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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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Growing Pains Of Sustainability: Scale, Care, And Counter-Infrastructures, Angela Ka Ki Lee Jun 2026

Growing Pains Of Sustainability: Scale, Care, And Counter-Infrastructures, Angela Ka Ki Lee

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sustainability transitions are marked by growing pains: tensions between planetary and local scales, global urgency and lived experience. This paper argues that techno-centric, metric-driven, and scalable approaches obscure inequalities, conceal the labour of maintenance, and overlook affective dimensions. It proposes a counter-infrastructural approach that understands sustainability as emerging through infrastructural, ecological, temporal, embodied, and relational dynamics. Drawing on interdisciplinary theory, participatory workshops, and experiential experiments, the study shows how process-oriented practices can reconnect individuals to energy systems. Bioregional thinking, community-led initiatives, repair and maintenance, and sensory engagement are explored as alternatives that foreground resilience and interdependence. Through lenses of scale, …

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Made To Misfit: Critical Design As A Tool For Pluriversal Thinking In Design Education, Kaat Kenis, Maud Gruyters, Stine Moons, Kristof Vaes, Leni Van Goidsenhoven Jun 2026

Made To Misfit: Critical Design As A Tool For Pluriversal Thinking In Design Education, Kaat Kenis, Maud Gruyters, Stine Moons, Kristof Vaes, Leni Van Goidsenhoven

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates how critical design can challenge universalist frameworks in design education and open up space for pluriversal perspectives. We explore the use of provocative probes as a concrete pedagogical method for cultivating pluriversal thinking and critical reflection. Our theoretical reflections are empirically grounded in a one-week workshop in which design students created and deployed provocative probes to surface experiences of those who ‘misfit’ and to initiate public interactions around these lived experiences. The notion of misfitting was used to introduce complexity and reflexivity. Findings show that while students began to delink from solutionist thinking and engage with plural …

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Should Sustainability Come Second? Artifact Analysis Toward More Positive Outcomes Through Design, Michael C. Kowalski, Jungkyoon Yoon Jun 2026

Should Sustainability Come Second? Artifact Analysis Toward More Positive Outcomes Through Design, Michael C. Kowalski, Jungkyoon Yoon

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While academic research on design for sustainability and design for subjective well-being has grown for decades, application of these perspectives in professional practice remains underdeveloped. Professional designers often struggle to translate these objectives into their work due to conflicting demands, including tight project timelines, cost targets, and manufacturing constraints. Tools and methods developed in academic contexts have faced criticism for failing to consider these practical concerns, resulting in limited professional adoption. Studies indicate professional designers could benefit from concrete case-studies for existing products and systems that clearly demonstrate both processes and outcomes. This paper addresses this need through an artifact-analysis …

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Embedding Design Capability In Growth-Oriented Smes In China: A Multiple-Case Study, Shiyi Li Jun 2026

Embedding Design Capability In Growth-Oriented Smes In China: A Multiple-Case Study, Shiyi Li

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This multi-case study of seven Chinese growth-oriented manufacturing SMEs explores how design capability is integrated and stably embedded within organizational innovation systems. Through analysing the dynamic process of sensing-seizing-reconfiguring and integrating the RPV framework, four stable embedding patterns are identified: Supporting, Rooted, Cognitive, and Instrumental. Findings reveal that embedding patterns are jointly determined by value creation logic, value chain position, resource conditions, and managerial cognition. Design capability embedding is not a linear maturity process but depends on continuous dynamic adaptation and organizational adjustment. Market validation feedback loops linking design investment to business outcomes play a crucial role in sustaining embedding …

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Understanding Power At The Doorstep: Examining Interpersonal Power Of Smart Doorbells Through Speculative Design, Sofie-Amalie Torp Dideriksen, Silke Snijder, Nazli Cila Jun 2026

Understanding Power At The Doorstep: Examining Interpersonal Power Of Smart Doorbells Through Speculative Design, Sofie-Amalie Torp Dideriksen, Silke Snijder, Nazli Cila

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While Smart Home Surveillance Products (SHSPs), such as smart doorbell cameras, promise safety and convenience, they also reproduce asymmetrical power relations, privileging residents while exposing neighbours, visitors, and service workers to unconsented monitoring. Existing legal and technical responses focus on compliance and system design, yet overlook the interpersonal and affective dimensions of being watched. This paper presents a design-led inquiry into speculative re-imaginings of smart doorbells, aimed at surfacing and reflecting the hidden power dynamics embedded in everyday domestic interactions. We base this inquiry on an understanding of interpersonal power from the feminist theory of Matrix of Domination, allowing us …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Sticky Vitalities: Developing Play Design Sensitivities Through Material-Affective Practices, Jennifer Ann Skriver, Helle Marie Skovbjerg Jun 2026

Sticky Vitalities: Developing Play Design Sensitivities Through Material-Affective Practices, Jennifer Ann Skriver, Helle Marie Skovbjerg

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While design for play has shown how materials invite and shape engagement, less attention has been given to how material encounters may hold participation over time. This article examines how participation is sustained through material–affective dynamics in early childhood play. Drawing on Spinoza’s (1985) concept of potentia, Ahmed’s (2004a, 2010a, 2010b) notion of stickiness, and Slaby et al.’s (2019) affective arrangements, the study explores how capacities and orientations unfold in situated encounters. Based on design-based research in Danish daycare, the analysis centers on a vignette in which a child remains in shared play through engagement with tape. The analysis shows …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Care-Full Co-Production — An Aotearoa Case Study, Anjuli Clare, Anna Brown Jun 2026

Care-Full Co-Production — An Aotearoa Case Study, Anjuli Clare, Anna Brown

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Embedding an ‘ethics of care’ into relational and collaborative design research practices benefits from a reflexive and reflective iterative approach. Through this process new ways of elevating multiple forms of knowing are developed, power asymmetries are disrupted, and inclusivity can be expanded. While care may often be included in our mindsets and principles for design research, care itself is often invisible or under talked about. Using the example of our project — Care-full Co-production — a practical perspective on co-producing research is taken. Through a case study of women’s health in Aotearoa New Zealand, this perspective highlights the everyday acts …

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From Tool-First To Intention-First Pedagogy: A Framework For Evaluating And Selecting Empathy Tools In Design Education, Akanksha Singh, Ilya Fridman, Purba Joshi, Daphne Flynn Jun 2026

From Tool-First To Intention-First Pedagogy: A Framework For Evaluating And Selecting Empathy Tools In Design Education, Akanksha Singh, Ilya Fridman, Purba Joshi, Daphne Flynn

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design education has embraced empathy, developing a diverse repository of tools and methods for cultivating empathic engagement. Yet guidance on how or why these tools should be selected remains limited. Current practices often conflate availability with appropriateness, with tools chosen based on familiarity or convenience rather than empathic fit or contextual suitability. This leads to shallow engagement, limiting the empathic understanding needed for effective design outcomes. This paper proposes a criteria-based framework for evaluating empathy tools, grounded in psychological theory and established empathic design frameworks. The proposed criteria offers a structured lens to assess how tools operate, for whom, and …

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Weaving Local Knowledge Into Design Education: Situated Learning In Ethnic Regions Of Western Sichuan, Yao Tian, Xuan Liu, Xiaoyi Su, Ziyan Zeng, Tingxuan Zhou Jun 2026

Weaving Local Knowledge Into Design Education: Situated Learning In Ethnic Regions Of Western Sichuan, Yao Tian, Xuan Liu, Xiaoyi Su, Ziyan Zeng, Tingxuan Zhou

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents a case study of the ‘Rural Fieldwork and Design Practice’ course at the School of Fine Arts, Minzu University of China, examining how situated learning in ethnic regions of Western Sichuan cultivates public design sensibilities. By engaging students in deep cultural immersion – from intangible cultural heritage documentation to community-based design interventions – the curriculum transforms local ethnic knowledge into plural pedagogical resources. The study analyses how students develop relational competencies through ethnographic fieldwork, collaborative design exhibitions, and cultural creative markets. Findings demonstrate that this situated approach fosters political sensitivity toward ethnic cultures, nurtures cross-cultural collaborative reflexes, …

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Reframing Design Success: Care As A Chain Of Responses, Ruiqi Yao, Ziwei Lin, Yiying Wu Jun 2026

Reframing Design Success: Care As A Chain Of Responses, Ruiqi Yao, Ziwei Lin, Yiying Wu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper emerges from a reflection on what counts as success in design. We examine how the relational qualities of care can guide design practice, approaching design as a continuous and socially embedded practice of responsiveness. Drawing on two projects in China, an age-friendly digital service initiative and a community governance intervention, we analyse how design unfolded through incremental adjustments, shared responsibilities, and situated betterments. Across both contexts, value developed through chains of responsiveness involving institutional uptake, resident participation, and evolving collaborations that extended the influence of the work beyond the designers’ immediate involvement. By bringing design into dialogue with …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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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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We Found Planet B. What Does This Mean For Design?, Candela Guyot, Victoria Rodriguez Schon Jun 2026

We Found Planet B. What Does This Mean For Design?, Candela Guyot, Victoria Rodriguez Schon

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Planet B emerges as a practice-based-fiction responding ironically to the slogan “There is no Planet B.” The project speculates on the discovery of an alternate planet and the task of replicating Planet A under the principle “if it looks the same, it is the same.” Through absurd protocols for selecting the perfect rock, flower, and stick, the experience enacted a satire of technoscientific control. Developed within the School of Materialist Research’s exploration of Nature and Artifice, it asks: what sensory, political, and aesthetic implications would the discovery of a Planet B bring to the design practice? Children spontaneously took over …

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Reframing Design Through Events: Generative Events As Ontological Units In Object-Oriented Design Ontology, Fengjin Yu, Qiaozhi Zhao Jun 2026

Reframing Design Through Events: Generative Events As Ontological Units In Object-Oriented Design Ontology, Fengjin Yu, Qiaozhi Zhao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study confronts the theoretical challenges arising from the increasing practical overlap of Participatory Design (PD) and Co-Design. Existing research, largely confined to method comparisons, lacks an ontological perspective capable of explaining its underlying integrative mechanisms. To address this critical gap, this paper argues for a fundamental ontological shift. We introduce the concept of 'generative events' as the basic ontological unit of design, a concept constructed by synthesising Object-Oriented Design Ontology (OODO) with Process Ontology. This framework reframes design as a dynamic generative process where humans and non-human objects collaboratively construct relationships and meaning within specific contexts. The contribution of …

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From Commodity To Commons: Creating Local Eco-Systems For The Design Of Sustainable Nhs Garments In Scotland, Lewis Urquhart, Paul Rodgers, Niki Taylor, Euan Winton, Lucy Welsh, Sophia Murden Jun 2026

From Commodity To Commons: Creating Local Eco-Systems For The Design Of Sustainable Nhs Garments In Scotland, Lewis Urquhart, Paul Rodgers, Niki Taylor, Euan Winton, Lucy Welsh, Sophia Murden

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates the transformation of NHS Scotland garment systems through a design-led, commons-based localist framework that challenges prevailing globalised procurement models. Drawing on co-design methodologies and sustainable material innovation, this project repositions garments - specifically surgical caps and scrubs - as relational artefacts embedded within systems of care, identity, and ecological responsibility. Collaborations with healthcare professionals, designers, and regional manufacturers have yielded prototypes utilising regenerative fibres such as lyocell and linen, made locally within Scotland. These interventions demonstrate the potential of commons-design to foster civic engagement, decentralised production, and circular economies. By embedding garment systems within local ecologies and …

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Redefining Design Practice As A Sensory And Decentred Experience, Azeem Hamid, Umar Hameed, Kristi Kuusk, Nithikul Nimkulrat Jun 2026

Redefining Design Practice As A Sensory And Decentred Experience, Azeem Hamid, Umar Hameed, Kristi Kuusk, Nithikul Nimkulrat

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how sensory focused practice can decentre the role of the design educator-researcher within design education, reframing learning as a relational and embodied form of practice-led design research. Drawing on a sensory workshop with foundation-year design students in Lahore, Pakistan, it explores how listening, movement, and tactile engagement foster reflective awareness and co-creation. Informed by theories of embodied cognition and relational pedagogy, the study considers how agency in learning environments extends beyond the educator to include materials, atmospheres, and collective experiences. Sensory practice is presented not as an adjunct to design but as integral to it, cultivating attentiveness, …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Investigating The Embodied Aesthetics Of Kinetic Structures At Biennales And World Expos, Hatice Hilal Topuz, Güzin Şen Jun 2026

Investigating The Embodied Aesthetics Of Kinetic Structures At Biennales And World Expos, Hatice Hilal Topuz, Güzin Şen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In biennales and world expos, where creative ideas, cultural values, and technological developments in art and architecture are exhibited, kinetic systems are increasingly used in installations and pavilions. This paper frames kinetic structures in relation to embodied aesthetics and investigates how such kinetic structures go beyond mere display to offer visitors a holistic aesthetic experience. It introduces a selection of kinetic structures presented in diverse biennales and expos by utilizing publications, commentaries, and curatorial statements; deconstructs and analyzes their designs regarding types of movement, body-space-time relations, participation modes, embodied metaphors, and conceptual narratives. Thus, the paper shows how kinetic structures …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Designing Preparatory Haptics: Relational Timing And Bodily Anticipation In Industrial Driving Contexts, Zhe Dai, Yonghong Liu, Pingping Fang, Xiangtian Bai, Yifei Xue, Fan Wu, Qian Ou Jun 2026

Designing Preparatory Haptics: Relational Timing And Bodily Anticipation In Industrial Driving Contexts, Zhe Dai, Yonghong Liu, Pingping Fang, Xiangtian Bai, Yifei Xue, Fan Wu, Qian Ou

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In safety-critical industrial contexts, visual alerts often fail under high cognitive load. This paper introduces Preparatory Haptics, framing haptic timing as a relational medium that reshapes bodily anticipation. We developed a wearable haptic prototype synchronized with auditory cues to investigate how temporal coordination and vibration modes influence attention and readiness. A driving-simulation study showed that advance-timing haptic cues foster proactive anticipation, whereas sustained vibrations are perceived as bodily resonance rather than interference, particularly under complex task conditions. These findings ground the Preparatory Haptics Framework, which treats temporal materiality as a generative element of embodied interaction and offers theoretical and practical …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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