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Sketching Social Robots: Visualising Futures Of Human–Robot Interaction Through Participatory Imagination, Nicholas Vanderschantz, Jessica Turner, Jemma Konig, Claire Timpany, Rafeea Siddika, Nathan Shakes Jun 2026

Sketching Social Robots: Visualising Futures Of Human–Robot Interaction Through Participatory Imagination, Nicholas Vanderschantz, Jessica Turner, Jemma Konig, Claire Timpany, Rafeea Siddika, Nathan Shakes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper, we explore sketching as a speculative and reflective practice for imagining social robots. Through a series of participatory design workshops, participants observed two prototype robots and then produced sketches and word maps envisioning possible appearances, behaviours, and social roles for robots in everyday life. Analysing the artefacts of these workshops reveals how non-expert human users perceive and imagine future robots in their worlds. We examine common themes of emotion, familiarity, discomfort, and relational values in the artefacts produced by the workshop participants. Our work highlights a way that sketching and written idea generation by non-designers can serve …

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Revisiting Kansei Engineering Through Japanese Scholarship: Toward Field Kansei Engineering, Liang Dong, Hong Zhang, Chun-Hsien Chen Jun 2026

Revisiting Kansei Engineering Through Japanese Scholarship: Toward Field Kansei Engineering, Liang Dong, Hong Zhang, Chun-Hsien Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Japan, as the birthplace of Kansei Engineering (KE), has played a pivotal role in shaping this field, building a solid research foundation and accumulating extensive scholarly experience. A substantial body of valuable Japanese-language studies has been published in academic conferences and journals in Japan. However, current English-language review articles in KE rarely include these Japanese works. To address this gap, this study provides a preliminary attempt to compile and analyse Japanese publications that propose new concepts, theories, models, and frameworks within KE. The review highlights distinctive perspectives developed by Japanese scholars, revealing contextual and situational sensitivity, collective and social understanding, …

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Design Research Laboratories: A Historical Review, Lynn Harles Jun 2026

Design Research Laboratories: A Historical Review, Lynn Harles

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In recent decades, Design Research Labs have proliferated across design educational institutions worldwide, emerging as dynamic spaces that challenge traditional pedagogical models. However, understanding this contemporary phenomenon requires contextualizing it within the historical origins of the laboratory metaphor in design—a concept repeatedly reimagined over nearly a century. Building upon Hasenhütl's (2018, 2023) identification of two historical generations from the early to mid-20th century, this research extends the genealogy to encompass contemporary developments, with particular attention to socio-ecological themes. The analysis reveals four distinct generations of Design Research Labs that do not follow strictly linear chronological progression but represent "expanding parameters" …

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The Act Of Crafting Textile Dialogues, Malene Harsaae, Anne Louise Bang Jun 2026

The Act Of Crafting Textile Dialogues, Malene Harsaae, Anne Louise Bang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how textile dialogues can be crafted within material‑driven de-sign processes in the context of increasing environmental pressure on textile re-sources and forthcoming regulations such as the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation. Through observations of professional practitioners and anal-yses of design students’ thesis work, the study investigates how material‑first ap-proaches influence ideation, prototyping and reflection in apparel and textile de-sign. Practitioners naturally engage in reflection‑in‑action, using craft skills to nego-tiate material behavior and technologies, often leading to unanticipated design di-rections. Students, guided by the material‑driven design model for apparel and tex-tiles, deliberately develop similar dialogues, gaining insights …

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The Fuzzy Edges Of Studio: Towards Inclusive Online Education, Nicole Lotz, Derek Jones, Tina Deiml-Seibtb Jun 2026

The Fuzzy Edges Of Studio: Towards Inclusive Online Education, Nicole Lotz, Derek Jones, Tina Deiml-Seibtb

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how online design studios can become more inclusive by embracing their inherently ‘fuzzy’ nature as characterized by negotiated visibility, ambient awareness, and flexible participation. Through a series of co-design workshops with students, educators, and practitioners, we examined learner experiences and co-designed recommendations for future online studios. Findings reveal ten core studio values, including respect, care, agency, and joy, operationalized through tangible design features such as dynamic visibility, serendipitous interactions, and multi-dimensional content views. Mapping these recommendations to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines demonstrates strong alignment, suggesting that inclusive practices can emerge organically when learners actively shape …

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Design For Well-Being: A Preliminary Investigation On Design Interventions In The Context Of Loneliness Economy, Jinxia Liu, Angela Giambattista, Loredana Di Lucchio Jun 2026

Design For Well-Being: A Preliminary Investigation On Design Interventions In The Context Of Loneliness Economy, Jinxia Liu, Angela Giambattista, Loredana Di Lucchio

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Loneliness has become a prominent public health issue that causes negative consequences at both individual and social levels. Concurrently, the market is actively responding and gradually forms the loneliness economy, addressing human emotional needs by offering related products and services. However, the largely implemented digital solutions remain problematic. This paper aims at investigating how design research has addressed the loneliness issue and what roles design plays in addressing loneliness. A mixed methodological approach was adopted, combining analysis of keyword co-occurrence and a meta-narrative review. The results identify the threefold design contributions: building and enhancing social connectedness, creating artificial companions and …

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Mediating Borders Through Sound: Sonic Boundary Objects In Infrastructural Listening, Paula Martin Rivero, Dietmar Offenhuber Jun 2026

Mediating Borders Through Sound: Sonic Boundary Objects In Infrastructural Listening, Paula Martin Rivero, Dietmar Offenhuber

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Through Tower of Babel, a spatialized sound installation based on field recordings at the U.S.–Mexico border, we examine how sonic boundary objects translate bureaucratic infrastructures into embodied, perceptual encounters. The installation treats borders as culturally constructed virtual spaces rather than geometric lines, enabling movement across sonic channels and challenging fixed notions of data and identity. We argue that sound-driven artifacts can function as boundary objects in design contexts by mediating knowledge, exposing hierarchies, and fostering collective sense-making. These artifacts support cooperation across diverse stakeholders through sonic habitability: auditory conditions that reframe relations among human, technological, and environmental actors. While auditory …

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Touch Wood: Stuckness, Risk Assessment, And Embodied Knowledge In Practice, Hugo Glover Jun 2026

Touch Wood: Stuckness, Risk Assessment, And Embodied Knowledge In Practice, Hugo Glover

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This practice-based research explores stuckness in creative work not as a problem to eliminate, but as a threshold state where tacit knowledge becomes operative. Drawing on autoethnographic narrative, I examine how attending to stuckness reveals the autonomic nervous system's (ANS) role in embodied knowing. Through a close reading of wood carving practice, I document how physical engagement with materials offered a way to work with, rather than overcome, stuckness. When invited to exhibit this work, I experienced acute stress that led me to adapt a Risk Assessment form—typically used for physical hazards—to map emotional risks such as shame and humiliation. …

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Code Ecologies: Reclaiming Design As Meaning-Making Within Human–Ecological Systems, Laura Santamaria Jun 2026

Code Ecologies: Reclaiming Design As Meaning-Making Within Human–Ecological Systems, Laura Santamaria

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper reclaims the role of design as a practice of meaning-making within human–ecological systems. While meaning has always been part of design discourse, successive turns – semiotic, experiential, relational – have addressed what meaning is without asking why living systems make meaning at all. Drawing on recent advances in neuroscience, biosemiotics and code biology, it argues that meaning-making is not a cognitive phenomenon unique to humans but a regulatory process intrinsic to living systems. Code Ecologies offers a philosophical framework that reinterprets the biosphere, technosphere and semiosphere as interdependent ecologies of codes, resonant with relational and Indigenous cosmologies. The …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Co-Designing Academic Archives: Design-Led Frameworks For Post-Digital Cultural Heritage, Ana Luísa Marques, Juliana F. Duque, Filipe Figueiredo Jun 2026

Co-Designing Academic Archives: Design-Led Frameworks For Post-Digital Cultural Heritage, Ana Luísa Marques, Juliana F. Duque, Filipe Figueiredo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Building an information legacy requires method: identifying, selecting, and cataloguing information that can anchor future research demands a thorough archiving process, with accurate information access and rigorous preservation practice. Yet academic archives today must also respond to a broader cultural condition shaped by digital transformation and interdisciplinary collaboration. This paper discusses the development of an academic design archive as part of the wider GLAM ecosystem, where preservation, innovation and digital transformation coexist. It proposes a design-led framework that approaches archiving as a cultural and participatory process. Through literature review and institutional reflection, the study highlights the archive’s dual role: collecting …

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Efficiency And Empathy: Integrating Ai Into User Research In An Undergraduate Ux Design Course, Nan Hu Jun 2026

Efficiency And Empathy: Integrating Ai Into User Research In An Undergraduate Ux Design Course, Nan Hu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The integration of AI into UX design presents both opportunities and challenges for UX education-how to leverage AI’s efficiency while developing students’ human skills. This pilot study examines LLMs as an analytical AI co-pilot in undergraduate user research. Students (N=17) conducted two cycles of user research: one using traditional methods, and another with Claude-assisted analysis. Findings show 14 (82%) of students perceived the Claude-assisted approach as faster in synthesizing data and extracting insights. However, the results also reveal a trade-off: AI's efficiency may reduce empathy-building, with 6 (35%) students reporting diminished user connection. This research illuminates the inherent tension in …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Plural Exhibition Experiences: Co-Designing Multisensory Storytelling With An Indigenous Sámi Museum, Siiri Paananen, Emma Kirjavainen, Juri Etto, Eeva-Kristiina Nylander, Jonna Häkkilä Jun 2026

Plural Exhibition Experiences: Co-Designing Multisensory Storytelling With An Indigenous Sámi Museum, Siiri Paananen, Emma Kirjavainen, Juri Etto, Eeva-Kristiina Nylander, Jonna Häkkilä

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article examines an Indigenous-led exhibition renewal at the Sámi Museum Siida, in which multisensory design and digital media were collaboratively developed with Sámi artists and museum experts. The exhibition was created primarily for the Sámi community, in a museum that also receives many international visitors. The study is based on a survey (n=35) and three focus groups (n=9) with participants representing diverse visitor perspectives to understand how people experienced and interpreted the exhibition’s sensory and technological elements. The results demonstrate that the exhibition created a sense of immersion through spatial and multisensory design grounded in local artistic and cultural …

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Urban Typography And Cultural Memory: A Literature Review In Support Of A Design-Led Approach To Heritage And Preservation, Carolina Short, Gareth Schott Jun 2026

Urban Typography And Cultural Memory: A Literature Review In Support Of A Design-Led Approach To Heritage And Preservation, Carolina Short, Gareth Schott

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Typography has increasingly been recognised as a valuable lens for cultural and urban analysis. This literature review extends such perspectives by examining how design-led approaches can support the documentation, reinterpretation, and revitalization of urban letterforms as cultural heritage. Drawing on typographic studies, geosemiotics, and design research, it focuses on urban typography — typographic landscapes — understood as spatial and multimodal carriers of memory, identity, and cultural value. While existing scholarship has explored the semiotic and aesthetic dimensions of typography in the urban environment, and some have proposed design-led interventions, connections between theory and practice remain open to further development. The …

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Participatory Design As Third Space: Iterative Ethic In Singapore’S Contemporary Multiculturalism, Cheng Chen Jun 2026

Participatory Design As Third Space: Iterative Ethic In Singapore’S Contemporary Multiculturalism, Cheng Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Participatory designers in Singapore work within Bhabha’s “third space,” where identities and practices are continuously negotiated across cultural boundaries. This qualitative study, based on interviews and ethnographic observation with 18 designers addressing social welfare for marginalized communities, examines how designers’ intersectional identities—such as female, queer, Chinese, and gig creatives—shape an ethic of care rooted in Asianised neighbourliness. Designers strategically inhabit in-between spaces, balancing top-down and bottom-up approaches through critical curiosity and cultural competence. Findings identify three interlinked personas: (1) Facilitator—mediating perspectives and trust; (2) Maker—engaging in embodied, situated making; and (3) Reflexive practitioner—cultivating curiosity across demographics. This iterative ethic enables …

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Design With Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, And Politics, Zixuan Wang, Jiashuo Liu, Bow Yiying Wu, John Vines, Karey Helms, Sarah Kettley, Paul Rodgers, Ann Light Jun 2026

Design With Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, And Politics, Zixuan Wang, Jiashuo Liu, Bow Yiying Wu, John Vines, Karey Helms, Sarah Kettley, Paul Rodgers, Ann Light

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This is an overview editorial of the track "Design with Care: Theories, Practices, Methods, and Politics" at the Design Research Society (DRS) conference 2026. In this track, we discuss how care could serve as a critical lens guiding research and design. Our track received 55 full paper submissions, and 21 of which have been accepted through a double-blind peer-review process. Together with three additional submissions from the open track, we organise these papers into four theme sessions: Knowing with Care, Practicing with Care, Co-designing with Care, and Making with Care. Collectively, the track demonstrates diverse ways of engaging with care …

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Transitional Materialities, Sofia Soledad Duarte Poblete, Camilo Ayala-Garcia Jun 2026

Transitional Materialities, Sofia Soledad Duarte Poblete, Camilo Ayala-Garcia

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Transitional Materialities brings together research that understands materials not as static substances, but as dynamic agents embedded in ecological, technological, and socio-economic transitions. This perspective highlights the evolving relationship between material innovation, planetary health, and design’s capacity to mediate and guide change. The track explores how designers move beyond passive material selection to engage actively in experimentation, critical reflection, policy making and the development of alternative, resilient futures. Contributions address material inspiration, education, and archives as means to support knowledge sharing and open-access dissemination; they also map materials and practices across contexts, from rethinking traditional material values and local specificities …

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Designing Strategic Change: Approaches, Methods, And Theories Of Strategic Design In Business Organizations, G. Mauricio Mejía, Violeta Clemente, Aroop Ratan Guha, Jeanne Liedtka, Beatrice D'Ippolito Jun 2026

Designing Strategic Change: Approaches, Methods, And Theories Of Strategic Design In Business Organizations, G. Mauricio Mejía, Violeta Clemente, Aroop Ratan Guha, Jeanne Liedtka, Beatrice D'Ippolito

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The DRS Edinburgh theme-track “Designing Strategic Change: Approaches, Methods, and Theories of Strategic Design in Business Organizations” includes a dozen papers that study the influence of strategic designers and strategic design practices in business organizations. This editorial describes and briefly assesses their contributions. While scholars have studied and explored the strategic role of design for organizational change, the papers show that designers and design practices must still contribute from their specific foundational mission and strengthen collaboration with other functions and senior management to materialise their potential. Future research should focus on solid case studies and the understanding of expert strategic …

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Design Education In Its Teenage Years: Growth With Tensions, Nicole Lotz, Ricardo Sosa, Violeta Clemente Jun 2026

Design Education In Its Teenage Years: Growth With Tensions, Nicole Lotz, Ricardo Sosa, Violeta Clemente

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design education research is one of the largest clusters of contributions at the Design Research Society 2026 Conference. This editorial reflects on the thirty papers of this cluster presented across five sessions. It identifies emerging concerns and persistent tensions in the field. Drawing on a synthesis of themes including creativity and identity, systemic and situated pedagogies, reflective practices, cultures and knowledges, and AI in design education, the editorial characterises the field as being in a productive phase of transition. Like an adolescent discipline, design education research shows signs of rapid growth alongside enduring continuities and noticeable leaps. Across the papers, …

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Strategic Design In Practice: Mapping Strategy Formulation And Implementation In Nordic Design Job Advertisements, Paulo Roberto Nicoletti Dziobczenski, Tua Björklund Jun 2026

Strategic Design In Practice: Mapping Strategy Formulation And Implementation In Nordic Design Job Advertisements, Paulo Roberto Nicoletti Dziobczenski, Tua Björklund

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper investigates strategic design in practice by analysing how organizations describe designers’ work in 232 job advertisements across the Nordic countries. Building on literature that positions strategic design as both strategy formulation (SF) and strategy implementation (SI), we identified explicit signs of SF and SI in the descriptions of designers’ tasks in the ads. Our findings show that Strategy implementation appeared in all ads, while strategy formulation was present in 104 roles (44.8%), mainly in senior-level positions. These SF activities included, for example, aligning design and product strategies with business objectives, leading product development and product management, driving strategic …

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Locality As A Driver For Transitional Materialities, Gökçe Deniz, Owain Pedgley, Camilo Ayala-Garcia Jun 2026

Locality As A Driver For Transitional Materialities, Gökçe Deniz, Owain Pedgley, Camilo Ayala-Garcia

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Material designers worldwide are transforming how innovation emerges through local engagement, moving beyond conventional material selection to create materials that reflect and embody their originating contexts. This research examines how locality influences design motivations, resource utilisation, and collaborative approaches through a systematic analysis of 635 material design projects across 56 countries, complemented by questionnaire responses from 19 practitioners across 14 countries. The mixed-methods research establishes the state of the art by mapping ingredient sourcing patterns, fabrication processes, and stakeholder engagements across diverse geographical contexts, while illuminating designers' conceptual frameworks regarding the role of locality in material development. The research reveals …

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Design Games As Rehearsals For Collaborative Innovation: Playing Out The Future System To Learn The Collaborative Game, Diana Saleh, Mia Hesselgren Jun 2026

Design Games As Rehearsals For Collaborative Innovation: Playing Out The Future System To Learn The Collaborative Game, Diana Saleh, Mia Hesselgren

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Moving across time horizons and system levels is challenging in collaborative innovation, where multiple agendas amplify complexity. As designers increasingly engage in processes aimed at transforming systems and fostering collaboration across boundaries, questions arise about how to navigate such complexity and orchestrate collaborative innovation. Situated within a collaborative innovation research project, this study draws on two empirical components: interviews with experienced design practitioners leading the multi-actor innovation processes, and the development and testing of a parallel design game. Design activities used for orchestrating collaborative innovation, identified through the interviews, informed the principles of the design game. The study presented here …

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Conversing With Scenario Data: Exploring Experienced Designers’ Data-Informed Reasoning Strategies In Smart Product Concept Exploration, Yaqin Peng, Xiang Yuan, Yuxuan Tan, Zikun Song Jun 2026

Conversing With Scenario Data: Exploring Experienced Designers’ Data-Informed Reasoning Strategies In Smart Product Concept Exploration, Yaqin Peng, Xiang Yuan, Yuxuan Tan, Zikun Song

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Smart product concept exploration unfolds in dynamic and diverse use situations (DDUS) that yield fragmented, multimodal scenario data, yet how experienced designers organise design reasoning in data-intensive environments to support problem framing remains underdescribed. We used a Scenario-Data-Informed (SDI) Canvas to make designer-data conversations visible and ran task-based sessions with 18 designers. From coded think-alouds and canvas inscriptions, we report three findings: first, three reasoning stances that structure work with scenario data; second, three language-in-use strategies and an actor-network mapping that renders translations among contexts, artefacts, and intentions as a traceable network; third, shareable cues that support collaboration and surface …

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A Hierarchical And Ontology-Based Taxonomy Of Stimuli–Smart Materials–Transformation Effects In 4d Printing As A New Interactive Modality, Jiayue Qin, Eujin Pei, Abdusselam Selami Cifter Jun 2026

A Hierarchical And Ontology-Based Taxonomy Of Stimuli–Smart Materials–Transformation Effects In 4d Printing As A New Interactive Modality, Jiayue Qin, Eujin Pei, Abdusselam Selami Cifter

DRS Biennial Conference Series

4D printing functions not merely as a smart manufacturing technique but as an interactive material technology: materials respond to human or environmental stimuli and generate a direct feedback loop. This study proposes a taxonomy that links Stimuli, Smart Materials, and Transformation Effects, developed through a combined Hierarchical Classification and Ontology-Based Classification approach grounded in a systematic literature review and ontology mapping. By organising complex stimulus–material–effect relationships into a designer-accessible structure, the taxonomy supports non-technical designers in identifying feasible pathways from intended interactions to material outcomes. It also provides a structured data foundation for developing 4D printing design guidelines and toolkits, …

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Maintaining Counterpublics: Archival Recursion And Prefiguration, Seojoo Han Jun 2026

Maintaining Counterpublics: Archival Recursion And Prefiguration, Seojoo Han

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study examines Interference Archive, a collectively run archive of social movement ephemera in Brooklyn, as a site where archival practice and design converge in continuous public formation. Through an analysis of exhibitions, interviews, and institutional materials, it demonstrates how archives employ the design tactics of tracing and projection not as discrete interventions but as recursive practices embedded in long-term infrastructuring. Tracing reveals genealogies of struggle, enabling participants to locate themselves within shared histories, while projection transforms this awareness into forward-looking artifacts and events that circulate beyond the archive. Unlike conventional participatory design or speculative futuring, IA cultivates a prefigurative …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Surfacing Wetlands Through Design Ethnography And Critical Visualisation, Alexandra Crosby, Sarah-Jane Jones, Holly O'Neil Jun 2026

Surfacing Wetlands Through Design Ethnography And Critical Visualisation, Alexandra Crosby, Sarah-Jane Jones, Holly O'Neil

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the visualisation of wetlands and waterways as a more-than-human design practice that can generate situated and relational understandings of colonised urban wetlands and waterways in Australia. We analyse three design research projects that create online visualisations of wetlands in Australia: The Sound of Water, Environmental Flows in Nap Nap Swamp (2021); The Rippon Lea Water Story (2023); and Dyarubbin the real Secret River (2020). These projects are brought together in this paper to open discussion about the role of design research place-based ethnography and critical visualisation in communicating with and about water places. We make the argument …

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Designing For Node-Based Ai Tools: An Analysis And Synthesis Of Design Principles, Shunan Zhang, Yi Xiao Jun 2026

Designing For Node-Based Ai Tools: An Analysis And Synthesis Of Design Principles, Shunan Zhang, Yi Xiao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Node-based interfaces are rapidly gaining traction in AI-driven design tools, yet a clear and comprehensive design framework remains essential. This paper addresses this critical need by presenting 10 carefully distilled design principles. These principles emerged from a thematic literature review of 14 recent, impactful papers published between 2020 and 2025, specifically focusing on Human-AI Interaction and visual programming. We meticulously grouped these principles into three core categories: Interaction & Usability, Human-AI Co-Creation & Creativity Support, and Explainability & Extensibility. Crucially, we also analysed how these principles intricately interconnect at a detailed level, highlighting their dynamic relationships. Based on this foundational …

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Imperfect Utopias: Norms In Vr Design And Queer Counter-Strategies, Alexandra Chalmers Braithwaite Jun 2026

Imperfect Utopias: Norms In Vr Design And Queer Counter-Strategies, Alexandra Chalmers Braithwaite

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper puts forward a set of strategies for designing queer experiences for virtual reality. First, the paper will outline The Body Traces Archive VR experience, the primary practice-based outcome of my doctoral research. This will be followed by a discussion of the medium of virtual reality and three industry-standard design norms that serve to limit and foreclose the possibilities of virtual reality: militaristic mastery and control, seamless (dis)embodiment, and prioritisation of comfort. For each industry standard norm, I propose a queer counter-strategy that works to re-align VR towards other possibilities. In turn, they are: utopian worldbuilding, embodiment via friction, …

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