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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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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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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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Designing Hospitality Through Sensory Workshops For Autistic People With Eating Disordered Behaviour, Sarah Kettley, Kyle Buchan, Abi Pickard, Ellen Maloney, Rebecca Allen, Callum Glasgow, Karri Gillespie-Smith Jun 2026

Designing Hospitality Through Sensory Workshops For Autistic People With Eating Disordered Behaviour, Sarah Kettley, Kyle Buchan, Abi Pickard, Ellen Maloney, Rebecca Allen, Callum Glasgow, Karri Gillespie-Smith

DRS Biennial Conference Series

We report on a series of sensory workshops and research interview training conducted with young Autistic people with lived experience of eating disordered behaviour. This under-researched co-occurence has been explored by a collaborative of clinical psychologists, peer researchers and participants through creative methods novel in this domain, led by a participatory design researcher. The paper outlines the design of the workshops, and discusses the insights generated around the key themes of environment, eating utensils and foods. It proposes a set of recommendations and creative opportunities for the hospitality industry to explore a range of approaches including ‘Autism-friendly days’ that may …

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Occupying The Sensors: Underwater Sound In An Urban River, Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Dietmar Offenhuber Jun 2026

Occupying The Sensors: Underwater Sound In An Urban River, Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Dietmar Offenhuber

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Although underwater soundscapes of urban rivers are understudied, they can reveal urban and biological processes across multiple scales. We present a case study of the Charles River’s underwater soundscapes in Boston, Massachusetts. We approach underwater acoustic sensing as a method to attune to infrastructural, non-human, and environmental dynamics. Given that water is an ideal medium for sound propagation, the river becomes a magnifier for ignored aspects of the city, such as the urban infrastructure’s impact on the river's soundscape or aquatic fauna activity. In the sensing process, the river’s underwater environment becomes a space where human, more-than-human, environmental, and infrastructural …

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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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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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Designing Emotionally Resonant Thermal Interactions For Public Speaking Support, Guanhua Sun, Wei Wang, Ruixiao Zheng Jun 2026

Designing Emotionally Resonant Thermal Interactions For Public Speaking Support, Guanhua Sun, Wei Wang, Ruixiao Zheng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how thermal interaction can support emotional expression and regulation in socially anxious contexts. Using participatory and body-mapping methods, participants recalled and visualized temperature-related experiences of comfort, which were translated into six emotionally resonant thermal patterns. These insights informed the design of TempReso, a sleeve-type wearable that delivers dynamic thermal cues on the forearm. A series of design experiments examined how warmth and coolness evoke affective memories, redirect attention, and foster emotional comfort during public speaking. The study highlights temperature as an expressive and emotional material, revealing how embodied experiences can inform the design of affective haptic interfaces …

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Unmaking Ai’S Classificatory Ontologies: Situated Annotation As Design Inquiry In Human–Ai Assemblages, Antonella Autuori Jun 2026

Unmaking Ai’S Classificatory Ontologies: Situated Annotation As Design Inquiry In Human–Ai Assemblages, Antonella Autuori

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how design research can unmake AI's classificatory ontologies through situated and embodied annotation practices. Drawing on feminist, queer, and critical data epistemologies, it reframes bias not as a technical flaw but as a generative condition that reveals how knowledge is produced and negotiated within human–AI assemblages. An autotheoretical experiment grounds the inquiry. The researcher creates and annotates a dataset of self-representations using subjective, affective, and relational labels, training a small-scale model to probe classification as an interpretive encounter shaped by embodiment, ambiguity, and positionality. Building on the shift from debiasing toward reflexive data practices in design and …

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Food Morphology: Food Forms Matter, Pedro Reissig Jun 2026

Food Morphology: Food Forms Matter, Pedro Reissig

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research is guided by the general question: Why do foods have the forms they do, and what is the best form for a particular food? The possible answers are multiple and complex, and involve a mix of factors, starting with ingredients and their transformative technologies, immersed in geographical and cultural contexts, informed by the customs, needs, tastes, and food functions of each place and time. These factors, and the interactions between them, constitute the determinants of a particular food's shape or form. Food morphology is defined by the author as the study of the generation, transformation and reading of …

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Transitional Materials And Collaborative Craft: European–Indonesian Design Practices From The Design Matters Lab Programme Toward A Resilient Future, Xingyu Tao, Samantha Vettese Jun 2026

Transitional Materials And Collaborative Craft: European–Indonesian Design Practices From The Design Matters Lab Programme Toward A Resilient Future, Xingyu Tao, Samantha Vettese

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design Matters Lab (DML) was a collaborative design programme that brought together ten emerging designers from Europe and Indonesia for an online and in-person design residency in Bandung, Indonesia. This paper explores the concepts, methods, and outcomes of DML, offering a potential blueprint for small-sized international businesses seeking to integrate crafting techniques and local, sustainable materials into their manufacturing processes. The project also proposes a methodology for teaching sustainability in design through meaningful environmental engagement rooted in local collaboration and applied practice. It emphasises the importance of working with local communities and using locally available waste and bio- materials. The …

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Cuia Colab: Toward A Design Across Species, Worlds And Relations, Andrea Bandoni Jun 2026

Cuia Colab: Toward A Design Across Species, Worlds And Relations, Andrea Bandoni

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Cuia Colab emerged from a design research project seeking to explore whether biodesign practices in the Amazon could foster equitable exchanges between traditional knowledge and contemporary design. The research combined theoretical and empirical methods, beginning with a literature review and a case study focused on the cuias of Santarém. Subsequent stages involved active field investigation through observation, collaboration with traditional cuia artisans, biodesign experiments integrating living organisms, and a co-created exhibition. Grounded in a situated, multispecies, and pluriversal approach, Cuia Colab revealed both the challenges and possibilities of establishing ethical and reciprocal relations between design and the Amazonian context. The …

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Scaffolding Oceans Futures: Design For Embedded, Embodied, And Emergent Thinking, Gillian Russell, Katherine Reilly, Jihyun Park, Lauren Thu Jun 2026

Scaffolding Oceans Futures: Design For Embedded, Embodied, And Emergent Thinking, Gillian Russell, Katherine Reilly, Jihyun Park, Lauren Thu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Citizen science and citizen data are widely used to engage with anthropogenic effects such as pollution and species loss. However, their focus on data gathering and objectivization can result in dispassionate learning. Futures scaffolding offers an alternative design approach that reimagines how environmental knowledge can be generated, experienced, and materialized. Positioned within co-speculative design, this practice uses design methods to make visible what data represents and to cultivate ocean futures. This paper mobilizes a workshop kit called Monsters of Marine Debris (MMD) as an object of design to illustrate futures scaffolding. MMD makes data a source of futures-making rather than …

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Play And Pilina: Reimagining Play Design Through Material Kinship And Cultural Practice, Corinne Takara Jun 2026

Play And Pilina: Reimagining Play Design Through Material Kinship And Cultural Practice, Corinne Takara

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Playful encounters at the intersection of familiar consumer materials and place-based natural matter are fertile terrain for speculative play world-building. This paper introduces bio-collaborative play, a design paradigm where materials and organisms are recognized as active collaborators and kin. This shifts play design away from the manipulation of objects toward a sustained dialogue with living systems. Grounded in Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) principles of pilina (reciprocal care) and kuleana (privileged responsibility), this framework reimagines speculative play as an act of communal care spanning biological scales and generational time. By treating plants, microbes, and everyday materials as co-authors, this approach analyzes …

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Co-Creating With Fungi: Mycelium Toys And Pedagogies For Regenerative Futures, Flavia Alice Mameli, Robbi Zidna Ilman Jun 2026

Co-Creating With Fungi: Mycelium Toys And Pedagogies For Regenerative Futures, Flavia Alice Mameli, Robbi Zidna Ilman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This practice-based research project presents BLX, a series of mycelium-based educational toys. Shaped like inflated building blocks, BLX invites children (early years to primary education) to construct playful structures whilst materialising biological and anthropogenic circularity through design. Unlike plastic toys that embody permanence, BLX can be played with, composted, or repurposed as plant pots—rendering regenerative processes tangible. Drawing on speculative design and material studies, the project positions mycelium as both educational medium and more-than-human collaborator. By embracing decay as (re-)generative, BLX challenges material cultures of permanence and offers children embodied encounters with temporality and transformation. This contribution is threefold: methodological …

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Understanding Sleep Challenges In Shared Dormitories: A Co-Design Inquiry, Zheng Wang, Adrian Gradinar, Lisa Thomas Jun 2026

Understanding Sleep Challenges In Shared Dormitories: A Co-Design Inquiry, Zheng Wang, Adrian Gradinar, Lisa Thomas

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Shared dormitories are the most common living arrangement for Chinese university students and have a crucial impact on their sleep and well-being. Most studies on sleep among this group primarily focus on the physical environment and the individual person, giving far less attention to the interpersonal and social aspects of living in shared dormitories. To address this gap, this paper presents the findings of a co-design workshop with 23 participants which explored their experiences of shared sleeping spaces and involved them in prototyping interventions for improving sleep experience. Findings reveal interpersonal interference as a major factor behind sleep disruption. Even …

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Design For Dignified Longevity: Olfactory-Enhanced Vr Meditation For Sustained Mindfulness Practice, Lei Xia, Xiaomei Li, Dan Li, Ling Fan Jun 2026

Design For Dignified Longevity: Olfactory-Enhanced Vr Meditation For Sustained Mindfulness Practice, Lei Xia, Xiaomei Li, Dan Li, Ling Fan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Mindfulness meditation supports psychological wellbeing and stress regulation—factors closely associated with healthy aging and longevity. However, practitioners often struggle to sustain attentional depth over time. While virtual reality (VR) has been explored as a tool for immersive meditation, most systems rely primarily on audiovisual stimuli and overlook olfactory cues despite their strong influence on emotion and environmental perception. This study introduces ScentSync, an olfactory-enhanced VR meditation system integrating AI-generated environments with synchronized scent delivery. A controlled experiment with 54 experienced meditators compared traditional meditation (Non-VR), VR meditation (VR), and olfactory-enhanced VR meditation (VR+Olfactory). Results show that the VR+Olfactory group achieved …

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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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Where Regenerative Design Theory Meets Ground: A Case Study Of Xreef On Weizhou Island, Chengjun Li, Valentina Rognoli, Fuqing Xu Jun 2026

Where Regenerative Design Theory Meets Ground: A Case Study Of Xreef On Weizhou Island, Chengjun Li, Valentina Rognoli, Fuqing Xu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the Anthropocene increasingly undermines natural systems, there is an urgent need for design to move beyond harm reduction toward active ecological restoration. Regenerative Design (RD) has emerged as a promising paradigm to complement sustainable design; however, fragmented knowledge and inconsistent terminology hinder designers’ systematic understanding. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, this study first reviews the philosophical stances and key approaches of RD, then examines its implementation in a coral reef restoration project on Weizhou Island. Reflection on the project revealed three major challenges: limited capacity for interdisciplinary collaboration, insufficient tools for stakeholder engagement, and inadequate dynamic …

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Towards An Operational Framework For Design For Values: An Exploration Through Systematic Literature Review, Yingjing Duan, Fei Hu* Jun 2026

Towards An Operational Framework For Design For Values: An Exploration Through Systematic Literature Review, Yingjing Duan, Fei Hu*

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design for Values (DfV) offers a robust approach for embedding values into technology, yet practitioners often face a “principles-to-practice gap” due to a lack of methodological guidance. To bridge this gap, an operational framework is developed, connecting abstract design processes with concrete practical methods. Through a systematic literature review, this research identifies 47 specific methods that explicitly support DfV practice. These methods are analysed from four dimensions—source discipline, methodological nature, operational characteristic, and practical purpose—to map the current DfV methodological landscape. This analysis informs the construction of a six-stage framework integrated with the Double Diamond model: discover, manage conflicts, conceptualise, …

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More-Than-Human Self-Tracking: An Uncertain Account Of Urine Monitoring, Protein Excess And Ecological Entanglements, Anton Poikolainen Rosén Jun 2026

More-Than-Human Self-Tracking: An Uncertain Account Of Urine Monitoring, Protein Excess And Ecological Entanglements, Anton Poikolainen Rosén

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores self-tracking technologies through a more-than-human lens, focusing on the entanglements between protein consumption, urine monitoring, and environmental care. Using autoethnography, I reflect on the practices of measuring protein and nitrogen in urine as a means to interrogate how personal health data intersect with ecological concerns, particularly nitrogen runoff and its contribution to overfertilization of the Baltic Sea. The account highlights tensions between the precision promised by digital health apps and the uncertainty, messiness, and environmental costs of measuring itself. By mapping nitrogen metabolism across bodies, infrastructures, and the environment, the paper identifies potential points of intervention: dietary …

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The Studio Model - Creating Space For Continuous Change, Kees Dorst Jun 2026

The Studio Model - Creating Space For Continuous Change, Kees Dorst

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Problems are not what they used to be. The complexity and scale of today’s challenges require a fundamentally different response from organisations. In this paper we will argue that they effectively need to move from ’problem-solving’ to a design approach. And that they need to move away from a ’one-off’ approach to innovation to creating interventions that move complex system to a better state. This requires a space and infrastructure for continuous innovation. For a model on how to achieve this, we turn to the practices of directors of creative agencies, as they shape environments for ongoing creation. The dynamics …

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Experiencing The More-Than-Human Through Human Augmentation, Botao 'Amber' Hu, Danlin Huang Jun 2026

Experiencing The More-Than-Human Through Human Augmentation, Botao 'Amber' Hu, Danlin Huang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The recent more-than-human turn in design calls for attentiveness to nonhuman beings. Yet—as Thomas Nagel's famous "What is it like to be a bat?" thought experiment highlights—human experience is constrained by our own sensorium and an irreducible gap in phenomenal access to nonhuman Umwelten. Grounded in eco-phenomenology and eco-somatics, this paper proposes Experiencing the More-than-Human through Human Augmentation (MtHtHA, or ">HtH+"), a design approach that repurposes human augmentation technologies—typically aimed at enhancing human capabilities for human optimization—to create temporary, embodied, first-person experiences that modulate the human sensorium to approximate nonhuman sensory experiences, cultivating ecological awareness, empathy, and care across …

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Restorative Retail: A Literature Review On Consumer Well-Being In The Retail Environment, Katelijn Quartier Jun 2026

Restorative Retail: A Literature Review On Consumer Well-Being In The Retail Environment, Katelijn Quartier

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In an era increasingly shaped by consumers’ search for meaningful and emotionally engaging experiences, the concept of restorative retail is emerging as a key paradigm in retail and service design. This semi-systematic literature review synthesizes theoretical and empirical research across marketing, environmental psychology, and architecture to examine how physical retail environments can promote psychological restoration and well-being. Drawing on foundational frameworks—Attention Restoration Theory (ART), biophilia, and servicescape theory—the review identifies central design principles such as nature integration, sensory harmony, and spatial openness that underpin restorative experiences. Although evidence supports the restorative potential of retail environments, empirical validation remains limited, particularly …

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Re-Materialising Design: Material Agency And The Reconfiguration Of Creative Practice, Olga Ioannou Jun 2026

Re-Materialising Design: Material Agency And The Reconfiguration Of Creative Practice, Olga Ioannou

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines biobased materials as agents of creative and systemic transformation within design practice. Drawing from a university course on circular building product design, several graduation theses, and two research projects -one focused on food waste valorisation and another on load-bearing mycelium composites- it investigates how engagement with biobased, regenerative materials reconfigures the designer’s role across the value chain, from sourcing to post-use reintegration. By situating material experimentation within ecological and socio-technical transitions, the paper argues that biobased materials enable a re-materialisation of design knowledge, where making becomes a mode of inquiry into interdependencies between nature, technology, and culture. …

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Material Driven Design Education: Exploring Circularity And Regeneration Through Waste-Based Experimentation, Ziqian Yu, Chengjun Li, Mei Yang, Hongwei Li, Valentina Rognoli Jun 2026

Material Driven Design Education: Exploring Circularity And Regeneration Through Waste-Based Experimentation, Ziqian Yu, Chengjun Li, Mei Yang, Hongwei Li, Valentina Rognoli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In light of the escalating climate and resource crises, design education must reconsider its role in shaping circular and regenerative futures, particularly with regard to emerging materials from waste. This paper presents the results of a pedagogical study conducted at the Joint School of Design and Innovation of Xi’an Jiaotong University and Politecnico di Milano. In this study, 120 students transformed local food and textile waste into new materials through hands-on experimentation, based on the Material Driven Design (MDD) approach, in a Chinese educational context. A comparative analysis of six student projects across toy and accessory applications reveals a synergy …

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Deep Materialities - Investigating The Complex Socio-Technical Entanglements Of Materials Towards The Designing Of Resilient Futures, Emile De Visscher, James Auger Jun 2026

Deep Materialities - Investigating The Complex Socio-Technical Entanglements Of Materials Towards The Designing Of Resilient Futures, Emile De Visscher, James Auger

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Each material production entails an ecosystem of interrelations linking geopolitical, economic, technological, cultural, social and sanitary dimensions, sometimes on a global scale. As designers, we are rarely conscious of these realities, and limit our actions to material selection at the scale of the artefact in constrained industrial and cultural settings. However, at a time of ecological crisis, tracking, revealing and understanding these complex systems is becoming an imperative if we are to transition towards resilient futures rooted in socio-economic realities. This article will present a pedagogical approach developed with Design Research MA students, where investigation and speculation stem from a …

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Fine Observation And Material Care: An Interactionist Approach To Design Aesthetics, Washington Morales-Maciel Jun 2026

Fine Observation And Material Care: An Interactionist Approach To Design Aesthetics, Washington Morales-Maciel

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper argues that the question “How does the awareness of material sustainability change perceptions of aesthetics?” requires an interactionist framework from philosophical aesthetics, against both eliminativist and formalist models. Without treating materials as morally valuable entities, there is no room to integrate the ethical dimension into aesthetic evaluation. However, the question can be inverted, since aesthetic perceptions also contribute to how we ethically treat materials. Central to the argument is the claim that aesthetic properties, by virtue of their affective character, are partly constitutive of the moral dimension of visual representations, not mere embellishments but active elements in shaping …

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Balancing Aesthetics And Protection: How Digital Artists Navigate Structural Inequities Through Aesthetic Watermarking, Runqi Fang, Changjuan Ran, Shenglan Cui, Xiangyu Meng, Biyao Li, Fang Liu Jun 2026

Balancing Aesthetics And Protection: How Digital Artists Navigate Structural Inequities Through Aesthetic Watermarking, Runqi Fang, Changjuan Ran, Shenglan Cui, Xiangyu Meng, Biyao Li, Fang Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Online presentations of digital art place artists in an ongoing trade-off between gaining exposure and protecting copyright, one that current platforms inadequately support. As a result, artists often rely on aesthetic watermarks, yet how they manage this balance remains underexplored. In this study, we conducted a co-creation workshop with 18 digital artists and examined how they design aesthetic watermarks in practice. Analysis reveals three key concerns shaping their decisions: aesthetic integrity, semantic fidelity, and protective functionality. Participants struggled to manage the tension between protection and artistic completeness, while also expressing growing concerns about the security of their work, facing rapid …

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Grounding The Interspecies Playground: A More-Than-Human Framework For The Goccia Project, Francesco Vergani, Davide Fassi Jun 2026

Grounding The Interspecies Playground: A More-Than-Human Framework For The Goccia Project, Francesco Vergani, Davide Fassi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper describes and presents a workshop conducted with partners of a European research project that reinterprets a former industrial site – now a small urban forest – as an Interspecies Playground, a living lab of multispecies coexistence. Through systemic design, more-than-human perspectives, and transdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, experts, designers, the municipality, and local communities, the project introduces a theoretical framework of relational ecology that seeks to challenge anthropocentric urban models and promote a new conception of green urban areas. By showing the project framework – articulated along the three interconnected layers of agents, phenomena, and contexts – and the …

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