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Designing The Echo. Practices For Oral Heritage In The Digital Age, Ilaria Bollati, Luisa Collina, Alice Biancardi Jun 2026

Designing The Echo. Practices For Oral Heritage In The Digital Age, Ilaria Bollati, Luisa Collina, Alice Biancardi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Oral heritage is inherently unstable: unlike written records, it persists through repetition and reinterpretation rather than through the conservation of a stable object. In post-digital cultural heritage contexts, safeguarding oral memories therefore cannot be reduced to storing audio files; it requires the socio-technical conditions to be designed that make voices interpretable, discoverable, and reactivatable. This paper develops and applies a three-phase framework ̶ Listening / Composing / Amplifying ̶ as an analytical and methodological lens for tracing how oral material is collected, translated into an questionable structure, and returned to the public through differentiated formats. The paper grounds the framework …

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Rethinking Communication And Power Relations In A Collaboration Between Designers And Welfare Communites/Organisations, Zhixin Zhang, Sarah Kettley, Agnese Sile Jun 2026

Rethinking Communication And Power Relations In A Collaboration Between Designers And Welfare Communites/Organisations, Zhixin Zhang, Sarah Kettley, Agnese Sile

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents a disabled researcher’s reflection on communication and power relations experienced through direct participation in an Inclusive Design Workshop in Tokyo. It explores how designers collaborated with welfare facility communities to develop inclusive ideas and practices. The study conceptualises inclusion as a relational process that extends beyond accessibility compliance, shaped through communication, emotion, and care. Through a reflexive ethnography that combined participant observation and multimodal analysis, four key themes emerged: Communication Barriers, Effective Communication, Effective Operation of Design Decisions, and Responding to Communication Strategies. Insights suggest that institutional hierarchies and emotional asymmetries often acted to hinder participation but …

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Queering Empathy In/For/With/By Design, Jessica Meharry Jun 2026

Queering Empathy In/For/With/By Design, Jessica Meharry

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Empathy is widely used as the initial stage of the design process to understand users and meet their needs and desires. Recently these methods have been critiqued for commodifying empathy in commercial practice, centering the designer instead of the user, and failing to account for power dynamics. Empathy is also under attack in political spheres, increasing the dehumanization of others. To address these criticisms, we explore the value of empathy in design processes and examine how queer theory and queering methodologies can help designers move past “walking in someone else’s shoes” towards intersectional design processes rooted in political responsibility. Synthesizing …

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Nature-Centred Biodesign For Regeneration. Design Understandings In Europe., Nina Costa, Pierre Oskam, Helen Charoupia, Fátima Pombo Jun 2026

Nature-Centred Biodesign For Regeneration. Design Understandings In Europe., Nina Costa, Pierre Oskam, Helen Charoupia, Fátima Pombo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how design researchers in Europe understand and enact nature-centred biodesign for regeneration: an emerging approach that bridges design, biology, and ecology to foster regenerative futures. It proposes an evolutionary framework of design agency, mapping the transition from imitation to co-evolution and from instrumental ethics to ecological justice. The framework highlights four paradigmatic quadrants: Anthropocentric Planning, Emerging Bioeconomy, Socio-Ecology, and Regenerative Biodesign that capture how ethical, ecological, and material orientations shape practice. In parallel, it employs a qualitative analysis of a questionnaire with 32 researchers from COST Action DESIGNAE (2025), which investigates how design operates between scientific, material, …

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Making The Invisible Visible: Supporting Older Adults’ Expression Of Emotional Needs For Companion Robots Through Visual Co-Design Tools, Chuxuan Xu, Hua Dong, Mohammed Elsouri, Mingfeng Wang Jun 2026

Making The Invisible Visible: Supporting Older Adults’ Expression Of Emotional Needs For Companion Robots Through Visual Co-Design Tools, Chuxuan Xu, Hua Dong, Mohammed Elsouri, Mingfeng Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As populations age, companion robots are increasingly explored to support emotional well-being in later life. However, older adults often find it difficult to express abstract emotions or imagine interactions with unfamiliar technologies, limiting their participation in early-stage design. This study develops and validates a structured toolkit designed to support emotional articulation and co-design participation. The toolkit, consisting of companionship cards, robot role cards, and recording canvases, was refined through expert evaluation and user testing, and validated through comparative interviews with older adults (n=10). Results show that the toolkit supported richer emotional expression, smoother dialogue, and more sustained engagement, helping participants …

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Ddenso: An Evaluation-Driven Methodology For Information Visualisations, Michele Mauri, Elena Aversa, Anna Cattaneo, María De Los Ángeles Briones Rojas Jun 2026

Ddenso: An Evaluation-Driven Methodology For Information Visualisations, Michele Mauri, Elena Aversa, Anna Cattaneo, María De Los Ángeles Briones Rojas

DRS Biennial Conference Series

When designing Information Visualisations for Media and Information Literacy (MIL) initiatives, a significant challenge lies in ensuring that they effectively transmit and consolidate knowledge, particularly when the Information Visualisation literacy of the audience is unknown. Applying a Research through Design approach, this article describes a meta-process: the reflective and iterative path that led to the definition of DDENSO, a replicable design methodology for creating and evaluating Information Visualisations that allow for knowledge retention. Grounded in prior theoretical and practical experience in Information Design, DDENSO emerged through the development of the artefacts for a MIL exhibition exploring the social implications of …

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More-Than-Human Oversight: Designing A Somaesthetic Space For High-Risk Ai Systems, Mariana Morais, Joaquin Santuber, Kristina Tica, Pablo Hermansen, Marcos Chilet Jun 2026

More-Than-Human Oversight: Designing A Somaesthetic Space For High-Risk Ai Systems, Mariana Morais, Joaquin Santuber, Kristina Tica, Pablo Hermansen, Marcos Chilet

DRS Biennial Conference Series

European AI regulation (EU AI Act) has assumed that humans will remain in control of AI systems, thanks to human-machine interfaces and a stop button (Art. 14 of the EU AI Act) as two separate static entities. This ontological blindness in legal institutions leads to a problem of making illusory mechanisms through which people relate to the more-than-human agency of AI systems, foreclosing any possibility of coexistence. Against this context, somaesthetic and affective interaction design practices can offer new possibilities of inter-relations between the more-than-human AI-data operations and the human and social institutions’ fixations on representations. This paper provides an …

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Aesthetics As A Driver For Inclusion: What Recycling Rooms Reveal About Participation In Everyday Society, Anna-Sara Fagerholm, Henrik Haller, Anders Warell, Per-Olof Hedvall Jun 2026

Aesthetics As A Driver For Inclusion: What Recycling Rooms Reveal About Participation In Everyday Society, Anna-Sara Fagerholm, Henrik Haller, Anders Warell, Per-Olof Hedvall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how aesthetics can foster inclusion in everyday urban infrastructures, using recycling rooms in residential areas as a case study. Drawing on a design ethnographic study of 27 municipal recycling facilities, three interconnected dimensions – access aesthetics, communicative aesthetics, and spatial aesthetics – were identified. Environments that are neglected, dark, and smelly tend to exclude residents, while those designed with aesthetic considerations foster a sense of shared responsibility and well-being. By linking perceptions of aesthetics in recycling rooms to broader debates in universal design, this paper highlights how aesthetic qualities influence participation, social connection, and environmental practices. These …

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Holding Paradoxes Together: Navigating Institutional Complexity In Public Design, Luis Garcia, Geert Brinkman Jun 2026

Holding Paradoxes Together: Navigating Institutional Complexity In Public Design, Luis Garcia, Geert Brinkman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the evolving practice of design in the public sector. To do so, we initiated a reading group that brought together academics and practitioners from around the globe to discuss how public design is understood and practiced in different contexts. The common thread across the six reading groups held so far was that public design is inherently paradoxical. Three core paradoxes appear to characterize its practice: the identity paradox (blending in to stand out), the enablement paradox (constraining design by enabling it), and the political paradox (designing apolitically while designing politically). These paradoxes highlight the need for strategic …

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Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking Wellbeing In Human–Ai Interaction From A Design Perspective, Boyu Zhang, Li Zhang Jun 2026

Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking Wellbeing In Human–Ai Interaction From A Design Perspective, Boyu Zhang, Li Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As AI increasingly enters everyday life in intimate roles of companionship and emotional support, established understandings of wellbeing in design research are being challenged. Conventional approaches tend to frame wellbeing as an optimizable experiential state, typically enhanced by means of emotional design. However, as AI becomes a medium for emotional engagement, wellbeing shifts toward a relational outcome that emerges from ongoing interactions.This paper introduces fictionalized affective relations to describe how users, despite knowing AI lacks genuine consciousness and emotion, nonetheless disclose vulnerability, invest affectively, and derive experiences of intimacy. It identifies three ethical tensions: emotional capitalization, loss of affective sovereignty, …

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From Conflict To Care: A Design Learning Experiment On Food Justice In Rio De Janeiro, Laura Cipriani, Claudio Magalhães, Stefano Maffei Jun 2026

From Conflict To Care: A Design Learning Experiment On Food Justice In Rio De Janeiro, Laura Cipriani, Claudio Magalhães, Stefano Maffei

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper discusses the Design for Peace Ecosystem: Urban Conflict and Food Justice course as a situated experiment in transformative design education. Conducted in Rio de Janeiro, the course combined participatory mapping, desk research, and fieldwork to explore how design can reveal and reframe tensions and hidden structural injustices within urban Food Systems. Students first developed urban food conflict maps to visualise inequalities in access, labour, and cultural recognition. Through desk research, they identified local “food care” initiatives that address food conflicts and promote the right to an adequate food culture. Using ethnographic diaries and ethnography techniques, they engaged with …

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Toward An Architectural Model Of Design Methods: Meta-Methods, Proto-Methods, And Method Building Blocks, Colin M. Gray, Shruthi Sai Chivukula, Abdul Moeed Asad Jun 2026

Toward An Architectural Model Of Design Methods: Meta-Methods, Proto-Methods, And Method Building Blocks, Colin M. Gray, Shruthi Sai Chivukula, Abdul Moeed Asad

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design methods have long occupied a central yet ambiguous role in design research. They are invoked as distillations of procedural knowledge and recipes for action but also function as placeholders for more complex performances. Yet the persistent assumption that methods are checklists—mechanical sequences of steps that can be validated or optimized—has obscured their performative and situated dimensions. This paper revisits the nature of methods through an architectural model that distinguishes between meta-methods, proto-methods, and method building blocks. Drawing from historical, theoretical, and empirical discussions, we argue that methods are best understood as assemblages of prescription and performance, whose coherence emerges …

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When Data Systems Meet Ecosystems: Tensions Between Ai Platforms And Vitality In Corporate Sustainability, Michelle Westerlaken, Sonja Rattay Jun 2026

When Data Systems Meet Ecosystems: Tensions Between Ai Platforms And Vitality In Corporate Sustainability, Michelle Westerlaken, Sonja Rattay

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Ecosystems are not computers. They are alive, endlessly complex, and deeply intriguing. What if the data systems used to better understand living worlds could embed this more-than-human vitality? This paper examines ecosystem data tools in corporate sustainability, where AI tools have become key mediators in sustainable transitions. Drawing on desk research and empirical data with biodiversity specialists at 13 large corporations, it identifies four tensions that reveal deeper mismatches between computational systems and ecological worlds. These arise between demands for certainty and the unstable dynamics of ecosystems; between the need for data as neutral evidence and as arguments towards managing …

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Designing The Playing Machine: Stage Design As Play Catalyst, Maria Mandea Jun 2026

Designing The Playing Machine: Stage Design As Play Catalyst, Maria Mandea

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article presents practice-led research where stage design is understood as an active, agential collaborator in theatrical performance, similar to how toys, playgrounds and material games are used as catalysts for play. Addressing the limitation of static, representational design, we develop a design for play methodology drawing from Constructivist theatre’s concept of the “acting apparatus.” This research explores the agency of material design within the performative space through two complementary case studies: an analogue, embodied board game system and a tech-driven, automated environment where pre-programmed robots act as performers. The playing machine concept is proposed as a design method that …

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Bridging Awareness And Action: Visual Communication Strategies For Sustainable Consumption In Fast Fashion, Alice Biolchini Jun 2026

Bridging Awareness And Action: Visual Communication Strategies For Sustainable Consumption In Fast Fashion, Alice Biolchini

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Fast fashion accounts for continuous labor exploitation and 8-10% of global carbon emissions, perpetuating environmental degradation. Yet consumer awareness alone often fails to drive sustainable behavior. This systematic literature review aimed to understand how psychological and communication elements can be used to design an intervention capable of changing consumption behavior. Following PRISMA 2020 methodology, 103 peer-reviewed studies were analyzed from 1,384 papers retrieved across six academic databases. Three thematic strands emerged: sustainable consumer behavior and decision-making, visual and aesthetic influence on awareness, and artificial intelligence in engagement contexts. Findings reveal that consciousness alone is insufficient; interventions are suggested to combine …

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Mapping Circular Design Pathways For Wearables: An Annotated Portfolio At The Intersection Of Material-Driven Design And Bio-Hci, Nicla Guarino, Venere Ferraro, Valentina Rognoli Jun 2026

Mapping Circular Design Pathways For Wearables: An Annotated Portfolio At The Intersection Of Material-Driven Design And Bio-Hci, Nicla Guarino, Venere Ferraro, Valentina Rognoli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the environmental impacts of wearable technologies intensify, exploring how material choices can enable circularity in such a waste-intensive sector has become critical for design research. In response to this challenge, materials are recognised as pivotal in emerging wearable alternatives, yet how they can actively support circular practices remains underexplored. The study addresses this gap through an annotated portfolio of 40 case studies situated in or informing the wearable domain at the intersection of Material-Driven Design and Bio-HCI. By foregrounding recurring materials, methods, and tools, the analysis aims to reveal how matter can act as a transformative agent in shaping …

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Territorial Design As Frictional Landscapes: Reframing Urban-Landscape Discourse And Practice Into Multi-Scalar Governance, Sophie Eberhardt Jun 2026

Territorial Design As Frictional Landscapes: Reframing Urban-Landscape Discourse And Practice Into Multi-Scalar Governance, Sophie Eberhardt

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper traces the emergence of territorial design as a distinct discourse and practice that repositions urban-landscape design from site-based form-making toward socio-ecological governance across scales. Drawing on a systematic review of scholarly literature (1960-2025), a practice survey (42 questionnaires with designers working in France), and three comparative case studies - Room for the River, Medellín’s social urbanism, and riverfront renaturation projects in Paris and Lyon - we show how ecological planning, landscape urbanism, and territorialist thought converge into methods that couple territorial diagnosis, morphological and biophysical patterning, and participatory co-design. The analysis foregrounds two fertile frictions: replicability vs. situatedness, …

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Design Through Co-Elaboration: Friction, Dysfunction, And More-Than-Human, Corentin Loubet Jun 2026

Design Through Co-Elaboration: Friction, Dysfunction, And More-Than-Human, Corentin Loubet

DRS Biennial Conference Series

AI devices are structured by “seamless” and “emotional” design, which conceals many underlying mechanisms and algorithmic rules. By contrast, behavioral objects – through defamiliarization and misbehavior – prompt critical reflection on our relationship with technological artifacts and expose their inner workings. However, most behavioral objects, particularly in art contexts, are designed to ensure predictable outcomes and audience interactions, revealing an underlying desire to tightly control the discourse produced by the work. This paper contends that their critical significance can instead emerge from their material presence through a frictional, more-than-human approach in which dysfunction becomes a source of unpredictable expressivity and …

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Designing For Dignity: A Method To Explore Emotional Lived Experiences Of Stigma And Dignity In Perinatal Mental Health Environments, Carmen Heuvelmans, Aslı Günay, Geke Ludden, Jodi Sturge Jun 2026

Designing For Dignity: A Method To Explore Emotional Lived Experiences Of Stigma And Dignity In Perinatal Mental Health Environments, Carmen Heuvelmans, Aslı Günay, Geke Ludden, Jodi Sturge

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Psychiatric care environments are intended to heal, yet their design is often experienced as stigmatizing. This paper presents the Uncovering and Designing for Dignity through Emotions (UDDE) method, a participatory approach designed to uncover the meaning of dignity for perinatal women in psychiatric care, explore lived experiences of stigma and dignity, and identify how care features can be re-designed to uphold dignity. While dignity is often defined as an inherent worth every person possesses, in everyday life dignity is experienced as a lived value shaped by interactions with others and the environment. Emotions act as biological signals that can reveal …

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Not Another Design That Ends Up In A Drawer: Mechanisms To Legitimize Design Outcomes In The Public Sector, Geert Brinkman, Elke Wennekers Jun 2026

Not Another Design That Ends Up In A Drawer: Mechanisms To Legitimize Design Outcomes In The Public Sector, Geert Brinkman, Elke Wennekers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While design has gained significant interest in the public sector in recent years, it has yet to gain real traction. Even in countries seen as frontrunners, design has not become mainstream practice and its potential to meaningfully address public issues remains largely unrealized. One of the main reasons for this is that designers find it difficult to legitimize design. In this study, we conducted eight interviews with designers to explore how they attempt to gain legitimacy for the outcomes of their work. We adopted an argumentation lens to identify the various legitimation strategies employed. Rather than individual strategies, we present …

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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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Sherlock Holmes In The Studio: Supporting Deductive And Inductive Reasoning Skills In Design Education, Koray Gelmez, Pelin Efilti, Hatice Kubra Kubra Yildiz, Ali Cankat Alan Jun 2026

Sherlock Holmes In The Studio: Supporting Deductive And Inductive Reasoning Skills In Design Education, Koray Gelmez, Pelin Efilti, Hatice Kubra Kubra Yildiz, Ali Cankat Alan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Reasoning is a central skill in design education, yet it often remains implicit in studio courses. This paper presents an instructional exercise that adapts methods of deductive and inductive reasoning, commonly associated with crime scene investigation, into industrial design education. Inspired by Sherlock Holmes’ investigative methods, students examined manufactured products as ‘crime scenes,’ collecting traces of production and assembly as evidence. By reconstructing these processes, they practised analytical thinking and transferred investigative reasoning into design reasoning. Implemented across three semesters with around 101 students, the activity was followed by interviews with 25 participants. Findings indicate that students reported stronger observation, …

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The Embodied Turn In Design Cognition And The Implications From The “Shensi” Aesthetics, Yu Zhi, Hanbing Ren Jun 2026

The Embodied Turn In Design Cognition And The Implications From The “Shensi” Aesthetics, Yu Zhi, Hanbing Ren

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In today's world, AI technology is reshaping design practice. The modern design cognition is shifting from Cartesian disembodied rationality to phenomenological embodied intuition. This study draws on Nigel Cross's research on design thinking and the concept of “Shensi” from traditional Chinese aesthetics. It reveals the embodied essence of design cognition as a dynamic network of body, technology, and environment. This network reconfigures design problems, structures, and meanings. By comparing "Shensi" (embodied, intuitive, humanistic) with AI-mediated design (logical, data-driven, efficient), this study proposes a new design paradigm based on Eastern wisdom to broaden theoretical understanding of design cognition.

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An Exploration Into The Value Of ‘Gap System’ Within Regenerative Design, Ariane Camille Fourquier, Delfina Fantini Van Ditmar, Iohanna Nicenboim Jun 2026

An Exploration Into The Value Of ‘Gap System’ Within Regenerative Design, Ariane Camille Fourquier, Delfina Fantini Van Ditmar, Iohanna Nicenboim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the possible contribution of ‘gap system’ within the context of regenerative design, highlighting how ‘gaps’, as overlooked, unexplored, and unrecalled dimensions of creative practice, can provide critical opportunities for regeneration. Drawing on ongoing research into weave structures conceptualised through the holes in between yarns, and by presenting the outcomes of a workshop, we illustrate the potential of thinking through ‘gaps’ as a nuanced perspective for regenerative design. Here, ‘gaps’ become sites of reflection, emergence, and transition. We show how this approach reshaped participants’ ways of mapping systems by focusing on ‘gaps’ rather than existing linear knowledge, enabling …

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Tangible Conversations For Uncertain Futures: A Design-Led Approach With Families Affected By Multiple Sclerosis, Alison Thomson, Hannah Scott, Ruth Dobson Jun 2026

Tangible Conversations For Uncertain Futures: A Design-Led Approach With Families Affected By Multiple Sclerosis, Alison Thomson, Hannah Scott, Ruth Dobson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Neurological prevention science is gaining traction, with implications for people at raised familial risk of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We examine how design can intervene in this emerging prevention space through Digesting Science (DS), a co-designed public engagement project that brings families affected by MS together through events and playful, hands-on activities in community settings. We analyse post-event open-ended evaluation forms and a follow up study using auto-photo-elicitation with semi-structured interviews with children and parents. Findings show that DS makes MS discussable without increasing anxiety, embodied activities create shared reference points and language for talking about symptoms, science and uncertainty. We …

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Verbalized Thoughts As Raw Knowledge: A Method For Designing Future Experience, Peiwen Luo, Zhengyu Tan, Ziang Chen Jun 2026

Verbalized Thoughts As Raw Knowledge: A Method For Designing Future Experience, Peiwen Luo, Zhengyu Tan, Ziang Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

At the early design stage, users’ verbalized thoughts lack in-depth analysis due to technological and cost constraints, hindering designers' creative future design. This study presents the results of a co-creation workshop with eight designers. Taking autonomous eVTOL flight as an example, this study developed the VR eVTOL cabin—an immersive experiential space where participants experienced story scenarios spanning boarding, flight, and landing. Participants’ verbalized thoughts about safety are collected through the think-aloud method. Subsequently, this study presents the reflective inference card to help participants comprehensively analyze the triggers behind these thoughts, their mental mechanisms, and propose design strategies for enhancing perceived …

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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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Time Travelers: Bridging Generations In Boston’S Seaport, Robiya Sahibnazarova, Annika Kim Jun 2026

Time Travelers: Bridging Generations In Boston’S Seaport, Robiya Sahibnazarova, Annika Kim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This qualitative study examines social isolation among Boston's elders aged 65 and older. We explored ways to employ service design and interactive encounters to connect different generations around history. Our focus was on Boston’s Seaport—a district shaped by redevelopment and technology. This study involved four interviews with museum professionals, elders, and locals to understand how memories influence community connections. The Time Travelers app features an Interactive Memory Map of stories along with guided walks and collaborative memory threads that encourage intergenerational exchange. Complementing the app, a Seaport boardwalk installation features televisions from different decades displaying memories from each era. Visitors …

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Mapping How Design Engages With Systems Thinking In Complex Healthcare Systems: A Scoping Review, Yuanrong Guo, Zixuan Wang, Sarah Kettley, Autumn Roesch-Marsh Jun 2026

Mapping How Design Engages With Systems Thinking In Complex Healthcare Systems: A Scoping Review, Yuanrong Guo, Zixuan Wang, Sarah Kettley, Autumn Roesch-Marsh

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Integrating systems thinking and design thinking offers a promising approach to address systemic challenges in healthcare. However, existing studies apply diverse systems thinking theories and methods across different healthcare contexts, and design also shows methodological pluralism. Such diversity has created conceptual fragmentation and uncertainty about how designers can meaningfully apply systems thinking. This paper presents a scoping review of 44 empirical studies that apply both design approaches and systems thinking theories or methods in healthcare service systems. The analysis examines where systems thinking is positioned within studies and identifies four relationship types: (1) design as systemic practice, (2) systems thinking …

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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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