Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

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 …

Empowerment For Aging Design: A Framework To Reframe The Design Of Solutions For Older Adults In The Global South, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Mariana Ramírez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design for older adults in Latin America remains strongly shaped by deficit-based and assistentialist assumptions that reduce aging to decline. Grounded in empowerment-oriented and resource-based design, this study explores how empowerment values can reframe the ideation of solutions for older people. Workshops conducted in five Colombian cities, supported by the Empowerment Nodes tool, enabled the identification of value expressions often overlooked in traditional design approaches. The findings culminated in the Empowerment Framework for Aging Design, a three-layered model composed of seven Silver Goals, fourteen Empowerment Values, and thirty-seven Enhancers, each paired with limiting counterparts that reveal how ageist paradigms subtly …

Symbiotic Behaviors And Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework For Organizations Led By/For Older Adults, Juliana Gómez, Mariana González, Tala Pedraza, Laura Sofía Riveros

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Café Séneca, the largest affinity chapter of the Uniandinos Alumni Association in Colombia, is dedicated to the wellbeing of older adults and led by retired members. Despite its popularity, the chapter lacked a strategic design structure, relying on inertia to shape its activities and limiting its ability to evolve sustainably. This paper presents a reflective case study of SenSilver, a situated participatory strategic design framework developed for organizations led by and for older adults. Combining business, positive, and empowerment-oriented design with biological, social, and psychological dimensions of aging, the framework was applied through a research-consultancy process with Café Séneca. The …

Infrastructuring Transitional Bio-Materialities: Case Of The Biomakerstudio, Ena Naito

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Designers today are actively engaging with experimentation and innovation of bio-materials derived from living matter, foregrounding the interrelationship between biological processes, material design, and ecological responsibility. In this context, workspaces that provide conditions to design with living organisms become especially crucial to leverage their transitional material potentials. Grounded upon a 24-month research-through-design study, this paper discusses the ground-up infrastructuring work of establishing a biodesign workspace to support designing with living matter in a university setting. I highlight the emergent nature of such endeavour, including the continuous alignment, containment, and care and maintenance work necessary for growing a provisional intervention into …

Designing With Care For The End Of Life: A Reflective Co-Design Workshop Using Material Facilitation, Chenfei Yu, Michael Arnold Mages

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Conversations about end-of-life (EOL) care are often delayed until moments of crisis, leaving little time or emotional capacity for people to reflect on what matters most to them. This paper reports on a reflective co-design workshop in which fifteen participants used material-facilitated methods to explore their imagined EOL experiences. Through landscape making, journey mapping, and collaborative service model building, participants expressed hopes, fears, values, and priorities that are difficult to articulate through direct questioning. The materials created a low-pressure and supportive environment, allowing participants to approach a sensitive topic at their own pace and translate personal meaning into ideas for …

Exploring Future Smellscapes With Smellwalks, Zuzana Neupauerová, Simone Ashby, Supraja Sankaran

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines how present-day smell encounters stimulate participants to reflect on possible futures and those scents that are emergent or susceptible to becoming transformed or lost altogether. We describe our speculative design setup whereby participants assumed the persona of an olfactory researcher from the year 2100, armed with a smell passport and set of vials, and tasked with time-traveling back to 2025 to capture scent samples. Smellwalk observations span three themes: environmental awareness of scent, the functional role of future scents, and social and cultural dimensions of olfaction. We discuss those scents which participants found to be particularly salient …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Not Just One "Best" Green: Soundscape Determines The Optimal Green Wall Form, Wenbo Li, Yihe Li, Hengji Wang, Yang Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In high-density cities, window-view green walls (GWs) are implemented to improve psychological well-being, but their design often ignores context. Existing research overlooks how GW geometric forms interact with ambient urban soundscapes. This study investigates this critical audio-visual interaction. We conducted a 4 (sound: between-subjects) × 4 (visual: within-subjects) experiment in Virtual Reality (N=80). Participants were exposed to four visual forms (No-GW, Triangle, Square, Rectangle) within four dominating soundscapes (No Sound, Traffic, Conversation, Ventilation), reporting their Stress and recovery results. Results revealed a significant interaction effect, showing the optimal GW shape for psychological well-being was context-dependent: rectangular forms were best for …

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 …

Perception-Based Design: An Approach For Engineering Sustainable Biobased Materials, Manu Thundathil, Ali Reza Nazmi, Bahareh Shahri, Nick Emerson, Jörg Müssig, Tim Huber

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Biobased composites, which are sustainable materials ideally poised to replace fossil-based raw materials, paradoxically are struggling to gain market acceptance. This underperformance is attributed to poor demand and acceptance of biobased composites, driven by technical and perceptual challenges. However, most research on biobased composites focuses on addressing technical challenges and fails to incorporate perceptual qualities into the material development process. By understanding the role of material characteristics (colour, patterns, texture, roughness) in shaping these qualities, we propose that novel biobased composites could be developed to meet specific consumer product needs. A prediction model for generating the desired material perception could …

Designing For Food System Transformation: Navigating Cultural Complexity In Cross-Regional Platform Design, Margherita Motta, Sebastian Baez-Lugo, Luis Rodriguez Aguayo, Laura Deschl, Nicolas Henchoz, Emily Groves

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines the design of a digital platform supporting sustainable food transformation across six European regional Hubs. Through multi-phase participatory evaluation involving contextual inquiry across culturally diverse contexts, responsive redesign, and formal usability testing, we identify a fundamental tension between technical standardization and cultural adaptation. While formal metrics demonstrated strong usability and aesthetic appeal of our platform design, Hub-based evaluation revealed that participants' requests for regional adaptation such as representing traditional production methods, biodiversity, and place-specific sustainability logics challenged fundamental platform assumptions about capturing food knowledge in standardized structures. We articulate emergent design principles including minimizing barriers while maintaining …

Problem–Solution Co-Evolution Research In The Drs Conference Community (2001-2025), Michael Mose Biskjaer, Kim Halskov, Alwin De Rooij

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The problem–solution co-evolution model proposed by Dorst and Cross (2001) remains highly influential for understanding design processes. This paper contributes a scoping review of DRS conference proceedings (2001–2025) revealing how the model has been adopted, developed, and critiqued. A thematic synthesis of a corpus of sixteen DRS papers shows how the model has been used to frame, connect, and extend foundational design theories by pointing to the crucial role of mutual adaptation of problem and solution. We find that problem and solution spaces are considered distinct and interdependent. Co-evolution is conceptualized and studied through several conceptual lenses, e.g., cognitive, social, …

Metatrain：A Metacognitive Framework–Based Gamified Executive Function Training For Children With Adhd, Ningfeng Tang, Yang Yin, Haoran Wei, Beijia Hu, Chunlei Chai, Xiyuan Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Nowadays, parents and educators are paying more attention to the intervention of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Children with ADHD typically exhibit deficits in executive functions (EF), and metacognition is crucial for enhancing these functions. However, existing interventions mostly focus on specific training of EF and lack effective strategies to promote overall improvement through higher-level metacognitive processes. Therefore, this study integrates the metacognitive theoretical framework into EF training and designs a gamified intervention program for children with ADHD. Subsequently, we conducted an experiment with 16 children with ADHD and analyzed the changes in their EF levels before and …

Design As A Distributed Capability For Organizational Strategies Of New Product Development, Caterina Dastoli, Gabriele Goretti

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study positions Design as a distributed capability for New Product Development through ecosystems knowledge. While the strategic role of Design in local productive systems is well established, new technology affordances often necessitate the design and implementation of organizational strategies—beyond traditional business strategies—across SMEs from diverse industrial clusters. Consequently, technological evolution calls for a system-level positioning of Design interventions and a clear articulation of Design capabilities within the organizational dimension of an ecosystem, where multiple actors participate in strategic and operational decision-making for New Product Development. By conceptualizing Design as an organizational intelligence, this research highlights its potential to enable …

Design Materials, Roberta Bernabei, Maria Maclennan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

No abstract provided.

The Transformative Nature Of Food – Adaptation, Connectivity And Identity, Dolly Daou, Claudia De Souza Libanio, Juan Montalván Lume

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This theme track examines the transformative role of food migration in shaping cultural identity, ecological systems, and practices of belonging through a food design lens. Building on The Transformative Nature of Food: Adaptation, Connectivity and Identity (Daou & Sarantou, 2026), it conceptualises food as a dynamic, designed system that evolves across geographies through processes of adaptation, connectivity and identities. As food travels, it connects people to both their original homeland and to the existing and emerging cultural identities, to develop a sense of belonging to local ecosystems. Food migration reinforces cultural continuity, political and social cohesion and belonging while influencing …

Temporalities Of More-Than-Human Design, Larissa Pschetz, Gizem Oktay, Valentina Nisi, Jiwei Zhou, Doris Kosminsky, Keili Koppel, Fiona Bell, Katharina Vones, Marta Ferreira

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This theme track builds on emerging research that foreground time as relational, situated, and plural, while examining how a shift towards more-than-human temporalities could reshape design practices, material engagements, and ethical responsibilities. The track proposes five areas of exploration: a) experimental representations of entangled temporalities; b) material transformations, geological formations, and temporal scales of planetary life; c) accounts on practices of noticing, attuning, and orchestrating more-than-human times; d) designerly ways of negotiating and coordinating rhythms; and e) etico-onto-epistemological reflections on time and design. The contributions engage these areas across contexts such as coastal ecologies, plant systems, and bio-based materials, framing …

Tilapia Fish Collagen: Potential As Halal Biomaterial In Tissue Engineering Applications, Norhidayu Muhamad Zain, Mohammad Naqib Hamdan

Nusantara Halal Journal

Collagen is a natural bioactive polymer widely utilized in tissue engineering applications due to its biocompatibility and biodegradability. Collagen derived from mammalian sources such as porcine and bovine is commonly used as biomaterials. However, due to religious concerns, the halal status of collagen must be taken into consideration. Since most of the mammalian collagen is hampered by its haram origins, marine collagens are widely investigated as alternatives for mammalian collagen in tissue engineering applications. Even though marine collagens are safe and easy to extract, these sources of collagen are hindered by their low denaturing temperature. Tilapia fish (Oreochromis niloticus) has …

Applications Of Geosynthetics In Tunnels Construction: A Sustainable Approach To Carbon Footprint Reduction, Ibraheem Rais, Abdullah H. Alsabhan, Md. Rehan Sadique, Shamshad Alam

Journal of Sustainable Construction Materials and Technologies

The use of geosynthetics has transformed tunnelling practices by enhancing structural integrity, durability, and environmental sustainability. This review adopts a systematic literature review design, covering publications from 2000 to 2025 sourced from Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar. The selected studies were screened based on relevance, quality, and focus on tunnelling applications, then thematically analyzed into four domains: geosynthetic types, applications, sustainability, and performance evaluation. This review focuses on the applications of various geosynthetics, including geotextiles, geogrids, geocomposites, geocells, and geomembranes, in tunnelling projects. These materials play crucial roles in reinforcing tunnel walls and slopes, improving load distribution, …

Soaring To New Heights Through The Lens Of The Scarlet Macaw–A Post-Loper Bright Interpretation Of The Endangered Species Act’S “Significant Portion Of Its Range” For A Climate-Driven “Foreseeable Future”, Kathryn Wood

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

This Comment will argue for particular interpretations of “significant portion of its range” and “foreseeable future” under the ESA to prioritize species preservation in the face of climate change.

The analysis begins by describing key aspects of the ESA, including its historical background, its conceptual definitions, its prescribed method for determining endangered species and threatened species, its listing process, and critical habitat requirements. This Comment then discusses climate change as a source of threat and endangerment “within the foreseeable future,” and whether acts worsening climate change can constitute an unlawful taking. Next, this Comment considers how the Supreme Court’s decision …

How Quickly Do Eastern Floodplains Store Carbon? Quantifying Reference Carbon Flux On The Dead Diamond River, Jacob Schnell

Earth Sciences Undergraduate Senior Theses

Terrestrial Earth systems sequester an estimated 30% of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The largest share is stored in global soils which collectively store more than 3 times the amount of carbon as the atmosphere. Floodplains and river systems, while covering only 5–8% of land area, store 20–30% of the global soil organic carbon (SOC), yet, the rate at which floodplains sequester carbon remains highly uncertain. Here I constrain floodplain carbon sequestration rates for a model northeastern river that has not been impacted by development or significant human activity. I calculate carbon stock using total organic carbon and derive carbon flux …

Holy Cross Magazine, Vol. 60 No. 2, Summer 2026, College Of The Holy Cross

Holy Cross Magazine

For a GoodTime, Call ...
How Holy Cross’ Goodtime Marching Band and Bettertime Pep Band deliver much more than music.
Story by Abby Riviello
Photography by Colin McAlister ’29

Read Like a Professor (on Summer Break)
Holy Cross faculty share the books they’re taking to the beach.
Story by Marybeth Reilly-McGreen ’89
Photography by Michael Ivins

Michelle Mondoux Paused at the Middle — And it Changed Everything
Stick with Associate Professor Michelle Mondoux and you’re going to learn a lot about biology in the classroom, and perhaps more about life beyond it.
Story by Abby Riviello
Photography by Michael Ivins …