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Strategic Positioning In Design Agencies: Achieving Optimal Distinctiveness Through Portfolios, Bingqing Tian, Antonius Van Den Broek, Mikko Koria Jun 2026

Strategic Positioning In Design Agencies: Achieving Optimal Distinctiveness Through Portfolios, Bingqing Tian, Antonius Van Den Broek, Mikko Koria

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The growing recognition of design’s value to business and society has driven rapid expansion in the design industries, intensifying competition among designers and design firms. Despite an increased scholarly attention to the strategic role of design, there is a lack of understanding how design businesses strategize and position themselves in the market. We aim to revitalise this debate by reviewing a diverse range of literatures on strategic positioning of design agencies and suggest a focus on the theory of optimal distinctiveness. This theory argues that to be successful, firms need to find an optimal balance between being different to be …

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Support Designer’S Wellbeing: Understanding Resilience In Design Education As A Wicked Challenge, Yilin Quan, Matthew Isherwood, Ji Han Jun 2026

Support Designer’S Wellbeing: Understanding Resilience In Design Education As A Wicked Challenge, Yilin Quan, Matthew Isherwood, Ji Han

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design students are expected to engage with wicked problems as part of their learning. Since these problems have no definitive solutions, the learning process can be challenging and may negatively affect students’ wellbeing. Cultivating resilience becomes critical. Although the conceptualisation of designer resilience has gained attention, it remains underexplored. This paper proposes a new conceptual model of resilience in design education, suggesting two capacity clusters: one emphasising short-term recovery and balance restoration, and the other focusing on long-term sustained engagement. It further frames resilience cultivation in design education as a wicked problem in itself, characterised by the inherent complexity within …

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Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks, Cagri G. Varli, Stefano Maffei Jun 2026

Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks, Cagri G. Varli, Stefano Maffei

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, their material dimension as active design agents (artefacts and infrastructures) remains largely unrecognized. This study challenges the positioning of packaging and distribution tools as passive elements, repositioning them as entities that shape the ongoing negotiation of ethics, responsibility, and co-dependence within food systems. Drawing on interviews, thing ethnography, and relational mapping across two alternative food network case studies, the study examines the roles of these material agents. The findings show that material artefacts contribute to the organization of care, responsibility, and continuity across both pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food networks. Differences in …

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Collective Handiness In Prospective Design: Philosophical Musings On A Serious Play Workshop On Articulation Work, Polyana Andrade Tavares, Rodrigo Freese Gonzatto, Frederick M.C. Van Amstel Jun 2026

Collective Handiness In Prospective Design: Philosophical Musings On A Serious Play Workshop On Articulation Work, Polyana Andrade Tavares, Rodrigo Freese Gonzatto, Frederick M.C. Van Amstel

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Building on the German philosopher Heidegger, design philosophy has historically dealt with handiness (zuhandenheit/vorhandenheit) as an ontological relationship between an individual, a technology, and an artificial world. Such handiness conceptualization does not account for the social accumulation of work necessary to bring technology ready-to-specific-hands. Building on the work of Brazilian philosopher Vieira Pinto, this investigation foregrounds the collective aspect of handiness to account for the articulation work behind a new design philosophy program, prospective design. This program embraces philosophy through design; therefore, this investigation includes a description of a stakeholder mapping workshop in which serious play was used to develop …

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Territorial Quest | A Phygital Urban Game For Public Design Education, Leonardo Moiso Jun 2026

Territorial Quest | A Phygital Urban Game For Public Design Education, Leonardo Moiso

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design education increasingly unfolds across studio, city and digital platforms, yet these environments are rarely orchestrated as coherent learning ecologies. This paper presents Territorial Quest, a location-aware, game-based activity embedded in a master’s level systemic and service design studio. The intervention turns urban exploration into a structured, data-driven process: student teams investigate different neighbourhoods, collect and categorise contextual data through shared digital tools, and participate in a lightweight scoring system that makes fieldwork visible and comparable. Using a research-through-design and design-based approach, the study combines questionnaires, digital trace data and qualitative feedback to examine how Territorial Quest shapes learning. Findings …

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Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt Jun 2026

Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The field of behavioral design uses insight into humans’ cognitive tendencies to help people make better, more rational choices. Yet individuals’ perceptions of what seems rational—let alone viable, or even conceivable—are not universally shared and are often informed by their embodiment as much as cognition. For example, fear of being scolded can inhibit overweight or obese individuals from seeking preventive healthcare, people with ‘invisible’ disabilities may feel pressured to pass as able-bodied to fit in, and Black individuals may avoid ordinary activities likely to prompt ‘birding while Black’ confrontations. Depicting cognition as the single site of judgment and decision-making therefore …

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Design For Healthy Ageing: Developing And Applying A Resource Model, Yumei Dong, Hua Dong, Tingting Wang, Richard H. M. Goossens Jun 2026

Design For Healthy Ageing: Developing And Applying A Resource Model, Yumei Dong, Hua Dong, Tingting Wang, Richard H. M. Goossens

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The sustainable development of an ageing society necessitates active participation of older people, requiring effective integration of their individual and collective resources into design. However, designers’ understanding of older people’s resources is rather limited. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of older people’s resources to support design for healthy ageing. Through literature review and interviews with 19 recently retired Dutch seniors, twelve resource types were identified, categorised into six dimensions: practical, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, and time. These categories were synthesised into a Diamond Model of Resources. The framework, encompassing both resource categories and the Diamond Model, was …

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Collaging Queer Decolonial Worlds: Applied Techniques In Design, Alexandra Eleazar, Cara Flores Jun 2026

Collaging Queer Decolonial Worlds: Applied Techniques In Design, Alexandra Eleazar, Cara Flores

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Collaging is a form of design that references, remixes, and transforms the past, while holding potential for queer decolonial imaginaries. Through bringing together decolonial and queer theories, we propose an exploration of collage as a design technique that seeks to tear through dominant imaginaries to create more emancipatory visualizations. To explore this, we first turn to feminist theoretical understandings of collage, and then ask: how does collaging show up as a distinctly queer and decolonial design practice? Then, we utilize examples from our field work to demonstrate how collage can function as a queer and decolonial design practice that shows …

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Responsible Retail And Branded Environments, Katelijn Quartier, Mia Münster, Bethan Alexander, Zakkiya Khan, Marina Ricci, Francesca Murialdo Jun 2026

Responsible Retail And Branded Environments, Katelijn Quartier, Mia Münster, Bethan Alexander, Zakkiya Khan, Marina Ricci, Francesca Murialdo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As spaces of consumption adapt to social, environmental, and technological shifts, design is emerging as a powerful agent of change. This track investigates the future of retail, hospitality, and other consumer-facing environments—including cafés, concept stores, and hybrid formats—through the lens of responsibility. Topics addressed include, but are not limited to: Restorative and regenerative approaches to consumption are gaining momentum, alongside wellbeing-driven design that recognises how the built environment can support mental, physical, and emotional health. At the same time, socially and environmentally sustainable practices—often grounded in circular economy principles—are redefining how we think about materiality, consumption, spatial design, and business …

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Public Design Education: Plural Practices And Situated Teaching And Learning, Luis García, Lara Salinas, Sofía Bosch Gómez, Geert Brinkman, Francesco Leoni, Estefania Ciliotta Chehade Jun 2026

Public Design Education: Plural Practices And Situated Teaching And Learning, Luis García, Lara Salinas, Sofía Bosch Gómez, Geert Brinkman, Francesco Leoni, Estefania Ciliotta Chehade

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This editorial introduces Track 8.1, Public Design Education: Plural Practices and Situated Teaching and Learning, and reflects on the submissions, review process, and accepted contributions as a way of exploring how public design is currently being interpreted, taught, and learned. We position public design as a transdisciplinary mode of practice enacted within and alongside public administration and other public-sector subjects, where institutional ways of working, governance conditions, and commitments to public value shape the design process itself. Drawing on contributions to the track, we examine the diverse interpretations surrounding the term, the competencies and capabilities associated with becoming a public …

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Participatory Design As Emotional Infrastructure: Supporting Collective Reflection And Resilience After The Pandemic, Xinyu Zhang Jun 2026

Participatory Design As Emotional Infrastructure: Supporting Collective Reflection And Resilience After The Pandemic, Xinyu Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

COVID-19 has left enduring emotional distress for many citizens even as public attention to the crisis has faded. In this context, participatory design (PD) is increasingly recognised as a dialogic and restorative practice that enables collective reflection and emotional recovery through shared meaning-making. This study examines how participatory design supports citizens in reflecting on pandemic-related psychological distress, with particular attention to war metaphors widely used in governmental and media communications during COVID-19. While these metaphors mobilised collective action, they also intensified perceptions of risk and vulnerability. The research is based on a year-long participatory design project, W&M, involving nine participants, …

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Enquête D’Âme: A Participatory Visualisation Of Wellbeing Through Embodied Reflection, Ricardo O'Nascimento, Bruna Petreca Jun 2026

Enquête D’Âme: A Participatory Visualisation Of Wellbeing Through Embodied Reflection, Ricardo O'Nascimento, Bruna Petreca

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Enquête d’âme is an interactive installation and research instrument that reimagines design impact assessment by shifting from affect detection to wellbeing articulation. A textile-covered keyboard allows participants to select from sixteen wellbeing dimensions; each input generates a coloured circle within a shared projection, forming an evolving visualisation of collective resonance. Three public deployments—a cultural event, arts festival, and university showcase—combined observations, brief interviews, and log analysis. Findings show that slow, tactile interaction fosters mindful engagement; participants treat the dimensions as reflective anchors rather than diagnostic labels; and aggregate patterns vary contextually (e.g., Optimism/Future-self in policy discussions, Playfulness/Participation in festival settings). …

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Along The Line Of Emotional Support: Reimagining Ai Companions For Young Adults’ Wellbeing, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Xue Pei, Andrea Gaggioli Jun 2026

Along The Line Of Emotional Support: Reimagining Ai Companions For Young Adults’ Wellbeing, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Xue Pei, Andrea Gaggioli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Young adults increasingly face emotional stress, uncertainty, and a lack of accessible, non-judgmental support. While AI technologies are emerging as potential companions, many adopt anthropomorphic and chat-based models that risk emotional overdependence, blurred boundaries, and false intimacy. This research explores how AI systems might be reimagined to foster authentic and ethical forms of companionship that support young adults’ wellbeing. Grounded in Positive Technology and its focus on promoting human flourishing, this research adopts a research-through-design approach, integrating semi-structured interviews, co-design sessions, hands-on prototyping, and user feedback. The resulting prototype, ALONG is a calm, embodied AI companion designed to encourage personal …

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Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities, Austin Toombs, Seora Park, Tilar Manion, Xinyun Zhang Jun 2026

Patterns Of Everyday Care: Translating Cultural Practices For Online Communities, Austin Toombs, Seora Park, Tilar Manion, Xinyun Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design research in social computing has used the concept of care to describe how technologies help or hinder interpersonal support online. Yet opportunities remain to explore how the subtle, everyday forms of care that have long sustained communities can inform social technology design. Addressing this, we present a collection of design patterns that translate culturally specific, everyday social practices like passeggiata (Italian social stroll) and sobremesa (Spanish post-meal lingering) into design prompts for digital platforms. Our collection has five pattern families: Shared Habits and Routines, Atmospheric Qualities, Collective Identities, Facilitation Roles, and Boundary Practices. The patterns map these families to …

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The Language Of Reflexivity: Investigating Limitations And Opportunities For Reflexivity In Prevailing Design Process Models, Asa River Jackson Jun 2026

The Language Of Reflexivity: Investigating Limitations And Opportunities For Reflexivity In Prevailing Design Process Models, Asa River Jackson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Prevailing design methodologies and models tend to contain language specific to pragmatic and contextual foundations of design history and culture. Consequently, these models provide limited support for the diverse and constructive nature of contemporary design practice, and particularly, lack the presence of embedded reflexivity. This paper seeks to determine the predominant and excluded language of 66 design process models, which function as projections of instruction and value in design dissemination. In the analysis, special attention is given to omissions within these process models, as well as their differences among more recently documented methodologies. As a result, the paper explores reflexive …

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Designing For Themselves: The Gearbox Model Of Value-Reclaiming Design Within Grassroots Sports Communities, Yijia Jiang, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Shiyu Liu, Kin Wai Michael Siu Jun 2026

Designing For Themselves: The Gearbox Model Of Value-Reclaiming Design Within Grassroots Sports Communities, Yijia Jiang, Huiyi Zhang, Keren Zhang, Shiyu Liu, Kin Wai Michael Siu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Grassroots sports communities (GSCs) express and impact values through everyday design practices that build belonging, identity, and agency. Adopting qualitative multi-case analysis of representative GSCs (n=10), this study explores how these communities define and reclaim their values through design practice. Four modalities are identified: 1) narrative re-authoring, 2) aesthetic re-coding, 3) collaborative re-making, and 4) ethical re-grounding. These modalities constitute a dynamic process wherein design functions as a relational infrastructure for collective meaning-making. Based on these findings, the study generates a Gearbox Model of Value-Reclaiming Design, theorising how communal design agency is exercised through dynamic and recursive interplay. The model …

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Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall Jun 2026

Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores and unpacks aspects of relationality by examining design engagements in a Swedish municipal care setting. Our exploration of relational perspectives on homecare is grounded in home care workers’ (HCWs) use of a workday scheduling and planning app. This paper presents empirical data generated through interviews and participatory observations, and identifies three themes: Manifesting relationality, Affectionating relationality and Tensioning relationality. Based on our understanding of relationality as it is developed in social care and design research, we discuss how relationality develops in everyday care, by juxtaposing this with real-life accounts of relational care. Then, we deliberate on the …

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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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Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot Jun 2026

Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores a pedagogical intervention that leveraged speculative enactment as a portal to utopian futures. During a Blended Intensive Program, students were presented with a design challenge that addresses workplace inclusion by reimagining it as a “future otherwise.” The challenge was projected into a future temporality, allowing participants to respond to contemporary challenges with radical imagination. Drawing on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as method and Bloch’s (1986) notion of concrete utopias, this study investigates how engaging with these enacted visions as sensorial expression serves as a mechanism to unleash potentialities latent in the present. Situated at the intersection of Design …

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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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Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers Jun 2026

Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Conventional participatory planning and design practice imply linear accumulation of data, facts, and representations, predicting meaningful futures through consensus-driven strategies. Transformation is framed as the transparent management of knowable information towards a providential destiny. By reducing participatory reasoning to factual transfer and discursive negotiation, reductionist approaches fail to address the systemic complexity and contingent character of socio-ecological challenges. They overlook disruptive shocks (financial crises, pandemics) that reorder systems. We propose disruption as a co-design method: a deliberately staged technique that exposes boundaries, surfaces dependencies, and fosters collective sense-making under uncertainty. Drawing on 4E cognition and relational design theory, we propose …

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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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From Metrics To Meaning: Enabling Iterative Design For Multi-Stakeholder Engagement And Behavioural Change In Systemic Climate Transitions With Quali-Quantitative Assessment And Sensemaking, Rohit Mondal, Sabrina Bresciani, Morgan Ricard, Ilenia Piergallini, Nikhil Chaudhary, Francesca Rizzo Jun 2026

From Metrics To Meaning: Enabling Iterative Design For Multi-Stakeholder Engagement And Behavioural Change In Systemic Climate Transitions With Quali-Quantitative Assessment And Sensemaking, Rohit Mondal, Sabrina Bresciani, Morgan Ricard, Ilenia Piergallini, Nikhil Chaudhary, Francesca Rizzo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Cities pursuing systemic approaches to climate neutrality increasingly leverage bottom-up strategies to foster multi-stakeholder engagement, enabling societal and behavioural transformations. However, assessing their impact through conventional quantitative indicators alone fails to capture the complexity of change. Design for systemic climate transitions enables cities to build pluralistic understandings of impact through mutual and reflexive learning that cultivates collective intelligence and shared insights. In this study, we analyse the quantitative indicators, qualitative data and collective sensemaking from 53 European cities participating in the EU Mission Cities: findings show that collective sensemaking has become a key enabler of reflexive learning, allowing cities to …

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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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Incommensurable Durations: Fungal Time And The Limits Of Attunement In Multispecies Design, Nina Williams, Alia Parker Jun 2026

Incommensurable Durations: Fungal Time And The Limits Of Attunement In Multispecies Design, Nina Williams, Alia Parker

DRS Biennial Conference Series

An emerging dimension of multispecies design is the effort to attune to new sensory entanglements with the more-than-human world that foreground the alternative temporalities of multispecies life. Adding to such approaches, in this paper we want to emphasise that there is an incommensurability between the timeframes of organisms and those of human ways of thinking about time and of capitalist production. Indeed, multispecies design involves trying to work with alternative timeframes that necessarily disrupt dominant rhythms of design and production. Exploring a set of encounters with fungal time, we consider how such experiments have the capacity to plunge us into …

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Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective, Yan Yang, Zhaoyu Wang, Jia Ren, Tie Ji, Han Meng Jun 2026

Design For Mending The Rift: Rethinking Sustainable Design From An Eco-Marxist Perspective, Yan Yang, Zhaoyu Wang, Jia Ren, Tie Ji, Han Meng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite the advancement of sustainable design, a critical paradox persists: many practices remain embedded in industrial paradigms, failing to address deep-seated socio-natural contradictions. Grounded in the Eco-Marxist "metabolic rift" framework and informed by recent Agricultural Innovation Design (AID) research, this study proposes a key path for mending these rifts. The research offers a systemic framework for intervening in complex social-ecological systems. The primary conclusions are: (1) metabolic rifts are fundamentally rooted in relational alienation, characterized by the disruption of healthy and reciprocal metabolic relationships between society and nature; (2) structural sustainability requires reshaping metabolic relationships across social, ecological, and intergenerational …

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Inclusive Design Revisited: A Paradigm Of Trustworthy Connectedness, Iris Van Hest, Eveline Van Zeeland, Jörg Henseler Jun 2026

Inclusive Design Revisited: A Paradigm Of Trustworthy Connectedness, Iris Van Hest, Eveline Van Zeeland, Jörg Henseler

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper revisits inclusive design by moving beyond its traditional emphasis on individual accessibility, which tends to overlook the relational dimension of inclusion. It proposes a paradigm of trustworthy connectedness, in which inclusion is conceptualised not merely as individual participation, but as the facilitation of relational ties between the designer or researcher and the individual or group. Inclusive design often relies on participatory methods, yet when participation and control become central, they risk silencing the very groups these approaches seek to include. Rather than participation or decision control, trustworthy connectedness, expressed through the designer’s competence and warmth, is central to …

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Care-Ful Reorientations In Design, Irem Tekogul, Laura Forlano, Carlos Teixeira Jun 2026

Care-Ful Reorientations In Design, Irem Tekogul, Laura Forlano, Carlos Teixeira

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In an era marked by increasing uncertainty and precariousness, feminist care ethics provide a conceptual foundation for reimagining alternative futures, challenging the persistence of "futures-as-usual" that often perpetuate dominant sociotechnical regimes. Care is a future-oriented and imaginative ethic: one that requires moral imagination to recognize the needs of distant others, the vulnerabilities of future generations, and the ethical entanglements of emerging sociotechnical systems. Building on an ethnographic study of design practices within a multinational technology company, we propose reorienting questions and tactics to integrate care ethics into future-making, addressing the disjunction between techno-futures and emergent care-informed design approaches. We outline …

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From Decoration To Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations In Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback, Yibo Meng, Bingyi Liu, Siyuan Li, Xinran Huang Jun 2026

From Decoration To Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations In Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback, Yibo Meng, Bingyi Liu, Siyuan Li, Xinran Huang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Office plants are ubiquitous in urban workplaces, yet they are often treated as disposable decoration rather than living co-inhabitants. This paper examines how interaction design can reconfigure this cultural framing. Using a research-through-design approach that combines interviews, the creation of an aesthetic biofeedback artefact, and a longitudinal deployment, we explore how plant vitality, expressed through light and sound, shapes everyday encounters between employees and plants. Rather than improving maintenance efficiency, the artefact functions as a relational probe. Participants described empathy, comfort, and companionship, alongside guilt, pressure, and resistance when the plant’s expressions demanded attention. These tensions show how care for …

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Integrating Co-Design And Auto-Ethnographic Approaches: A Preliminary Review Of Methods, Intentions, And Potential, Jingyuan Tan, Linfu Zhang Jun 2026

Integrating Co-Design And Auto-Ethnographic Approaches: A Preliminary Review Of Methods, Intentions, And Potential, Jingyuan Tan, Linfu Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Co-design emphasizes the outward connectivity of perspectives and aspirations, while autoethnography foregrounds the inward exploration of the personal and intimate. Recent trends in design research that integrate these approaches prompted this literature review, guided by the question: How might combining co-design and auto-ethnographic approaches contribute uniquely to design practice and research? Drawing from design studies in education, healthcare, HCI, and community engagement, the review identifies five methodological variations of co-design and auto-ethnographic integration: solo, dialogic, triangulated, cumulative, and solidary. It suggests that these collaborative-reflective–narrative approaches empower co-design practitioners to (1) navigate their evolving and layered roles and identities in relation …

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