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Transdisciplinarity In Practice: Challenges And Transformative Potentials Of Participatory Design In Sociobiodiversity Contexts, Denise Dantas, Suzana M. R. Álvares, Laercio Marques Da Silva, Neide Araujo, Joel Leandro De Queiroga, Luiz Octavio Ramos Filho Jun 2026

Transdisciplinarity In Practice: Challenges And Transformative Potentials Of Participatory Design In Sociobiodiversity Contexts, Denise Dantas, Suzana M. R. Álvares, Laercio Marques Da Silva, Neide Araujo, Joel Leandro De Queiroga, Luiz Octavio Ramos Filho

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article examines the epistemological, political, and practical challenges of transdisciplinarity in a participatory design project with agroforestry family farmers in São Paulo, Brazil, within the Design for Biodiversity initiative. By bringing together designers, scientists, and farmers, the project demonstrates how participatory design operates as a negotiation between institutional knowledge and vernacular expertise. Farmers’ experiential knowledge informed design decisions and interpretations of socioecological dynamics. Findings reveal tensions not only in interactions with farmers, requiring communication adapted to accessible language and local realities, but also within the academic team, due to differing worldviews and validation standards. Through a design-led action research …

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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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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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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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How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros Jun 2026

How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Aside from design theories and design methods, the design research field has built numerous methods for observing design practices. Most of them can be classified into two categories: ethnographies, which consist of sharing the daily lives of designers, and experimental approaches, which reconstruct design situations in the controlled environment of a laboratory. This study retraces the history of these methods, that exist almost independently from one another creating silos within the design research field. Throughout their respective developments, both ethnographies and experimental approaches indicate the same blind spot: the study of material traces of processes that have already taken place. …

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"That's Fine..." Uncovering Ambiguity Through Emotional Labelling In Scottish Design Students’ Design Process, Hazar Taissier Marji, Paul A. Rodgers, Ross Brisco Jun 2026

"That's Fine..." Uncovering Ambiguity Through Emotional Labelling In Scottish Design Students’ Design Process, Hazar Taissier Marji, Paul A. Rodgers, Ross Brisco

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Putting emotions into words is a natural human strategy for reinterpreting situations, even when done unintentionally. Evidence shows that this process, known as affective labelling, can reduce distress compared to non- affective verbalisation. Given that, the word 'fine' is widely used as a self-report label for emotional states, yet its meaning remains strikingly ambiguous. Limited research has explored such neutral or mid-spectrum emotional terms that are neither overtly positive nor negative but still shape the design process. This study examines how Scottish design students use 'fine' to describe their emotional experiences during their final design projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted …

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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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Ai' S Brush On Novice Posters: Unfolding Visual Competence Shifts Of Design Students, Yisu Zhao, Chuhan Li, Qianqian Hu, Fang Liu, Renke He Jun 2026

Ai' S Brush On Novice Posters: Unfolding Visual Competence Shifts Of Design Students, Yisu Zhao, Chuhan Li, Qianqian Hu, Fang Liu, Renke He

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As generative AI tools increasingly permeate design education, questions arise about their impact on novice students’ creative competence. This study addresses two research questions: (RQ1) How does AI participation affect students’ creative outcomes, particularly the visual dimensions of their work? (RQ2) How do evaluators redefine competence amid AI involvement in novice design students’ creative processes? Using a mixed-method approach, Study1 analysed professional evaluations of 88 student projects, showing that AI-assisted works scored higher in creativity and visual elaboration but not in design logic, with greater score divergence.Study2 involved interviews with eight design experts, revealing tensions in evaluators’ attribution of competence …

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Absent Voices, Alternative Futures: What Design Issues Didn't Say About Design (1984-2025), Yeqiu Yang Jun 2026

Absent Voices, Alternative Futures: What Design Issues Didn't Say About Design (1984-2025), Yeqiu Yang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Can Western design theory be a universal panacea? Celebrating Design Issues' 40-year legacy (1984-2025), "The Unfolding Culture" exhibition asks how culture will shape design's future, yet overlooks whose culture dominates design discourse. Through critical analysis of Design Issues, the author reveals three structural absences that question theoretical universalism: (1) Medium constraints—text-based format systematically excludes sound, video, and material-based knowledge production, eliminating epistemologies that resist textualization; (2) Temporal lag—non-Western topics arrive decades late, revealing one-way delayed recognition rather than dialogue; (3) Divergent concerns—East and West simultaneously focus on fundamentally different design questions yet lack mechanisms for synchronous exchange, resulting in parallel …

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The Dcf Framework: Integrating Cross-Cultural And Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives On Comfort Experience, Danhua Zhao, Rui Qin, Chaomin Ma, Yuhao Jiang, Bingquan Wang Jun 2026

The Dcf Framework: Integrating Cross-Cultural And Multi-Stakeholder Perspectives On Comfort Experience, Danhua Zhao, Rui Qin, Chaomin Ma, Yuhao Jiang, Bingquan Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design plays a key role in driving economic and organizational transformations. However, existing approaches face significant challenges in addressing the translation of cross-cultural needs, integrating diverse perspectives, and critically reassessing the role of design within the singular economic/efficiency paradigm, particularly regarding affective experiences assessment such as comfort. To address these, this study proposes a qualitative framework that incorporates multiple stakeholders and cross-cultural users into the design process, referred to as the Diversity-Co-Creation-Framework (DCF). Through four phases—Scanning, Framing, Mapping, and Deepening—the DCF combines tools such as semi-structured interviews and the Futures Triangle from foresight research to engage opinion leaders and cross-cultural …

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Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes Jun 2026

Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Metaphors play a crucial role in how designers understand, communicate, and shape technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. This paper introduces Archipelagic AI (AAI), a speculative framework that employs metaphor-making as a design research strategy to challenge the colonial epistemologies that structure AI systems. Developed through collaborative autoethnography and fabulation in one of Europe’s richer ecosystems (Samouco in the Tagus Estuary), AAI draws on archipelagic studies and Caribbean decolonial thought to foreground a geosocial intelligence emerging through relational nodes of situated knowledge, where matter, forces, currents, and affects interweave in fluid assemblages. Structured around three metaphorical figures — …

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Designing Under Uncertainty: How Novices Rationalize Prototype Choices Before And After Parallel Testing, Pa Chang Vang, Carlye Anne Lauff Jun 2026

Designing Under Uncertainty: How Novices Rationalize Prototype Choices Before And After Parallel Testing, Pa Chang Vang, Carlye Anne Lauff

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how novice designers justify prototype concept choices before and after parallel stakeholder testing in early-stage product development. Drawing on 99 survey responses collected across two checkpoints in a 16-week interdisciplinary design studio, we used an inductive-deductive coding approach to map emergent themes to innovation frames of desirability, feasibility, and viability. Six themes emerged: desirability (primarily perceived play value) dominated pre- and post-test reasoning, while feasibility (simplicity/modularity) and viability (production cost, market potential) shaped secondary trade-offs. Parallel testing prompted revisions when stakeholder engagement or client cues contradicted expectations; many students retained choices when testing validated initial impressions or …

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New Agenda For Inclusive Design, Hua Dong, Abdusselam Selami Cifter, Stella Boess, Farnaz Nickpour, Yumei Dong, Weining Ning Jun 2026

New Agenda For Inclusive Design, Hua Dong, Abdusselam Selami Cifter, Stella Boess, Farnaz Nickpour, Yumei Dong, Weining Ning

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The Inclusive Design Special Interest Group of the Design Research Society (InclusiveSIG - with Professor Hua Dong as its Convenor, and Dr Weining Ning as its co-convenor) organised the “New Agenda for Inclusive Design” Track for DRS2026. The Track has attracted more than 50 submissions from 16 countries. In total 19 papers were selected after blind peer-review, and three further papers added, forming four sessions: 1) Rethinking Inclusive Design; 2) Studying Older People: Theories and Methods; 3) Neurodivergent Groups: Adults and Children; 4) Assessing Accessibility and Inclusion. New agenda and trends include “relations as inclusion”, “aesthetics as a driver for …

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Meaning At A Distance: Redefining Aesthetics In The Age Of Intelligent Objects, Stefano Caggiano Jun 2026

Meaning At A Distance: Redefining Aesthetics In The Age Of Intelligent Objects, Stefano Caggiano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how the aesthetics of design is being redefined by the embodiment of intelligent and interactive technologies within the framework of cognitive semiotics. Interpretation—understood as semiosis—is conceived as the fundamental process of meaning-making, through which user and artifact dynamically co-produce sense. Two modes of semiosis are distinguished: motor interpretation, grounded in the embodied incorporation of objects as extensions of the body, and cognitive interpretation, based on inferential and cooperative meaning construction. In traditional design, aesthetics either supports functional embodiment or serves decorative representation. In AI-equipped artifacts, however, function becomes distal, executed at a cognitive distance. Consequently, affordance shifts …

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Cut It Out: Reframing Hand Paper-Ripping As A Collage Method For Wellbeing And Care, Danielle Vaughan Jun 2026

Cut It Out: Reframing Hand Paper-Ripping As A Collage Method For Wellbeing And Care, Danielle Vaughan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Hand-based paper-ripping collage-making (PRCM) promotes wellbeing through circular engagement with re-purposed papers as transitional materials, demonstrating a threephased framework (apprehension, confidence, co-creation) that is potentially transferable to bio-based materials and other substrates. The study introduces paperpeutic, a neologistic term describing the therapeutic value arising from mindful, improvisational engagement with manual ripping in PRCM contexts, drawing inspiration from Japanese Chigiri-e and Western collage traditions. The practice fosters mindfulness, creativity, and community through direct, hands-on engagement, providing an accessible alternative to the abstraction and precision of digital design. Salvaged paper is reframed as an active collaborator in the processes of meaning-making and …

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Care Through Ambiguity: Findings From Participatory Health Design, Xiran Mi, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Shujie Xie Jun 2026

Care Through Ambiguity: Findings From Participatory Health Design, Xiran Mi, Kin Wai Michael Siu, Shujie Xie

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how ambiguity can function as a condition for care in participatory health design. Through patient-centred interviews and a participatory workshop, it examines how uncertainty and emergent understanding shape the relational and ethical dimensions of care. The study finds that ambiguity enables participants to remain responsive within unequal structures and to negotiate care through hesitation, metaphor, and embodied expression, highlighting how relational sensitivity operates within asymmetrical power relations. Care is reframed not as a stable act of giving, but as a social process of continual adjustment and mutual dependency. By embracing indeterminacy in design practice, this research shows …

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From Passive List To Active Script: Menu Design As A Strategic Agent For Restaurant Sustainability Transformation, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Yijia Jiang, Kin Wai Michael Siu Jun 2026

From Passive List To Active Script: Menu Design As A Strategic Agent For Restaurant Sustainability Transformation, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Yijia Jiang, Kin Wai Michael Siu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Restaurants face the challenge of lacking systematic integration pathways in their sustainability transition (ST), struggling to fully incorporate sustainable principles throughout their operational systems. In this context, menu design demonstrates significant potential as a strategic tool to drive comprehensive ST. This study employs Goffman's dramaturgical theory to conceptualize restaurants as "social theaters," examining how menus function as "scripts" to systematically drive ST. Through analysis of eight representative cases, the research: 1) develops an integrated framework comprising three strategic dimensions, including nine key design intervention tactics that provide concrete implementation pathways for restaurant ST; 2) reveals three agency mechanisms of menus, …

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Reflective Practices For Esg: A Framework For Organisational Learning And Transformation, Kamila Kunrath, Devarajan Ramanujan Jun 2026

Reflective Practices For Esg: A Framework For Organisational Learning And Transformation, Kamila Kunrath, Devarajan Ramanujan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) in organisations is often reduced to metric-driven compliance, overlooking the collective sensemaking required for systemic transformation. Through a longitudinal case study, we traced the evolution of ESG strategy and sensemaking processes across organisational layers. The study highlights (i) the nature of reflection determined by role, (ii) three recurring types of reflection, and (iii) the key transitions that marked the ESG journey in the case company. The results indicate that structured reflection can connect measurement with meaning, transforming ESG into a co-created learning system. These findings inform the Reflective ESG Learning Framework (R-ESG-LF), a learning infrastructure …

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Extending Futures Literacy To Speech Scientists And Technologists, Sjuul Bos, Simone Ashby, Julian Hanna Jun 2026

Extending Futures Literacy To Speech Scientists And Technologists, Sjuul Bos, Simone Ashby, Julian Hanna

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As speech technologies make rapid strides, facilitating multi-tasking, workflow automation, and cross-cultural collaboration, attention to the adverse effects of such technologies (e.g., legacy bias and inequities) continues to lag, exposing the need for non-designers, such as speech scientists and technologists, to critically assess the ethical implications of their work. In this paper, we present the art-based futuring methods used in a speech technology summer school we co-organized for guiding students in exploring the unintended consequences of speech technology outputs. By sharing our methods and pedagogical insights, we aim to help educators promote discussions on themes like fairness and inclusivity and …

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The Paradox Of Richness: A Discourse-Centered Framework For Equitable Visualization, Fangbo Wu, Canyu Jiang, Yanlin Yin, Yonghong Liu Jun 2026

The Paradox Of Richness: A Discourse-Centered Framework For Equitable Visualization, Fangbo Wu, Canyu Jiang, Yanlin Yin, Yonghong Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The proliferation of new technologies, notably GenAI, alongside augmented and virtual reality, has produced a paradoxical situation in visualization practice: while offering unprecedented multimodal richness, their complexity erects new barriers to entry, thereby exacerbating inequality and undermining design's democratic promise. Although research at the micro-level of visualization techniques abounds, a critical and systematic methodology for addressing the inherent power dynamics and design justice issues from meso- and macro-perspectives remains conspicuously absent. This paper intervenes by adapting an analytical framework from Critical Discourse Analysis to embed design justice within visualization practice. We propose a four-layer framework—Culture, Context, Meaning, and Expression (CCME)—as …

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Becoming Designers: Studio Instructors As Catalysts Of Designerly Identity Formation, Beril Gök Jun 2026

Becoming Designers: Studio Instructors As Catalysts Of Designerly Identity Formation, Beril Gök

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Embodiment, affect, and symbolic modelling remain underexplored dimensions of designerly identity formation, despite its recognition as a central outcome of design education. While existing research emphasizes cognitive-skill acquisition, little is known about how studio instructors shape identity through aesthetic, relational, and performative means. This study examines the influence of instructors within the socio-aesthetic ecology of the design studio. Using abductive thematic analysis of focus group interviews with teaching assistants across architecture, industrial design, interior design, and fashion design, the study highlights shared cross-disciplinary patterns across international contexts. Findings reveal that instructors shape designerly becoming not only through teaching but also …

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Reimagining Materiality: Responsible And Experiential Vr Design For Fashion E-Commerce In India, Prajwala Dasari, Min-Ji Seo Jun 2026

Reimagining Materiality: Responsible And Experiential Vr Design For Fashion E-Commerce In India, Prajwala Dasari, Min-Ji Seo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research explores how fashion brands can replicate touch and garment materiality through digital design strategies to engage Gen Z shoppers in India, addressing the sensory absence in e-commerce. Using an interpretivist, qualitative, multi-method approach involving eight semi-structured interviews and five participant observations, the study investigates how Virtual Reality (VR) can enhance emotional engagement and responsible consumption in fashion retail. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), findings show that gamification, interactivity, and personalisation—combined with transparency and brand trust—drive consumer acceptance. The study highlights the importance of inclusive and …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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The Ecology Of Effort: Aesthetics Of Resistance In The Age Of Frictionless Design, Stefano Caggiano Jun 2026

The Ecology Of Effort: Aesthetics Of Resistance In The Age Of Frictionless Design, Stefano Caggiano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how design can restore cognitive and sensory depth within a culture shaped by frictionless digitality. The dominance of frictionless design—defined by speed, ease, and seamlessness—has optimized usability but diminished the experiential conditions that make meaning possible. Meaning emerges through resistance: the effort, uncertainty, and interpretive engagement that activate attention and reward. Drawing on embodied cognition and semiotic theory, the paper argues that cognitive effort and sensory resistance are essential to perception and value. Physical and spatial artefacts, through material texture, spatial articulation, and perceptual complexity, can reintroduce friction into everyday experience, inviting interpretive participation rather than passive …

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Not Post-Digital But More-Than-Human: Rethinking Digital Design For Regional Natural History Museums, Katt Grover, Argenis Ramirez Gomez, Claire Bailey Ross Jun 2026

Not Post-Digital But More-Than-Human: Rethinking Digital Design For Regional Natural History Museums, Katt Grover, Argenis Ramirez Gomez, Claire Bailey Ross

DRS Biennial Conference Series

What if the future of digital design in museums isn’t found in cutting-edge institutions, but in the often-overlooked ecologies of regional natural history collections? This paper repositions small regional museums not as lagging behind in digital transformation, but as fertile grounds for exploring more-than-human digital design. Drawing on an ongoing collaborative project between the Portsmouth Natural History Museum and the University of Portsmouth, we reflect on the interactive experiences using low-cost holograms and motion-capture avatars as mediators between human and non-human actors within museum ecologies. Giving collections voices and personalities engaged audiences, yet in attempting to become more-than-human, the collections …

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Cultureaction! An Interaction And Experience Design Project To Explore San Marino’S Historic Center As A Living Archive., Silvia Gasparotto Jun 2026

Cultureaction! An Interaction And Experience Design Project To Explore San Marino’S Historic Center As A Living Archive., Silvia Gasparotto

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research explores how design-driven approaches can boost engagement with cultural heritage and archives, centering on an experimental initiative in San Marino's historic center. The project envisions the city as a dynamic archive brought to life through interactive installations. A system featuring an interactive device called Iride and six site-specific installations was created to reveal the hidden historical and meaningful layers within the urban landscape. These installations use multisensory components to craft experiences that enhance visitors' cognitive and emotional connections with local cultural stories. This method illustrates how design and digital technology can connect tangible and intangible heritage, institutional archives …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Bringing Characters To Vitality: Enhancing Credibility Of Original Characters In Narrative Works By Making The Oc A Generative Ai Agent, Xiaozhan Liang, Ling Zou, Yong Hu, Siyu Luo Jun 2026

Bringing Characters To Vitality: Enhancing Credibility Of Original Characters In Narrative Works By Making The Oc A Generative Ai Agent, Xiaozhan Liang, Ling Zou, Yong Hu, Siyu Luo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how generative AI can transform original characters (OCs) into interactive agents that improve character believability in design contexts. We propose a human–AI co-creation workflow that integrates dialogue, image, and context modalities, stabilizing style and behavior through structured prompts and expert feedback. In a mixed-method evaluation with five expert creators and a general audience, the approach increased perceived realism and emotional authenticity, while psychological complexity changed little—indicating the need for longer-horizon design. Dialogue contributed most to credibility, with context reinforcing coherence and images showing limited gains. We distill design principles for cross-modal alignment, style stability, and progressive complexity, …

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