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Visualisation For Citizen Participation: Data Practices In The Copenhagen Climate Citizens' Assembly, Daniele Dell'orto, Amalia De Götzen, Mathieu Jacomy Jun 2026

Visualisation For Citizen Participation: Data Practices In The Copenhagen Climate Citizens' Assembly, Daniele Dell'orto, Amalia De Götzen, Mathieu Jacomy

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The recent popularisation of data and their visualisation has offered new opportunities for spaces of citizen participation around contested issues, such as climate assemblies. The potential of data visualisation in opening and supporting discussions has been widely recognised, but so has the risk it carries of naturalising certain perspectives and delegitimising others. Still, the roles played by data visualisation in the specific context of climate assemblies remain unaddressed. This paper investigates those roles through field observation and desk research around a case study, the Københavnernes Klimaborgerting. The study explores which data were visualised, how, by who and why. What emerges …

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The Transformative Nature Of Food And The Transition Of Traditional Desserts Into Industrial Products: A Case Study Through A Transformational Design Lens, Burcu Torum Jun 2026

The Transformative Nature Of Food And The Transition Of Traditional Desserts Into Industrial Products: A Case Study Through A Transformational Design Lens, Burcu Torum

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines the transformation of traditional Turkish desserts into contemporary industrial food products through the framework of transformational design. Grounded in the premise that food functions not only as a biological necessity but also as a carrier of cultural memory, identity, and social meaning, the study explores how traditional foods can be reinterpreted within modern production systems, consumption patterns, and sustainability expectations. Drawing on student projects from a food design course in an industrial design department during the 2024–2025 academic year, the research analyzes how desserts are redesigned according to industrial constraints and contemporary lifestyles. Using thematic analysis, findings …

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In Vegetal Terms: Temporal Lenses In Human-Plant Interaction, Clee Zhuo Wang, Jeffrey C. F. Ho, Bow Yiying Wu Jun 2026

In Vegetal Terms: Temporal Lenses In Human-Plant Interaction, Clee Zhuo Wang, Jeffrey C. F. Ho, Bow Yiying Wu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper highlights temporality as an important more-than-human design strategy and expands multiple lenses for engaging with the temporal complexity of more-than-human. Reflecting on the dominance of anthropocentric and industrial notions of time in design, we choose plant as a paradigmatic case for otherly temporality. We take stock from interdisciplinary literatures and introduce six temporal lenses: rhythm, horizon, continuity, duration, genealogy, and incompleteness, to articulate how plants live, change, and relate through multiple overlapping temporalities. Connecting these lenses to human-plant interaction design practice, these temporal lenses enables designers to recognize temporal frictions, attend to vegetal rhythms, and cultivate responsive and …

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From Speculation To Strategy Reflection: A Case Study Of Design-Led Foresight Workshops At Revigrés, Gisela Pinheiro Agostinho, Teresa Franqueira Jun 2026

From Speculation To Strategy Reflection: A Case Study Of Design-Led Foresight Workshops At Revigrés, Gisela Pinheiro Agostinho, Teresa Franqueira

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article presents a case-based investigation of design-led foresight in practice through a series of international workshops conducted in Denmark and China within a doctoral action-research programme with Revigrés, a Portuguese ceramic manufacturer. Grounded in a structured trend cartography clustered into fifteen domains, multidisciplinary teams employed lightweight foresight methods, including personas, rapid scenario visioning, and low-fidelity prototyping, to explore possible housing futures for 2070. Twelve speculative design visions emerged, ranging from bio-integrated habitats and privacy-legible smart homes to circular neighbourhood systems and programmable interiors. Rather than treating these visions as predictive outcomes, the study examines how workshop artefacts functioned as …

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Olfactory Prototyping As Diplomatic Device: Codesigning A Morethanhuman ‘Us’ With Two Captive Pumas, Marcela Mora, Pablo Hermansen Jun 2026

Olfactory Prototyping As Diplomatic Device: Codesigning A Morethanhuman ‘Us’ With Two Captive Pumas, Marcela Mora, Pablo Hermansen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper extends cosmopolitical prototyping into the olfactory domain to examine how smell can operate as a diplomatic device for interspecies coexistence. Building on a longitudinal, autoethnographic research through design project, we report multi session fieldwork with two captive pumas—Huilo (older, methodical) and Maqui (younger, playful)—at Refugio Animal Cascada, Chile. The study sought not to apply enrichment as an external fix, but to co constitute a situated more than human we in which animal, designer, materials, climate and infrastructures jointly stage conditions for safe relationality. We designed textile olfactory braids (reused cotton braids and burlap sachets) infused with botanicals (e.g., …

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Narrativizing Care: Exploring Narrative Medicine For Designing Ai-Mediated Remote Patient Monitoring, Somayeh Ranjbar, Tara Capel, Peter Lloyd, Douwe E. Atsma, Somaya Ben Allouch, Jeroen Raijmakers Jun 2026

Narrativizing Care: Exploring Narrative Medicine For Designing Ai-Mediated Remote Patient Monitoring, Somayeh Ranjbar, Tara Capel, Peter Lloyd, Douwe E. Atsma, Somaya Ben Allouch, Jeroen Raijmakers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how care is enacted and understood within Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) systems, which promise efficiency and autonomy but fragment care into data flows. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a Dutch hospital’s RPM program for myocardial infarction patients, we analyze how stories, reassurance, and contextual interpretation unfold alongside structured data, revealing the promise and limits of AI-mediated care. Using narrative medicine’s triad of attention, representation, and affiliation, we identify how extractive data models overlook patients’ lived realities and relational dimensions of care. We propose three design provocations for exploring the application of AI in RPM systems: narrative layers …

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From Fragile Remnants To Regenerative Systems: Circular Design Through Eggshell Waste, Hasti Valipour Goudarzi, Esther K. J. Clifford, Ramkumar S Jun 2026

From Fragile Remnants To Regenerative Systems: Circular Design Through Eggshell Waste, Hasti Valipour Goudarzi, Esther K. J. Clifford, Ramkumar S

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Eggshell waste, designated by the EPA as the 15th largest food-based pollutant, is reimagined here as a regenerative material through circular and reciprocal design practices. This research explores how discarded eggshells can be transformed into bioplastics, coatings, and modular construction elements. The project integrates ecological theory (Haraway’s “response-ability,” Kimmerer’s reciprocity) with hands-on material experimentation across diverse geographies, including India and Europe. Emphasizing student-led, non-hierarchical learning, it cultivates ecological care and interdependence between human and more-than-human worlds. Installations, workshops, and collaborations with local experts support regenerative construction practices rooted in local materials and needs. By challenging extractive, linear waste systems, the …

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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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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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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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‘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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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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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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Performer, Technologist, Machine: Co-Creating The Soul Song Sensorium, Asha Ward, Jojo Taylor Jun 2026

Performer, Technologist, Machine: Co-Creating The Soul Song Sensorium, Asha Ward, Jojo Taylor

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Soul Song Sensorium examines the negotiation between performer, technologist, and technology in the co-creation of a sound-driven wearable instrument. Initially imagined as a system translating gesture and voice into live sonic layers, the project evolved through iterative exchanges between what the performer envisioned, what was technically achievable, and what emerged unpredictably in practice. The technology frequently acted as a third actor whose behaviours, limitations, and resistances shaped both creative intention and aesthetic outcome. Rather than progressing through linear feature accumulation, the work advanced through attunement—paring back complexity, refining mappings, and learning to work with the system’s tendencies. Through this process, …

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Negotiating Control With Materials: Progressive Modes Of Engagement In Design Practice, Yuliang Kang, Enza Migliore, Jingze Liu Jun 2026

Negotiating Control With Materials: Progressive Modes Of Engagement In Design Practice, Yuliang Kang, Enza Migliore, Jingze Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper addresses a design dilemma: how can designers engage with materials that exhibit recognizable yet unpredictable behaviors? Traditional design relies on predictability and control. However, in an era of crises and complexity, we must acknowledge non-human agency and recognize that materials inherently respond and adapt. Complex material systems, characterized by self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, and emergent patterns, resist deterministic control, requiring an alternative approach. Drawing on material agency and play perspectives of rules and chances, we develop an operative framework of negotiating control, exemplified through clay fractals using the Lifting Hele-Shaw cell (LHSC). We identify three progressive modes of engagement: …

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Historicising Speculative Design With Mcluhan’S Tetrad, Soyoun Jang, Jay David David Bolter Jun 2026

Historicising Speculative Design With Mcluhan’S Tetrad, Soyoun Jang, Jay David David Bolter

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper introduces and applies Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad model, grounded in critical media studies, as an interpretative framework for analysing corporate concept videos as design fictions. Through a close reading of seven videos, we identify three recurring themes: present as future, the rhetoric of the new and socio-economic utopia. In parallel, the two diagonals of the Tetrad reveal contrasting orientations: the enhances-obsolesces diagonal reflects a corporate anticipatory (non-radical) future, whereas the retrieves-reverses diagonal is more critical and disruptive. We discuss figure-ground reversal as a key strategy for historicising corporate concept videos and suggest how the Tetrad can foster historical reflexivity …

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Designing Hope: Civil Society, Empathy And Peace, Or Avoiding World War Iii, Philip Ely, Ilpo Koskinen, Shelley Mcnulty, Brian Dixon Jun 2026

Designing Hope: Civil Society, Empathy And Peace, Or Avoiding World War Iii, Philip Ely, Ilpo Koskinen, Shelley Mcnulty, Brian Dixon

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the face of widespread global conflict, this paper explores emergent work on empathic design for peace. We draw on award-winning theory and practice within peace studies and previous work on empathic design to develop a theoretical framework for the practical application of design methods, and illustrate this framework by showing how an analysis of a novel—in this paper, Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)—can lead to a multi-scalar approach to civil society-led peacebuilding which can inform future public sector and policy design work. We view this as a form of ‘literary design fiction’—that can harness the positional difference of conflict …

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Bridging The Community-Institution Divide: Multi-Level Community-Based Participatory Design For Migrant Health In China, Linfu Zhang, Emmanuel Tsekleves, David Pérez Ojeda, Zhangfeng Chen, Jingyuan Tan Jun 2026

Bridging The Community-Institution Divide: Multi-Level Community-Based Participatory Design For Migrant Health In China, Linfu Zhang, Emmanuel Tsekleves, David Pérez Ojeda, Zhangfeng Chen, Jingyuan Tan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Co-design with marginalised communities in developing settings —and their experiential knowledge—often collides with expert rationalities and hierarchical logics in public health institutions, undermining power-sharing, sustained participation, and institutionalisation. This paper explores how co-design mediates these competing logics to bring structurally produced health injustices back into the formal institutional field of vision. Based on seven months of immersive fieldwork in Shenzhen, China’s largest migrant city, the paper analyses a social design case addressing rural–urban migrants’ psychological well-being in an informal settlement. It integrates community-based participatory research (CBPR) and co-design to initiate the process of returning public health concerns to the institutional …

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Designations Drift: Exodesign And The Epiphylogenesis Of Practice, Chris Sutevski Jun 2026

Designations Drift: Exodesign And The Epiphylogenesis Of Practice, Chris Sutevski

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As design becomes increasingly automated and abstracted, the act of designation, once tied to human intentionality, appears to be lifting away from the human. In the era of exocapitalism, defined by Poliks and Trillo as a system unbound from the human condition and driven by self-replicating logics of value extraction, design too is being reconfigured through machinic and algorithmic processes. This paper introduces the concept of exodesign to describe this shift: the deterritorialisation of design’s human-centred agency amidst the rise of software stacks, machine learning, and cybernetic optimisation systems. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s notions of epiphylogenesis and general organology, alongside …

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Proximity, Technology, And Care: Towards Longevity-Friendly Urban Ecosystems, Carla Sedini, Carolina Nina Bonato Jun 2026

Proximity, Technology, And Care: Towards Longevity-Friendly Urban Ecosystems, Carla Sedini, Carolina Nina Bonato

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Social relationships, extending beyond the familiar and domestic spheres, play a crucial role in sustaining the healthy ageing of cities’ inhabitants. The urban ecosystem can support social participation and interdependence among its inhabitants by combining the design of hard and soft infrastructures that shape social engagement and urban attractiveness. Within this framework, a new dimension of care is emerging, one that transcends traditional healthcare and institutionalised models. How can technologies help generate the cornerstones of caring, inclusive, long-life communities? By examining a series of international case studies on technology, proximity, care, and ageing, the paper aims to offer actionable design …

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Situated Knowledge In Rural Craft Practices: A Context-Sensitive Approach To Craft–Design Collaboration In Fife, Scotland, Peining Sheng, Ayaan Ahmed Jun 2026

Situated Knowledge In Rural Craft Practices: A Context-Sensitive Approach To Craft–Design Collaboration In Fife, Scotland, Peining Sheng, Ayaan Ahmed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how craft, as an unselfconscious design practice and embodied knowledge, contributes to situated design research, based on an ethnographic field study in Fife, Scotland, and a co-creation workshop in Edinburgh. The study points out that existing studies and practices promoting craft–design collaboration tend to focus on urban contexts and designer-led methods, often resulting in a lack of context-sensitive consideration and the presence of imbalanced relationships. Thus, this study underscores that understanding the local knowledge of rural-based craft practitioners and the distinct attributes of rural settings can respond to the challenges of rural craft practices and the barriers …

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The Didactic Body: Interdisciplinary Design Pedagogy In 1970s Denmark, Christine Bjerke Jun 2026

The Didactic Body: Interdisciplinary Design Pedagogy In 1970s Denmark, Christine Bjerke

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores alternative pedagogical approaches that centred the relationship between the human body and design in 1970s Denmark. Initiated by lecturers at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – School of Architecture (today Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation), a series of interdisciplinary ergonomics seminars (1974–78) at Institute 3C2 brought together more than a hundred students and lecturers from architecture, design, dance, and the medical and social sciences. Through archival research and oral history, I analyse these overlooked teaching practices and situate them within broader societal changes. Informed by disability studies, I examine how the seminars negotiated …

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Making Futures With Textiles: Boundaries, Practice, Sustainability, Martin John Bonney Jun 2026

Making Futures With Textiles: Boundaries, Practice, Sustainability, Martin John Bonney

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores craft as a site of making and thinking, asking how practice-based ethnography can extend design theory amid ecological and social uncertainty. Drawing on apprenticeship-style fieldwork (2024-2025) with craft communities in London (UK) and Yogyakarta (Indonesia), the study engages practitioners working across textiles, silver, gold, stone, wax-resist batik, wool, and silk. While textiles provide a methodological thread, the research examines how diverse materials shape knowledge through constraints, resistances, and affordances. Grounded in design anthropology and practice-based interpretations of posthuman and new materialist thought, material agency is understood as the capacity of matter and process to influence decisions and …

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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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Función-Nepantla: The “Other” Functionality Inspired By Mexican Philosophy For Rethinking Industrial Design In Mexico, José De La O Jun 2026

Función-Nepantla: The “Other” Functionality Inspired By Mexican Philosophy For Rethinking Industrial Design In Mexico, José De La O

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design in Mexico, often disconnected from the local industry value chain, has long relied on arte popular as a self-referential cultural narrative to add value, establish identity, and find its “substance.” While this practice stems from a genuine search for rootedness and authenticity, it frequently leads to stagnation, raises concerns about cultural appropriation, neo-colonial dynamics between designers and craftspeople, neglect of functionality, and lack of innovation. This paper critiques this and proposes a framework for defining functionality, rooted in Mexican philosophy as an alternative value system. Drawing on thinkers such as Emilio Uranga and Grupo Hiperión’s work, it identifies parallels …

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Reciprocal Value Between Learning And Circular Practices, Franchesca Michaela De Moura, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Christina Breed Jun 2026

Reciprocal Value Between Learning And Circular Practices, Franchesca Michaela De Moura, Nonkululeko Grootboom, Christina Breed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigates how adaptive reuse servicescapes may contribute to sustainable transformation through learning, by leveraging circular practices as experiential learning tools. Research on circular economy rarely adopts a human-centred lens or explores its links to learning, especially in the Global South, where the value of alternative epistemologies and informal economies often remains unrecognised. To address this gap, a qualitative case study approach was employed, combining participant observation and semi-structured interviews at educational initiatives in an adaptive reuse precinct in inner-city Johannesburg, South Africa. The findings reveal a reciprocal relationship between education and circular practices in generating value for sustainable …

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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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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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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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Agreements For Collective Real-Time Sketching Practice In Design Research, Mafalda Gamboa, Elvia Vasconcelos Jun 2026

Agreements For Collective Real-Time Sketching Practice In Design Research, Mafalda Gamboa, Elvia Vasconcelos

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers often converse without speech, for example, through sketches and artifacts. These conversations transverse across layers through gestures, time, and materialities. In this paper, we report on a demonstration at a design conference, where we brought together the practices of two designers, into a collaborative real-time sketching environment. Through this unfolding exchange, we explore how sketching can move beyond individual expression to become a collective emergent record of thought and relation. The demo drew together digital and physical media while listening to a theoretical prompt, in a shared conversation with the audience. From this process and its tensions, we derive …

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