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Co-Speculating With Ai: From Prompts To Practices, Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Maria Luce Lupetti, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Dave Murray-Rust Jun 2026

Co-Speculating With Ai: From Prompts To Practices, Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Maria Luce Lupetti, Giulia Jiangxian Zhu, Dave Murray-Rust

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents a vocabulary for co-speculation with AI, developed through an experimental design studio with 55 postgraduate students who used generative AI tools to explore more-than-human design practices of decentering. The vocabulary spans multiple scales of interaction—from individual prompting acts to extended collaborative sessions—serving descriptive, analytic, and generative functions. Whilst it was developed through the specific context of decentering practices, we argue that this vocabulary is transferable to diverse design domains. It offers designers and researchers a framework for more reflective and intentional engagements with AI, contributing to emerging discussions on how design practice evolves when speculation becomes a …

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From Scientific Publication To Scientific Impact: Designing Research For Reach And Engagement, Elisabeth Breden, Eveline Van Zeeland, Jörg Henseler Jun 2026

From Scientific Publication To Scientific Impact: Designing Research For Reach And Engagement, Elisabeth Breden, Eveline Van Zeeland, Jörg Henseler

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Digital media offer transformative possibilities for sharing and experiencing research. These new options call for design researchers and publishers to rethink traditional publishing norms. Yet, expanding access alone is insufficient; making academic knowledge meaningful to diverse audiences can drive real impact. How to engage audiences beyond academia to ensure a broader impact? This study applies the design tools framing and analogical modelling to shift the perspective on academic knowledge dissemination. This allows us to recognize scientific outputs as designed products that need to be brought to ‘the market’ with a clear path for reaching and engaging audiences. This study introduces …

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Towards A Common Language For Representation Tools In More-Than-Human Design, Berre Su Demir, Aykut Coskun Jun 2026

Towards A Common Language For Representation Tools In More-Than-Human Design, Berre Su Demir, Aykut Coskun

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Representation tools in More-Than-Human Design (MTHD) are growing rapidly as researchers increasingly seek to include nonhuman perspectives in design. However, guidance for selecting, designing, and evaluating such tools is limited, leaving designers to navigate trade-offs in user-friendliness, empathy, and resources without a shared structure. While recent work has attempted to address this by introducing parameters for MTHD representation tools, their relevance and usefulness remain unexamined. We explore how these parameters resonate in practice through workshops with 12 MTHD researchers, demonstrating that the parameters serve as decision supports during design and use, as lenses for reflection, and as a shared vocabulary …

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Negotiating Control With Materials: Progressive Modes Of Engagement In Design Practice, Yuliang Kang, Enza Migliore, Jingze Liu Jun 2026

Negotiating Control With Materials: Progressive Modes Of Engagement In Design Practice, Yuliang Kang, Enza Migliore, Jingze Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper addresses a design dilemma: how can designers engage with materials that exhibit recognizable yet unpredictable behaviors? Traditional design relies on predictability and control. However, in an era of crises and complexity, we must acknowledge non-human agency and recognize that materials inherently respond and adapt. Complex material systems, characterized by self-organization, nonlinear dynamics, and emergent patterns, resist deterministic control, requiring an alternative approach. Drawing on material agency and play perspectives of rules and chances, we develop an operative framework of negotiating control, exemplified through clay fractals using the Lifting Hele-Shaw cell (LHSC). We identify three progressive modes of engagement: …

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Speculative Woolgathering: Using Design Approaches To Explore Values In The Uk Wool Supply Chain To Enable Digital Good, Naomi Jacobs, Emily Birch, Peter Craigon, Katherine Drury, Anabel Gutierrez Mendoza, Louise Manning, David Perez Jun 2026

Speculative Woolgathering: Using Design Approaches To Explore Values In The Uk Wool Supply Chain To Enable Digital Good, Naomi Jacobs, Emily Birch, Peter Craigon, Katherine Drury, Anabel Gutierrez Mendoza, Louise Manning, David Perez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents an interdisciplinary project using speculative design to explore the intersections of sustainability and technology in the UK Wool industry. Through a process of value mapping, worldbuilding, design fiction, and card development, the project involved stakeholders across the wool supply chain who contributed their perspectives and priorities. This process revealed how value is created in the wool industry, and how relationships and systems are mediated by hidden, often contrasting values. Findings highlight the importance of these values in shaping sustainable and equitable futures for the sector. We present a conceptual framework of valuation, revaluation and evaluation as a …

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Heterodox Economic Perspective For Designing Sustainability Transitions: Integrating Fundamental Human Needs And The Milieu Approach, Maxime Ritouet, Audrey Tanguy, Tatiana Reyes, Valérie Laforest Jun 2026

Heterodox Economic Perspective For Designing Sustainability Transitions: Integrating Fundamental Human Needs And The Milieu Approach, Maxime Ritouet, Audrey Tanguy, Tatiana Reyes, Valérie Laforest

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design for sustainability transitions is an emerging field within design for sustainability that aims to provide guidelines and strategies to generate systemic change in society, mostly at the socio-technical system level. Nevertheless, some limitations of current approaches have been pointed out by scholars, including their market-centered perspective and the vague definition of the sustainability visions adopted. To overcome these limitations, a shift towards a heterodox economic perspective is needed. Such a shift could help define new goals for design – satisfying fundamental human needs – through an integrative vision of humans within their environment. The city scale appears particularly appropriate …

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The Role Of Packaging In Smart Home Design, Nour Al Maalouf, Chaiwoo Lee Jun 2026

The Role Of Packaging In Smart Home Design, Nour Al Maalouf, Chaiwoo Lee

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As technology becomes vital to aging independently, its first points of contact such as packaging influence accessibility and confidence. This study examines how older adults engage with technology through packaging. Nineteen Boston-based adults aged 65 to 85 interacted with three smart home kit packaging prototypes. Observations and interviews highlighted four main insights: Participants preferred (1) design that supported independent use, (2) visible organization of all components, (3) easy, tool-free opening, and (4) sustainable, recyclable materials. Ninety-five percent recalled past frustration with packaging that felt like it was meant “for someone else.” These results suggest that designing for longevity means rethinking …

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Beyond Situated Ethics: Towards A Practice-Based Understanding Of How Designers Do Ethics, Samantha Osys Jun 2026

Beyond Situated Ethics: Towards A Practice-Based Understanding Of How Designers Do Ethics, Samantha Osys

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As discussions about AI and its societal impacts grow, questions about how to practise design responsibly and ethically have become more prominent. This paper examines how designers do ethics in practice, focusing on the relationship between universal frameworks and situated, lived experiences. Conversations with design practitioners reveal that while universal ethical frameworks provide consistency, they often overlook the everyday negotiations designers face in the workplace. Practitioners report that current governance systems, influenced by external regulations, are overly ‘top-down’ and narrowly focused on specific technologies. This approach leaves designers to identify and fill ethical gaps themselves, often through subtle, even covert, …

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Putting An Ear To The Ground: Attending To Frictions In Human-Machine-Soil Temporalities, Margrete Lodahl Rolighed, Lone Koefoed Hansen Jun 2026

Putting An Ear To The Ground: Attending To Frictions In Human-Machine-Soil Temporalities, Margrete Lodahl Rolighed, Lone Koefoed Hansen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In this paper we present "Plant-disco", an interactive physical design object that seeks to make activities in soil (e.g. bugs and plant growth) sensible to humans. With this, we discuss how more-than-human temporalities come to surface (such as plant, soil, microorganisms and machine) and how this creates friction in our human perception of time and interaction. The central aspect of the paper is to discuss how the design, as a result of trying to extend human appreciation of nature into soil, also intervenes in human temporalities by engaging with the seemingly slow pace of nature at a time where most …

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Navigating Lca In Circular Design: Methodological Barriers When Applying Life Cycle Assessment To Industrial Waste Upcycling Design Decisions, Seidpooyan Ghafoori, Linda Nhu Laursen, Christian Tollestrup Jun 2026

Navigating Lca In Circular Design: Methodological Barriers When Applying Life Cycle Assessment To Industrial Waste Upcycling Design Decisions, Seidpooyan Ghafoori, Linda Nhu Laursen, Christian Tollestrup

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Industrial designers increasingly valorise pre-consumer waste through upcycling; yet face methodological ambiguities when applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for design decision-making. This paper critically examines barriers in using LCA to evaluate circular design strategies for industrial waste metals, plastics, and wood. Through focused literature review of LCA studies and guidelines, this research identifies key methodological tensions: allocation approaches produce contradictory conclusions about upcycling benefits; system boundary definitions inconsistently classify upcycling activities; functional unit choices fundamentally alter comparative results; guideline selection (ISO, GHG Protocol, PEF) creates large variation in results; performance metrics remain application-dependent rather than operational. Findings reveal when LCA …

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Preserving Material Integrity: Designing For Value Retention In Imperfect, Discarded Materials, Nikoline Sander, Linda Nhu Laursen Jun 2026

Preserving Material Integrity: Designing For Value Retention In Imperfect, Discarded Materials, Nikoline Sander, Linda Nhu Laursen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how designers can contribute to the sustainable transition by retaining intrinsic value in imperfect, discarded materials from manufacturing. With European manufacturing generating over 230 million tons of waste annually, potential lies in using such materials at their processing stage as substitutes for virgin materials into new products. Drawing on a Danish research project with 22 material discards, the study categorises and characterises the materials into offcuts, rejected materials, rejected objects, process waste, and excess materials, each varying in imperfection parameters, predictability, variability, and data availability. The analysis examines how designers retain intrinsic value embedded in prior processing …

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(Re)Framing Timber Values: Cascade Use Metrics As A Dynamic Policy Tool, Elif Erez-Henderson, Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes Jun 2026

(Re)Framing Timber Values: Cascade Use Metrics As A Dynamic Policy Tool, Elif Erez-Henderson, Nadja Gaudillière-Jami, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Salvaged timber embodies a paradox of contemporary circularity: despite its capacity to store carbon and its long history of reuse, it remains marginal within modern construction. Its reuse is constrained by regulations that both shape and reflect the material’s value. This paper reframes this paradox through the lens of value fluctuation–how financial, carbon, and social values oscillate and misalign across timber’s successive lives, determining whether it circulates as resource, product, or waste. These sequential uses, known as cascade use, describe an approach to resource management that prioritizes biomass retention. Building on this framework, the paper proposes a value-centered cascade-use metric …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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The Atmospheric Jukebox - A Sonic Boundary Object For Multi-Sensory Exhibition Design, Jonas Rasmussen Kirkegaard Jun 2026

The Atmospheric Jukebox - A Sonic Boundary Object For Multi-Sensory Exhibition Design, Jonas Rasmussen Kirkegaard

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Museums increasingly aim to create multisensory, immersive experiences, yet exhibition design still tends to privilege visual-first ideation and communication, risking outcomes that are photogenic rather than atmospherically coherent for visitors. This paper introduces the Atmosphere Jukebox, an interactive soundscape playback device that enables heterogeneous teams of curators, designers, architects, historians, and educators, to listen to, discuss, and negotiate sonic atmospheres in the design process. In doing so, it supports multimodal attention and a shared imagination of the affective affordances that unfold across the visitor journey. The Atmosphere Jukebox is therefore proposed as a boundary object for atmospheric staging. The contribution …

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Analysis Of Design Start-Up Companies’ Challenges And Enablers In Saudi Arabian Ecosystem, Omaimah Alsenani, Paul Rodgers, Alexander Holliman Jun 2026

Analysis Of Design Start-Up Companies’ Challenges And Enablers In Saudi Arabian Ecosystem, Omaimah Alsenani, Paul Rodgers, Alexander Holliman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In recent years, Saudi Arabia’s economy has shifted from oil dependence toward diversification, spotlighting the “creative economy”. This transformation highlights the design economy, where designers are pursuing entrepreneurial and commercial opportunities. Understanding the challenges and enablers that shape design start-ups is key to supporting their growth within the design economy. This paper, part of larger PhD research, explores the Saudi Arabia design ecosystem and the experiences of running a design start-up. The paper addresses the question: “How does the Saudi Arabian ecosystem support or hinder design start-ups?” It provides a qualitative perspective based on semi-structured interviews with fifteen designer-entrepreneurs across …

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Ai And Thou: Empathy, Artificial Intelligence And Alterity In Design, Matt Sinclair, Peter Buwert Jun 2026

Ai And Thou: Empathy, Artificial Intelligence And Alterity In Design, Matt Sinclair, Peter Buwert

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Empathy is a key differentiator in Nigel Cross' model of Design as a third discipline, and has become established as a vital component of both research and practice. Yet agreed definitions of empathy in design remain elusive, and the roles it should play have been questioned and problematised. Recent developments in the capabilities of Large Language Models have generated discussion of the possibility of both simulated and actual empathic behaviour by artificial intelligences. In this paper we gather and synthesise relevant philosophical debates on the nature and operation of AI-empathy. Concepts of alterity in the work of Martin Buber and …

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Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes Jun 2026

Designing Archipelagic Ai: Challenging The Coloniality Of Ai Through Speculative Metaphors, Fabio De Almeida, Pedro Sanches, Valentina Nisi, Nuno Jardim Nunes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Metaphors play a crucial role in how designers understand, communicate, and shape technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) is no exception. This paper introduces Archipelagic AI (AAI), a speculative framework that employs metaphor-making as a design research strategy to challenge the colonial epistemologies that structure AI systems. Developed through collaborative autoethnography and fabulation in one of Europe’s richer ecosystems (Samouco in the Tagus Estuary), AAI draws on archipelagic studies and Caribbean decolonial thought to foreground a geosocial intelligence emerging through relational nodes of situated knowledge, where matter, forces, currents, and affects interweave in fluid assemblages. Structured around three metaphorical figures — …

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Designerly Ethics: Reflections On Shadowing Cancer Patients And Ideas For Embedding Ethics In Practice, Erika Renedo Illarregi, Laura Hartman, Yeray Sañudo Recacha, Laura Aguado González, Jorge Sierra-Pérez, Alba Medina Castillo, Victoria Artigas Ortega, Carlos Romero Piqueras Jun 2026

Designerly Ethics: Reflections On Shadowing Cancer Patients And Ideas For Embedding Ethics In Practice, Erika Renedo Illarregi, Laura Hartman, Yeray Sañudo Recacha, Laura Aguado González, Jorge Sierra-Pérez, Alba Medina Castillo, Victoria Artigas Ortega, Carlos Romero Piqueras

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Procedural ethics—applying for approval—alone may fail to address many issues that arise during fieldwork (ethics in the field), particularly when designers enter sensitive contexts such as healthcare. Building on our earlier contribution (DRS 2024: Embedded Ethics in Practice), we reflect on shadowing recently diagnosed cancer patients through a set of ethical considerations. Using framework analysis, we examine challenges encountered by what we term shadowers—five designers and one nurse who accompanied 14 patients throughout the service journey, from consultations to treatment. By noting the actions taken and feelings experienced as ethical issues emerged, we question how to navigate such complexities. Examining …

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Bridging Macro Sustainability And Everyday Life: Developing A Meso–Micro Indicator Framework For Sustainable Design In Historic Districts, The Case Of Laomendong, Nanjing, Chen Liu, Yuwei Wu, Weimin Guo Jun 2026

Bridging Macro Sustainability And Everyday Life: Developing A Meso–Micro Indicator Framework For Sustainable Design In Historic Districts, The Case Of Laomendong, Nanjing, Chen Liu, Yuwei Wu, Weimin Guo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper develops a multi-scalar indicator framework that bridges macro sustainability goals with the realities of historic district regeneration, focusing on the Laomendong Historic District in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. The study translates top-down policies into meso to micro level design indicators that capture the spatial, social, and cultural dimensions of sustainability. Using a mixed-methodology approach, it combines policy content analysis to identify macro-narratives with grounded theory-based social media analysis to reveal bottom-up perceptions and everyday experiences. The resulting framework demonstrates how sustainable design can move beyond macroeconomic and environmental metrics, embracing a broader range of considerations. Findings suggest that while …

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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

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

DRS Biennial Conference Series

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

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Situated Knowledge In Rural Craft Practices: A Context-Sensitive Approach To Craft–Design Collaboration In Fife, Scotland, Peining Sheng, Ayaan Ahmed Jun 2026

Situated Knowledge In Rural Craft Practices: A Context-Sensitive Approach To Craft–Design Collaboration In Fife, Scotland, Peining Sheng, Ayaan Ahmed

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how craft, as an unselfconscious design practice and embodied knowledge, contributes to situated design research, based on an ethnographic field study in Fife, Scotland, and a co-creation workshop in Edinburgh. The study points out that existing studies and practices promoting craft–design collaboration tend to focus on urban contexts and designer-led methods, often resulting in a lack of context-sensitive consideration and the presence of imbalanced relationships. Thus, this study underscores that understanding the local knowledge of rural-based craft practitioners and the distinct attributes of rural settings can respond to the challenges of rural craft practices and the barriers …

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Learning How To Use Bodystorming In Service Design For Generating New Insights And Ideas: An Application To Out-Of-Hours Primary Care In The Netherlands, Ömer Taha Döver, Monisha Mohan, Dirk Snelders, Nikita Arora, Ruihong Geng, Paula Melo Signerez, Mathé Delissen Jun 2026

Learning How To Use Bodystorming In Service Design For Generating New Insights And Ideas: An Application To Out-Of-Hours Primary Care In The Netherlands, Ömer Taha Döver, Monisha Mohan, Dirk Snelders, Nikita Arora, Ruihong Geng, Paula Melo Signerez, Mathé Delissen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Bodystorming is a design method for generating new insights and ideas for service improvement through improvised, embodied roleplay. However, it is not easy to learn how to use bodystorming as a generative method. Guidance for learning focuses on how to engage in embodied social-technical interactions, but it does not specify clear goals for wanting to do so. In a case study of an out-of-hours primary care service we explored how goal setting can stimulate novice users to use bodystorming to generate insights and ideas. Over three iterations of bodystorming, a group of novice bodystormers focused on goals that they derived …

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Careful Configurations: An Exploration Of Smart Technologies In More-Than-Human Innovation, Ruth Neubauer, Verena Fuchsberger Jun 2026

Careful Configurations: An Exploration Of Smart Technologies In More-Than-Human Innovation, Ruth Neubauer, Verena Fuchsberger

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Smart technologies promise efficiency and sustainability, yet their intelligence remains narrow – confined to optimising isolated human needs rather than nurturing the wider ecologies in which lives unfold. This paper explores how design may shift from smart technologies to more careful configurations: systems that participate in human–material–environmental relations rather than merely processing data. Drawing on Barad’s framework of intra-action, we reimagine technological innovation as distributed and relational. Through a series of eco-social prototypes – from modular heating and communal hydration to wooden fridges and moss bathrooms – the paper demonstrates how care, reciprocity and participation may re-enter the logic of …

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Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions, Tomas Vivanco, Tomas Diez Jun 2026

Mapping Agents: A Fab City Full Stack Geospatial Framework For Interdependent, Community-Led Interventions, Tomas Vivanco, Tomas Diez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article explores mapping as an experimental design practice that emerges from the intersection of ecosystems, technologies, and communities. Grounded in the Powers of Ten model and the Fab City Full Stack framework, our approach combines multi-scale observation- ranging from local infrastructures to bioregional systems- to capture ecological, material, and social data that reveal the interdependencies shaping territories. The work focuses on detecting weak signals of hyperlocal phenomena, often overlooked shifts in ecological or social systems, that can guide an iterative prototyping process. In this way, mapping becomes a generative act, tracing connections between citizens' behaviors, environmental conditions, and material …

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Unstructuring Data, Activating Dialogue: How Situated Knowledges Shape Participatory Systemic Design Practices, Asja Aulisio, Amina Pereno, Martina Spinelli Jun 2026

Unstructuring Data, Activating Dialogue: How Situated Knowledges Shape Participatory Systemic Design Practices, Asja Aulisio, Amina Pereno, Martina Spinelli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the role of data within participatory systemic design, focusing on how structured and unstructured data influence participation, sensemaking, and representation. Through three interconnected applications, the research examines how systems’ visual representations function as boundary objects that enable dialogue, trust, and shared understanding among diverse actors. Drawing on the concept of unstructuring data, the paper discusses how transforming data from fixed, expert-driven artefacts into open, evolving representations fosters inclusivity and reflexivity in design processes. The findings highlight that structured data support decision-making in well-defined contexts, whereas unstructured data stimulate exploration and collective learning in complex or fragile territories. …

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Enframing Creativity: Speculations On Design Education's Transformations In The Age Of Generative Ai, Alireza Sharifi, Michael Hohl, Fredrik Skatar Jun 2026

Enframing Creativity: Speculations On Design Education's Transformations In The Age Of Generative Ai, Alireza Sharifi, Michael Hohl, Fredrik Skatar

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The rapid advancement of AI technologies necessitates a shift from reactive adoption to speculative inquiry into long-term consequences for educational systems. Grounded in Martin Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology," this research examines the epistemology of AI in design education. Methodologically, it employs speculative futurology, integrating speculative design, critical design, and scenario planning to explore possible futures, culminating in a philosophical mapping framework based on Heidegger's critical stance. The findings reveal a critical temporal mismatch between rapid AI capability growth and slower educational adaptation, creating urgency for human-centered frameworks. The research concludes that design education's future depends on consciously cultivating Critical …

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Designing Knowledge Otherwise: The Bembo Officina Editoriale As A Case For Alternative Academic Publishing, Raimonda Riccini, Simone Spagnol, Giampiero Dalai, Stefania D'Eri, Manuel Zanettin, Giovanni Borga, Luciano Perondi Jun 2026

Designing Knowledge Otherwise: The Bembo Officina Editoriale As A Case For Alternative Academic Publishing, Raimonda Riccini, Simone Spagnol, Giampiero Dalai, Stefania D'Eri, Manuel Zanettin, Giovanni Borga, Luciano Perondi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents Bembo Officina Editoriale (BOE) as a design-research experiment addressing the epistemological, ethical, and technical tensions in contemporary scientific publishing. BOE develops an open-source, automated editorial workflow—based on Markdown–Python pipelines—to generate fully editable InDesign outputs, reducing production costs and enabling accessibility without compromising design quality. Rooted in a non-profit academic framework, the model reclaims editorial autonomy while resisting the inequities of commercial open-access models based on Article Processing Charges. BOE thus proposes an alternative publishing infrastructure where automation sustains pluralism and transparency. The contribution situates this approach within a critical reflection on the historical continuity between typographic rationalization …

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