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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Designing For The Working Body: Challenges In The Development Of Occupational Exoskeletons, Emese Papp-Schmitt, Christian Wölfel, Torben Söker, Jens Krzywinski Jun 2026

Designing For The Working Body: Challenges In The Development Of Occupational Exoskeletons, Emese Papp-Schmitt, Christian Wölfel, Torben Söker, Jens Krzywinski

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Exoskeletons exemplify intimate body-technology entanglements, where user experience is inherently corporeal. Despite their increasing presence in industrial and emerging consumer markets, current development methods often neglect the embodied dimensions of these devices. This paper explores what it means to design for the working body in the context of occupational exoskeletons. Drawing from our design practice and qualitative interviews in automotive and logistics, we identify tensions across three areas: (1) user and context research, inclusive and (2) body-sensitive development processes, and (3) the semiotics and social meaning of exoskeletons. We highlight challenges such as normalized risk and harm, limited attention to …

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“Even If I Do It, I Cannot See Any Differences”: Designing Strategies To Facilitate Adolescents’ Low-Carbon Behavior, Rui Shan, Wenhao Zhou, Huanshu Jiang, Wanlin Zhang Jun 2026

“Even If I Do It, I Cannot See Any Differences”: Designing Strategies To Facilitate Adolescents’ Low-Carbon Behavior, Rui Shan, Wenhao Zhou, Huanshu Jiang, Wanlin Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Climate change, an urgent threat to millions of lives, requires collective efforts to advance a low-carbon transition. In particular, as future citizens, adolescents play a key role in shaping a low-carbon future. To understand how their potential can be supported, this study examines how design, particularly through human-computer interaction as a technology-mediated approach, can encourage adolescents to adopt low-carbon behavior. To do so, a formative study was conducted. First, we conducted a survey to understand adolescents’ cognitive levels and behavioral characteristics. Findings from this stage reveal that adolescents’ low-carbon behavior can be cultivated before a conscious understanding is established. Building …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Designing Social Inclusion In Circular Transitions: A Participatory Study Of Repair Initiatives In Germany, Antje Burckhardt, Lenard Opeskin, Andrea Augsten Jun 2026

Designing Social Inclusion In Circular Transitions: A Participatory Study Of Repair Initiatives In Germany, Antje Burckhardt, Lenard Opeskin, Andrea Augsten

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Repair initiatives are promoted as policy instruments to foster sustainable consumption practices within circular economy agendas. However, recent studies question their ability to achieve broader societal impact, noting that social inclusion remains limited. The study addresses this challenge by employing a participatory design approach to actively explore fields of action to enhance social inclusion in repair initiatives in Germany. Drawing on a literature review, we first conducted five expert interviews with repair initiative representatives, as well as 53 short interviews with visitors and people who had not previously visited a repair initiative, identifying barriers and opportunities for improvement. Second, we …

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Investigating Context In Sonic Interaction Design For Sleep: Bridging Users And Designers Through Participatory And Ideation Workshops, Abhishek Choubey, Tinke Van Buijtene, Sandra Pauletto Jun 2026

Investigating Context In Sonic Interaction Design For Sleep: Bridging Users And Designers Through Participatory And Ideation Workshops, Abhishek Choubey, Tinke Van Buijtene, Sandra Pauletto

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sleep is fundamental to health and well-being, yet sleep problems have risen sharply in recent years. These problems often arise from individual and contextual factors, some of which are modifiable through behaviour or design. Research examining sleep’s contextual factors and how they can inform design interventions remains limited. This article presents two connected workshops exploring these aspects of sleep using participatory and speculative design methods. The first workshop invited participants to map contextual aspects of sleep through empathy maps and speculative exercises revealing three themes affecting sleep: safety, sleep routines, and stress or anxiety. The second focused on ideation asking …

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Public Sector’S Climate Commoning And Infrastructural Care, Alicia Smedberg, Per Linde, Anders Melin, Joakim Nordqvist Jun 2026

Public Sector’S Climate Commoning And Infrastructural Care, Alicia Smedberg, Per Linde, Anders Melin, Joakim Nordqvist

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Local urban governments struggle to approach environmental goals in the global climate crisis. An understanding on the necessitiy to increase fair citizen engagement in governmental sustainability initiatives has become fundamental, the challenge emerge on how processes can become resilient beyond specific project initiatives. The concept of infrastructruring, here understood as a situated effort to hold together socio-material constellations that enable certain ways of acting, provides a foundation for long-term interaction between the public sector and citizens. But as the participatory design community is strong on providing ”points of entry” for citizen participation it remains less clear how one cares for …

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More Than Concrete: The Tacit Knowledge Of Construction Workers Through Material Cognition And Embodied Experiences, Enza Migliore, Mirna Zordan, Peiyue Lin Jun 2026

More Than Concrete: The Tacit Knowledge Of Construction Workers Through Material Cognition And Embodied Experiences, Enza Migliore, Mirna Zordan, Peiyue Lin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Concrete builds the assets and aesthetics of contemporary cities. This research suggests that concrete also shapes emotions and cognition, generating a tacit body of valuable experience. Construction workers, who engage with this material daily, embody expertise through their bodily practices. Yet their insights remain unheard and underrepresented in the design discourse. This study adopts a material engagement approach, using concrete samples as probes and conducting semi-structured on-site interviews with 14 workers in Shenzhen, China. Analysing 280 minutes of video and audio data thematically, the research reveals that workers and materials mutually shape each other. Workers develop their understanding of concrete …

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Playing Future Places Together, Troy Innocent, Carolyn Briggs, Ashleigh Dharma, Carlo Tolentino Jun 2026

Playing Future Places Together, Troy Innocent, Carolyn Briggs, Ashleigh Dharma, Carlo Tolentino

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Cities are physical manifestations of how we live together in urgent need of redesign to adapt and respond to impacts of climate change. Place-based methods offer critical and imaginative ways to work with neighbourhoods as living labs for regenerative futures and planetary civics. Reworlding explores urban play as method in co-governance of the green transition of neighbourhoods. It works with posthuman methods to give nature a voice, supporting more-than-human approaches, and addressing climate, biodiversity, and pollution challenges. Play and democracy balance interests, power, and knowledge asymmetries among neighbourhood actors by engaging cultural actors and use local, indigenous, or marginalised knowledge …

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The Black Box In Spatial Planning: Visualizations Of Indeterminacy In Cybernetics And Model Theory, Marlon J. Brownsword, Adam Jasper, Christiane M. Herr, Thomas Fischer Jun 2026

The Black Box In Spatial Planning: Visualizations Of Indeterminacy In Cybernetics And Model Theory, Marlon J. Brownsword, Adam Jasper, Christiane M. Herr, Thomas Fischer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper traces the historical and conceptual role of the black box as a diagrammatic figure in planning theory. Emerging from pre-war radio circuit jargon, and first theorized in cybernetics, the black box articulated a productive tension: it acknowledged the indeterminacy of future contingencies whilst concealing moments of executive discretion. Alongside cybernetics, the black box became an omnipresent yet elusive figure in 1960s and 70s spatial planning. Against the backdrop of contemporary debates on explainable AI (XAI), this history has acquired renewed significance for designers. Examining a corpus of planning diagrams produced over fifty years ago, the paper shows how …

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Shifting From Creativity To Sympoiesis: A Site-Oriented Design Inquiry Of More-Than-Human Creative Ai, Petra Jääskeläinen, Lisa Boulton, Ron Wakkary, Gillian Russell Jun 2026

Shifting From Creativity To Sympoiesis: A Site-Oriented Design Inquiry Of More-Than-Human Creative Ai, Petra Jääskeläinen, Lisa Boulton, Ron Wakkary, Gillian Russell

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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How Sound Knowledge And Education Can Support Designers In Creating Museum Experiences: Insights From Semi-Structured Interviews With Experts In Acoustics/Sound, Yi Zhang Jun 2026

How Sound Knowledge And Education Can Support Designers In Creating Museum Experiences: Insights From Semi-Structured Interviews With Experts In Acoustics/Sound, Yi Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Today, the growing demand for sound in shaping multisensory museum experiences requires exhibition designers to acquire relevant sound knowledge. However, designers often find it difficult to identify applicable insights across the vast and interdisciplinary fields of acoustics and sound studies. Thus, this paper conducts twelve semi-structured interviews with experts in acoustics and sound-related disciplines. The findings establish a basic sound knowledge framework comprising four thematic areas with related concepts: fundamentals of acoustics, sound and space, sound and audience experience, and sound control and technology. In addition, the paper explores interdisciplinary communication and collaboration in sound design practices within exhibition productions. …

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Decolonizing Care In Design Research: Familiness And Relational Practices From Creative Ageing In Thailand, Khemmiga Teerapong, Boonanan Natakun Jun 2026

Decolonizing Care In Design Research: Familiness And Relational Practices From Creative Ageing In Thailand, Khemmiga Teerapong, Boonanan Natakun

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper advances a decolonised understanding of care within design research by examining how relational and culturally grounded practices shape engagements with older adults in Thailand’s rapidly aging society. Drawing on the Monday Museum creative ageing initiative in Bangkok’s Khlong Bang Luang neighbourhood, the study critiques Western-centric framings of care that privilege clinical, individualised, or outcome-driven approaches. Fieldwork and co-design activities with elderly residents reveal that care emerges as a relational practice embedded in local cultural norms, expressed through attentiveness, reciprocity, and shared responsibility. The paper introduces “Familiness” as a Thai, culturally situated framework that embodies warmth, flexibility, and family-like …

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Participatory Design As An Epistemic Practice: Designing For Institutional Responsiveness In The Scottish Parliament, Cara Broadley Jun 2026

Participatory Design As An Epistemic Practice: Designing For Institutional Responsiveness In The Scottish Parliament, Cara Broadley

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines Participatory Design (PD) as an epistemic practice that can strengthen how democratic institutions listen and respond to diverse forms of knowledge. Drawing on the PARliament Engagement project, it explores how creative approaches can reveal and reshape the interpretive practices that govern what counts as evidence in parliamentary scrutiny. The research was conducted through a participatory action research process involving ethnographic shadowing, interviews, and co-design workshops with parliamentary staff, creating opportunities for shared reflection on how knowledge is generated, interpreted, and used across scrutiny work. The paper develops the concept of institutional responsiveness to describe how PD can …

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Exploring How Packaging Transparency And Processing Level Affect Acceptance Of Edible Insects In Taiwan, Wei-Chen Chiu, Chun-Heng Ho Jun 2026

Exploring How Packaging Transparency And Processing Level Affect Acceptance Of Edible Insects In Taiwan, Wei-Chen Chiu, Chun-Heng Ho

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As global food systems face growing sustainability challenges, edible insects are emerging as a viable alternative protein source. This study explores how transparent window size and food processing level in packaging affect Taiwanese consumers’ purchase intentions toward insect-based foods. A 2 (window size: small vs. large) by 3 (processing level: unprocessed, semi-processed, fully processed) experiment with 359 participants, categorized by attitudes into acceptance and rejection groups, revealed that processing level significantly influenced purchase intention. Fully processed products received the highest acceptance across both groups. Window size had a minor effect, slightly increasing purchase intention among the rejection group when smaller …

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Dwelling, Making, And Digital Mediation: Mani Stone Piles In Eastern Tibet, Danmeng Xu, Han Sun, Zhijun Peng, Deng Pan, Jing Su Jun 2026

Dwelling, Making, And Digital Mediation: Mani Stone Piles In Eastern Tibet, Danmeng Xu, Han Sun, Zhijun Peng, Deng Pan, Jing Su

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines mani stone piles in Eastern Tibet as material forms emerging through dwelling, movement, and situated acts of making. Drawing on Tim Ingold’s dwelling perspective and long-term visual ethnography conducted between 2016 and 2025, it shows how mani piles are produced through the embodied selection, carrying, and stacking of stones at passes, riverbanks, and crossroads. Rather than treating these piles primarily as fixed religious symbols or products of prior design intention, we argue that their forms arise from the practical coordination of bodily skill, available materials, topography, ritual habit, and movement through the landscape. It further shows that …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Heterodox Economic Perspective For Designing Sustainability Transitions: Integrating Fundamental Human Needs And The Milieu Approach, Maxime Ritouet, Audrey Tanguy, Tatiana Reyes, Valérie Laforest Jun 2026

Heterodox Economic Perspective For Designing Sustainability Transitions: Integrating Fundamental Human Needs And The Milieu Approach, Maxime Ritouet, Audrey Tanguy, Tatiana Reyes, Valérie Laforest

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design for sustainability transitions is an emerging field within design for sustainability that aims to provide guidelines and strategies to generate systemic change in society, mostly at the socio-technical system level. Nevertheless, some limitations of current approaches have been pointed out by scholars, including their market-centered perspective and the vague definition of the sustainability visions adopted. To overcome these limitations, a shift towards a heterodox economic perspective is needed. Such a shift could help define new goals for design – satisfying fundamental human needs – through an integrative vision of humans within their environment. The city scale appears particularly appropriate …

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Is There Limitless Romance Behind A “Bunch Of Ones And Zeros”? How Social Vr Shapes Romantic Interaction And Its Design Implications, Ágnes Karolina Bakk, David Redmond, Borbála Tölgyesi, Kata Szita Jun 2026

Is There Limitless Romance Behind A “Bunch Of Ones And Zeros”? How Social Vr Shapes Romantic Interaction And Its Design Implications, Ágnes Karolina Bakk, David Redmond, Borbála Tölgyesi, Kata Szita

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how romantic relationships and expressions of intimacy unfold within social virtual reality (SVR) environments such as VRChat. Drawing on virtual ethnography and 26 semi-structured interviews, it examines how embodiment, anonymity, and technological affordances shape trust, emotional intimacy, and sexual expression. While often framed as taboo, these dynamics are central to understanding relational practices in immersive environments. Findings show that intimacy is experienced as both emotionally authentic and technologically mediated, emerging through practices such as roleplay, virtual touch, and shared activities. The study highlights how anonymity simultaneously enables openness and introduces challenges around trust, consent, and safety. By …

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Materialising Ecologies Of Intelligence: Learning To Design With And Within More-Than-Human Systems, Marianne Mcara, Zoë Prosser, Kirsty Ross Jun 2026

Materialising Ecologies Of Intelligence: Learning To Design With And Within More-Than-Human Systems, Marianne Mcara, Zoë Prosser, Kirsty Ross

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design is evolving from primarily human-centred approaches towards planetary concerns that re-centre more-than-human agency – a perspective that correlates with pressing ecological challenges emerging from global anthropogenic impacts. Against this backdrop, design education that equips graduates with the competencies to engage present and future complex socioecological challenges continue to develop. The authors discuss interconnected drivers that are shaping the wider field and advancing designers' roles before presenting a pedagogical model that supports design students to engage in academic-industry-community collaboration and forms of making to materialise complex systems and evolving epistemologies in accessible and tangible ways. The authors offer insights into …

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Co-Creating Connections: How Design, Healthcare, And Museum Actors Experience A Co-Creation Process, Margo Annemans, Iulia Vescan, Frederik Vandyck, Grietje D'Hollander, Maarten Van Acker, Inge Glazemakers Jun 2026

Co-Creating Connections: How Design, Healthcare, And Museum Actors Experience A Co-Creation Process, Margo Annemans, Iulia Vescan, Frederik Vandyck, Grietje D'Hollander, Maarten Van Acker, Inge Glazemakers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In recent years, co-creation has become common in design and healthcare contexts. This paper examines a co-creation process aimed at creating a physical link between a museum park and a child and adolescent psychiatric hospital. Whereas the experiences of end-users are key in co-creation processes, only few studies analyse how research and design actors experience partaking in such process. Therefore, we aim to unravel how a co-creation process is perceived by the various actors involved to ultimately foster improved understanding and collaboration and formulate recommendations for future projects. Through a focused collective autoethnographic approach, we explore the experiences of all …

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Mediating More-Than-Human Care: Art, Design And Climate Governance, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Jaz Hee-Jeong Choi, Rachel Elisabeth Clarke, Louise Mazet, Kana Ohashi Jun 2026

Mediating More-Than-Human Care: Art, Design And Climate Governance, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Jaz Hee-Jeong Choi, Rachel Elisabeth Clarke, Louise Mazet, Kana Ohashi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Art is increasingly mobilised in climate governance and policy, yet often instrumentalised for predefined human agendas of data visualisation, awareness raising, and science communication. This paper explores design research’s role as a mediator of more radical art-driven participation that cultivates more-than-human care ecologies: relational configurations that redistribute sensing, accountability, and decision-making across human and other-than-human actors. Drawing on theories of care and affective politics, we examine how design research can support art-driven participation through a critical literature review. Three illustrative case studies addressing sustainable transitions on an interregional level, urban air pollution, and disaster recovery demonstrate a move from anthropocentric …

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(Re)Framing Timber Values: Cascade Use Metrics As A Dynamic Policy Tool, Elif Erez-Henderson, Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes Jun 2026

(Re)Framing Timber Values: Cascade Use Metrics As A Dynamic Policy Tool, Elif Erez-Henderson, Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Salvaged timber embodies a paradox of contemporary circularity: despite its capacity to store carbon and its long history of reuse, it remains marginal within modern construction. Its reuse is constrained by regulations that both shape and reflect the material’s value. This paper reframes this paradox through the lens of value fluctuation–how financial, carbon, and social values oscillate and misalign across timber’s successive lives, determining whether it circulates as resource, product, or waste. These sequential uses, known as cascade use, describe an approach to resource management that prioritizes biomass retention. Building on this framework, the paper proposes a value-centered cascade-use metric …

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Tagus Estuary Color Swatch – Materials As Affective Mediators In More-Than-Human Temporalities, Mariana Simoes, Mariana Pestana, Frederico Duarte, Valentina Nisi Jun 2026

Tagus Estuary Color Swatch – Materials As Affective Mediators In More-Than-Human Temporalities, Mariana Simoes, Mariana Pestana, Frederico Duarte, Valentina Nisi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper reimagines material catalogues not as static inventories but as archives of deep-time and affect: tools for sensing, caring for, and reconfiguring our relationships with the more-than-human world. It presents Tagus estuary colour swatch, a Research-through-Design exploration in which bio-pigments derived from local plant, mineral, algal, and waste streams form a colour palette embodying the estuary’s ecological rhythms. The project reframes materials beyond inert resources but rather as affective mediators of and for more-than-human temporalities – by embodying and expressing temporal processes and by enabling designers and audiences to engage with them. Positioned against the extractivist legacy of traditional …

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Design Activism Pedagogy: Learning And Negotiating Values In Practice, Gheysa Caroline Prado Jun 2026

Design Activism Pedagogy: Learning And Negotiating Values In Practice, Gheysa Caroline Prado

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how design education can reveal and negotiate values through the practice of design activism. Based on a multi-year teaching experience with undergraduate design students, the study reflects on how pedagogical strategies oriented by emancipation and collective responsibility enable the articulation of ethical awareness in design processes. The teaching approach evolved from remote reflection-based activities to embodied, field-based interventions that addressed social and environmental issues in local communities. Through qualitative analysis of classroom documentation and student projects, the study identifies values such as reciprocity, dignity, and solidarity as emerging drivers of learning and design action. The discussion highlights …

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"It's Going To Be A Really Good Place To Hang Out": Supporting Diversity In Community Indoor Environments By Eliciting Autistic Adults’ Preferences, Asako Osedo, Stella Boess Jun 2026

"It's Going To Be A Really Good Place To Hang Out": Supporting Diversity In Community Indoor Environments By Eliciting Autistic Adults’ Preferences, Asako Osedo, Stella Boess

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigates how indoor environments, for example of schools or workplaces, can actively support the diversity of communities, by considering the case of autistic adults’ preferences for them. Employing a participatory design approach, we engaged autistic individuals to understand their lived experiences, preferences for meaningful in-person social interactions, and their strategies to engage in social settings. Key findings highlight the importance of sensory regulation, vibrant and engaging spaces that mitigate awkwardness and promote authentic interactions, and the role of predictability and autonomy in reducing unnecessary stresses. We show how autistic adults can be supported in managing their regulation to …

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Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice, Marta Ferreira, Ana Henriques, Angelika Strohmayer, Valentina Nisi Jun 2026

Practical Ways Of Staying With The Trouble: Enacting Posthuman Ethics Through Design Practice, Marta Ferreira, Ana Henriques, Angelika Strohmayer, Valentina Nisi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how posthuman design researchers operationalise the values inherent to their research as an everyday practice of care, messiness, and partiality. Drawing on five in-depth interviews and employing diffractive analysis through posthuman and feminist care ethics lenses, the study highlights how practitioners enact plural, situated, and reflexive approaches to method. The findings distil theoretical commitments into actionable suggestions and everyday ethics, underscoring the significance of relational accountability in design research. Implications are discussed for legitimising care-centred methods, reframing design research, and supporting systemic change. In foregrounding posthuman approaches and ethics as ongoing attunement, this research offers practical strategies …

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Learnings From Peruvian Gastronomy For The Transculturalization Of Design Practices, Laura Salcedo Miranda, Juan Montalván Lume Jun 2026

Learnings From Peruvian Gastronomy For The Transculturalization Of Design Practices, Laura Salcedo Miranda, Juan Montalván Lume

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In recent decades, Peruvian gastronomy has experienced a higher exposure and production of culinary creations manifesting practices of transcultural mixture entangling diverse cultural influences. Nevertheless, there still remains a need for studies that discuss such cultural amalgamations, which could also inform strategies for transculturalization in other culturally sensitive practices like design. This paper analyses multiple variations of well-known Peruvian dishes to understand the historical and contemporary processes of cultural mixture that have fostered the current landscape. For this, a conceptual framework that draws from Latin American Transcultural Design Studies and Gastronomic Theory is proposed to enable transdisciplinary learnings entangling both …

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Toward A Culturally Situated Perspective: Rethinking The Role Of Ai In Intangible Cultural Heritage Pattern Creation, Xiaojing Yuan, Xiang Yuan, Sanyi Wang, Hao Li, Mengzhi He, Duoduo Zhang, Nick Bryan-Kinns Jun 2026

Toward A Culturally Situated Perspective: Rethinking The Role Of Ai In Intangible Cultural Heritage Pattern Creation, Xiaojing Yuan, Xiang Yuan, Sanyi Wang, Hao Li, Mengzhi He, Duoduo Zhang, Nick Bryan-Kinns

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Research on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in cultural design has primarily focused on generative control and creative efficiency, often overlooking the misalignment between AI task definition and cultural creation. This study explores how GenAI can be culturally adapted within traditional pattern-making practices. Using an ethnographically informed generative probe, field experiments were conducted in the Huayao cross-stitch community, which practices a form of Chinese intangible cultural heritage. The findings reveal how cultural practitioners negotiate creative logic and cultural judgment when collaborating with AI, identifying four key orientations: liveliness, locality, creation-in-progress, and community creativity. Building on these insights, the paper redefines AI’s …

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