva Pinto, Marcelo Silva Pinto

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Relational design practices, grounded in the collaboration among local producers, public institutions, and designers, have strengthened cultural identity and promoted new forms of economy based on values of sustainability and belonging. This article presents the development of a gastronomic festival as a living laboratory of transformation, carried out in the municipality of São Gonçalo do Rio Abaixo, Brazil, by the Design, Territory, and Gastronomy extension project of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). Based on the theories of relational design and design for transitions, the study highlights how design mediates local tensions, overcomes institutional challenges, and helps the reconstruction …

Go to article

Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions, Tomas Vivanco, Tomas Diez Jun 2026

Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions, Tomas Vivanco, Tomas Diez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article explores mapping as an experimental design practice that emerges from the intersection of ecosystems, technologies, and communities. Grounded in the Powers of Ten model and the Fab City Full Stack framework, our approach combines multi-scale observation- ranging from local infrastructures to bioregional systems- to capture ecological, material, and social data that reveal the interdependencies shaping territories. The work focuses on detecting weak signals of hyperlocal phenomena, often overlooked shifts in ecological or social systems, that can guide an iterative prototyping process. In this way, mapping becomes a generative act, tracing connections between citizens' behaviors, environmental conditions, and material …

Go to article

Attuned Design Practice: Embodied Knowledge As A Design Vocabulary At The Intersection Of Artistic And Scientific Inquiry., Anne Marleen Olthof, Jouke Verlinden, Somaya Ben Allouch Jun 2026

Attuned Design Practice: Embodied Knowledge As A Design Vocabulary At The Intersection Of Artistic And Scientific Inquiry., Anne Marleen Olthof, Jouke Verlinden, Somaya Ben Allouch

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article introduces Attuned Design Practice (ADP) as an umbrella term for studying embodied knowledge at the intersection of artistic and scientific inquiry. It addresses an epistemological gap across design and human–computer interaction, dance and somatics, and disability studies. Building on an existing framework of embodied knowing, we examine domain-specific traditions and expose the threshold between these knowledge domains. We propose Open Rehearsals as experimental settings for co-performance among human and non-human actors. Within this context, attunement is introduced as a performative materiality that enables relational, situated, and operational forms of understanding across disciplines. An eighteen-month field study in design, …

Go to article

Enhancing Social Connections Through Co-Illustration Workshops Among Solo-Living Young Adults, Jueshuang Wang, Emma Rose, Mirian Calvo Jun 2026

Enhancing Social Connections Through Co-Illustration Workshops Among Solo-Living Young Adults, Jueshuang Wang, Emma Rose, Mirian Calvo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The rising prevalence of social loneliness among solo-living young adults indicates an urgent need for support. However, research addressing this issue, especially in Asia, is limited. This study aims to bridge this gap by introducing co-illustration workshops as a novel method to enhance social connections and wellbeing in this demographic. Employing a participatory action research (PAR) methodology, the study engages participants in five iterative co-design cycles to enhance social connections. The findings suggest that temporary co-illustration workshops serve as a conduit for conversation and facilitate the formation of high-quality weak ties, thereby alleviating social loneliness. This paper provides guidance and …

Go to article

The Fuzzy Front-End Of Transformation: An Inquiry Protocol For Intervention Design, Niti Bhan, Piia Rytilahti Jun 2026

The Fuzzy Front-End Of Transformation: An Inquiry Protocol For Intervention Design, Niti Bhan, Piia Rytilahti

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Donella Meadows’ concept of leverage points - places in complex systems where small shifts may lead to fundamental changes in the system as a whole - is gaining attention for developing a 'leverage points perspective' on systems transformation. Distinguishing a 'system of interest' as well as identifying 'where' and 'how' to intervene for 'whom' are all matters of practical relevance which remain to be properly addressed. We contribute an inquiry protocol to identify opportunities for design actions aiming to trigger transformation in complex human systems. Our system of interest for empirical study is the informal trade ecosystem at the borderlands …

Go to article

Telling Stories, Making Hanzi: Ai-Assisted Co-Creation With Elderly Migrants In Urban China, Yunfei Chen, Wen Zhan, Peiyue Lin, Ziqun Hua, Ying Hu Jun 2026

Telling Stories, Making Hanzi: Ai-Assisted Co-Creation With Elderly Migrants In Urban China, Yunfei Chen, Wen Zhan, Peiyue Lin, Ziqun Hua, Ying Hu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how older migrants in urban China can record stories that everyday language and design often miss. We ran two co-creation workshops with 10 elders. Activities combined oral storytelling, facilitator-mediated AI assistance, and hand making. Large language models proposed candidate glyphs through a facilitator. Participants crafted new Hanzi to hold their stories. The resulting characters served as memory anchors for later sharing and retelling. Our interpretive analysis shows heterogeneity and adaptive capacity among participants. Participants experienced AI as a creative initiator that lowered barriers to expression and making, especially for those with lower digital literacy. The work challenges …

Go to article

Practicing Prototyping Within Transition Design: Materials, Competences And Meanings, Maria Vitaller Del Olmo Jun 2026

Practicing Prototyping Within Transition Design: Materials, Competences And Meanings, Maria Vitaller Del Olmo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Recent research highlights the potential of prototyping for promoting sustainable transitions. However, scholars argue that it is essential to modify, and possibly redefine, the conventional use of prototyping to address complex system transformations. This paper enhances the understanding of prototyping within Transition Design for sustainability. Drawing on Social Practice Theory and practice-oriented design, we conceive prototyping as a design practice and define it through three key components: materials, competencies, and meanings. This perspective shifts the emphasis from individual prototyping artefacts to a more comprehensive, contextual understanding of the practice, aligning with the systemic nature of transitions. The empirical findings derive …

Go to article

Building Together(Ness): Exploring Constructive Play When Designing For Social–Emotional Learning (Sel) In Late Childhood., Mariagiulia Sardu Jun 2026

Building Together(Ness): Exploring Constructive Play When Designing For Social–Emotional Learning (Sel) In Late Childhood., Mariagiulia Sardu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates how constructive play can support social–emotional learning (SEL) in late childhood. As children approach adolescence, they increasingly seek emotional support from peers, develop stronger identities and need to engage in self-reflection and personal expression. Despite these needs, SEL programs targeting children aged 8 to 11 are limited. Research has shown that play can support SEL. This study explores how constructive play can foster social–emotional skills and help address this shortage. The project was conducted with a child-centred approach and a design-based research methodology, ensuring a strong link between theory and practice while prioritising children’s perspectives. The fieldwork …

Go to article

Decoding The Visual Language Of Embroidery: Making, Knowing, And Recontextualising, Minshu Chen Jun 2026

Decoding The Visual Language Of Embroidery: Making, Knowing, And Recontextualising, Minshu Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper positions textile-making as a way of understanding the world through embodied engagement with materials, processes and relationships. Drawing on Xiang embroidery traditions and the Chinese philosophical concept of Qi-Yun (vital force and resonant rhythm). Through participatory workshops with local communities in Hunan, China, it explores how tacit knowledge emerges in a specific context through inner perception, observation, collaboration and dialogue surrounding material interaction and the accumulation of experience. A triangular methodology is developed to analyse multiple standpoints (traditional practitioners, technical collaborators and spectators) and articulate how different standpoints participate in meaning-making within textile practice. This approach theorises embroidery …

Go to article

Hybrid Craft Practices For Sustainable Materialities And Narratives Through Digital Fabrication, Alessia Romani, Philip Gurrey, Imogen Clendinning, Junyu Ke, Joshua Pearce Jun 2026

Hybrid Craft Practices For Sustainable Materialities And Narratives Through Digital Fabrication, Alessia Romani, Philip Gurrey, Imogen Clendinning, Junyu Ke, Joshua Pearce

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Hybrid craft can help envision more sustainable futures, recognizing the human-nature-technology interdependence in ecological making practices. Beyond industrial and research applications, digital fabrication offers new aesthetic and formal possibilities to designers, artists, and practitioners, exploring new materialities and narratives to foster sustainable discourses through hybrid craft and reflective making. This paper explores how hybrid craft and digital fabrication can foster sustainable materialities and narratives to reflect on human-nature-technology relationships and advance sustainability discourses through Janus, a collaborative case study combining local natural elements with 3D printing and crafts. By showcasing a corn stalk alongside its 3D scanned and 3D printed …

Go to article

Negotiating Authenticity, Vividness, And Engagement: A Design Framework For Genai In Heritage Co-Creation, Zijing Song, Sifan Chen, Chihiro Sato, Christian Wagner Jun 2026

Negotiating Authenticity, Vividness, And Engagement: A Design Framework For Genai In Heritage Co-Creation, Zijing Song, Sifan Chen, Chihiro Sato, Christian Wagner

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The adoption of generative AI in heritage storytelling has revealed hidden tensions among stakeholders due to competing values. To investigate how design research can negotiate values differences, we conducted a three-session qualitative study surrounding the “Kawagoe Festival” in a bottom-up, three stakeholder-group setting. Session 1 used photo-elicitation to ground memories; Session 2 adopted human–AI image co-creation to explore past representations and speculative futures; while Session 3 facilitated reflective discussion. Grounded theory analysis identifies three values shaping GenAI-mediated co-creation: authenticity as a symbolic baseline, vividness as the enrichment of remembered details, and engagement as enabler of iterative, playful participation. Stakeholders balanced …

Go to article

Designing For Food System Transformation: Navigating Cultural Complexity In Cross-Regional Platform Design, Margherita Motta, Sebastian Baez-Lugo, Luis Rodriguez Aguayo, Laura Deschl, Nicolas Henchoz, Emily Groves Jun 2026

Designing For Food System Transformation: Navigating Cultural Complexity In Cross-Regional Platform Design, Margherita Motta, Sebastian Baez-Lugo, Luis Rodriguez Aguayo, Laura Deschl, Nicolas Henchoz, Emily Groves

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines the design of a digital platform supporting sustainable food transformation across six European regional Hubs. Through multi-phase participatory evaluation involving contextual inquiry across culturally diverse contexts, responsive redesign, and formal usability testing, we identify a fundamental tension between technical standardization and cultural adaptation. While formal metrics demonstrated strong usability and aesthetic appeal of our platform design, Hub-based evaluation revealed that participants' requests for regional adaptation such as representing traditional production methods, biodiversity, and place-specific sustainability logics challenged fundamental platform assumptions about capturing food knowledge in standardized structures. We articulate emergent design principles including minimizing barriers while maintaining …

Go to article

In Kinship With Harakeke Phormium Tenax: How One Plant And Its Materials Facilitate Transitional Knowledge Through Inter-Indigenous And Inter-Cultural Exchange., Angela Kilford, Sonya Withers, Faith Kane, Huhana Smith Jun 2026

In Kinship With Harakeke Phormium Tenax: How One Plant And Its Materials Facilitate Transitional Knowledge Through Inter-Indigenous And Inter-Cultural Exchange., Angela Kilford, Sonya Withers, Faith Kane, Huhana Smith

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Abstract: This paper considers how one plant, harakeke (phormium tenax), native to Aotearoa New Zealand embodies the natural attributes to mitigate climate change and support transition to more sustainable and equitable material futures. Through interaction and collaboration, harakeke demonstrates how circular and regenerative textile design systems are manifested. In the interest of learning from harakeke the authors, working from multiple perspectives, position the plant as tohunga (knowledge expert) and themselves as tauira (learners) to share and reflect upon their engagements with the plant and its fibre. From harakeke we learn about familial relationships to whenua (land) and to each other, …

Go to article

Hacking As A Queering Design Practice. Insights From A Visual Analysis Of Product Hacking Scenes In Movies., Julia Carrasco Parodi, Massimo Menichinelli, Guim Espelt Estopà Jun 2026

Hacking As A Queering Design Practice. Insights From A Visual Analysis Of Product Hacking Scenes In Movies., Julia Carrasco Parodi, Massimo Menichinelli, Guim Espelt Estopà

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article examines hacking, understood as the alteration of an object’s function, as a queer and feminist design practice that disrupts normative relations between bodies and things. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist snap as a moment of rupture and reconfiguration, we define hacking as an embodied act of refusal that reconfigures everyday things. Through "Función Rota", an audiovisual research project that gathers product hacking scenes in movies, we identify hacking as a form of both critique and speculation: it reveals the normative logics embedded in things, while opening up the possibility of re-prototyping from below. Through feminist …

Go to article

First Prev Next Last