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Measuring Service-Related Subjective Wellbeing In Paediatric Oncology, Valentina Marques Da Rosa, Priscila Goergen Brust-Renck, Flavio Sanson Fogliatto, Leandro Miletto Tonetto Jun 2026

Measuring Service-Related Subjective Wellbeing In Paediatric Oncology, Valentina Marques Da Rosa, Priscila Goergen Brust-Renck, Flavio Sanson Fogliatto, Leandro Miletto Tonetto

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Children’s hospitalisation affects more than physical health; it shapes children’s subjective wellbeing (SWB). Yet design researchers rarely systematically capture SWB. This study introduces the Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire for Hospitalised Children (SWBQ-HC), a tool that measures children’s perceptions of themselves, hospital services, and spaces. Developed by combining validated psychological scales with service- and space-specific items, the tool was piloted with 19 paediatric patients (aged 4–13) and 35 parents. Factor analysis revealed four dimensions: Positive and Negative Feelings about Self, and Feelings about Hospital Services and Spaces. The results highlight the interplay between relational and environmental factors in shaping SWB and reveal …

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“Why Do All The Schools Look The Same?” Exploring Children’S Spatial Design Preferences Through Generative Ai In India, Chinmay Pade, Charu Monga Jun 2026

“Why Do All The Schools Look The Same?” Exploring Children’S Spatial Design Preferences Through Generative Ai In India, Chinmay Pade, Charu Monga

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Artificial Intelligence is increasingly embedded in creative and spatial design processes, transforming how ideas are visualized and interpreted. This study examines how generative AI tools influence children’s imagination and articulation of spatial design preferences for schools in India. In a context where school environments are often standardized and children’s perspectives remain marginalized, participatory workshops with primary-school students engaged them in describing, writing, and generating AI-assisted images to express their visions for school spaces. The process revealed both the potential and the limits of AI-driven visualization. While AI expanded imagination and made ideas instantly visible, it also reproduced globalized aesthetics detached …

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Exploring How Llms Shape Collaborative Decision-Making In Service Design, Yaoqi Li, Hyunyim Park Jun 2026

Exploring How Llms Shape Collaborative Decision-Making In Service Design, Yaoqi Li, Hyunyim Park

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The increasing integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) into design workflows is reshaping how designers make decisions. This study examines the influence of LLMs on design decision-making during the early stages of service design, through a diary study with service design practitioners. By analysing usage logs and conducting post-intervention focus group interviews, we examine collaborative decision-making across three interaction dimensions: designer–designer, designer–LLM, and LLM–LLM. The findings reveal that LLMs reshape the internal decision logic and collaboration mode within service design teams. Across different stages of collaborative decision-making with human, LLMs take on varying roles as apprentice, collaborator, advisor, expert, co-creator, …

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Distributed Care Hubs: Rethinking Disability Care Policy Through Participatory Research, Christina Chi Zhang, Kyra Zimmerman, Austin Duncan, Jiin Jung Jun 2026

Distributed Care Hubs: Rethinking Disability Care Policy Through Participatory Research, Christina Chi Zhang, Kyra Zimmerman, Austin Duncan, Jiin Jung

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper develops the concept of "distributed care hubs" to describe the informal, relational infrastructures through which disabled people sustain everyday life amid insufficient formal care systems. Drawing on participatory research in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—combining community mapping, ethnographic interviews, and computational analysis—we show how community-built care emerges through ordinary social interactions, shared spaces, and reciprocal relationships. Distributed care hubs reveal that disability care and everyday sociality are inseparable; they challenge independence-centered policy frameworks by foregrounding interdependence as a universal human condition. Yet these hubs remain precarious, functioning as compensatory mechanisms shaped by systemic failures that force disabled people into informal survival …

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Agnes As A Critical Wearable: Mediating Age, Materiality, And Embodied Expertise, Elisa Cardamone, Taylor Brennan, Sophia Ashebir, Lisa D'Ambrosio, Joseph F. Coughlin Jun 2026

Agnes As A Critical Wearable: Mediating Age, Materiality, And Embodied Expertise, Elisa Cardamone, Taylor Brennan, Sophia Ashebir, Lisa D'Ambrosio, Joseph F. Coughlin

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design is increasingly engaging with the body through soft systems, wearables, and responsive materials, exploring how material interactions shape experiences of care and inclusion. This paper examines the Age Gain Now Empathy System (AGNES) - a wearable suit simulating the chronic physical conditions and functional changes associated with older age - as a critical, soma-focused design intervention. Drawing on auto-ethnographic reflection and participant observation, we present a theoretical and methodological analysis. We argue that AGNES' critical materiality actively mediates how the ageing body is read and made visible, inviting embodied understanding and supporting co-creation partnerships. We analyse how this wearable …

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Intermediary Ecologies And Participatory Infrastructures In Wind Power Planning – Towards A Practice Of Design For Just Transitions, Tessa Laven, Ramia Maze, Niki Wallace Jun 2026

Intermediary Ecologies And Participatory Infrastructures In Wind Power Planning – Towards A Practice Of Design For Just Transitions, Tessa Laven, Ramia Maze, Niki Wallace

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper analyses how transition intermediaries and participatory infrastructures shape an unjust energy licensing process and outlines implications for design for just transitions. Centring on the Fosen Wind Farm in Norway, where wind power development violated Indigenous Sámi cultural rights, it traces how licensing enabled renewable expansion while generating democratic and rights-based conflicts. Using historical case analysis and a synthesis of various literatures, the paper explores the intermediary ecology of licensing and shows how interactions among transition intermediaries structure power asymmetries. In dialogue with design research on infrastructuring, it proposes three practices for design in just transition contexts: unveiling institutional–cultural …

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Uncovering The Health Impacts Of Extreme Temperatures In Western United States Prisons Through Interdisciplinary Architectural And Epidemiological Methods, Serena Langdon-Dimidjian, Allison Macht, Shawhin Roudbari, Katherine Lemasters, David Ciplet, Elizabeth Corrado, Michael Clifton, Bob Eisman Jun 2026

Uncovering The Health Impacts Of Extreme Temperatures In Western United States Prisons Through Interdisciplinary Architectural And Epidemiological Methods, Serena Langdon-Dimidjian, Allison Macht, Shawhin Roudbari, Katherine Lemasters, David Ciplet, Elizabeth Corrado, Michael Clifton, Bob Eisman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Mass incarceration is a public health and architectural crisis in the United States. Extreme temperatures present mental and physical health challenges for incarcerated populations, exacerbated by the architectural strategies of carceral spaces. At the intersection of architecture and epidemiology we investigated how participants could leverage architectural drawings to analyze the inhumane temperatures they experienced in state prisons. Through interviews and focus groups with formerly incarcerated people, we found that the method of participatory architectural drawing allowed participants and researchers to spatialize the impact of extreme temperatures on mental and physical health as mediated by architectural space. Through a collaboration between …

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The R’S Have It: Navigating The Playground Of Design For Health Through Design Rationale, Bard Wartena, Derek Kuipers Jun 2026

The R’S Have It: Navigating The Playground Of Design For Health Through Design Rationale, Bard Wartena, Derek Kuipers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how systemic designers in health navigate plural perspectives and overlapping quality regimes. We introduce the Playground of Design as four interconnected spaces of problem, design, change, and solution, together with four R’s, Rapidness, Rigour, Relevance, and Resonance, as conversational lenses for articulating design rationale in plural settings. Two Dutch cases illustrate this approach. Bias Blaster, a serious game for adolescents recovering from psychosis, is reread retrospectively to reconstruct systemic design rationale. E-Health Junior, a long-running e-health consortium, is reconstructed through interviews and translated into a pedagogical workshop for perspective-taking. We argue that combining the Playground of Design …

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Co-Living With Agentic Ai: Reframing Design Research For Experiential Trust In Everyday Domestic Life, Jay Moon Jun 2026

Co-Living With Agentic Ai: Reframing Design Research For Experiential Trust In Everyday Domestic Life, Jay Moon

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As artificial intelligence evolves into agentic, adaptive, and generative systems, design research faces an epistemic shift. AI assistants, once reactive interfaces, are increasingly experienced as proactive presences that shape everyday life. This transformation reframes trust, no longer limited to technical reliability, transparency, or explainability, but also emerging as a relational and experiential phenomenon formed through interaction. While industry emphasizes technical trust, including privacy, security, and system reliability, design research must also address experiential trust, a felt confidence grounded in the lived quality of human and AI coexistence. Focusing on the smart home as a case of everyday domestic life, where …

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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 As A Mediator: Bridging Traditional Cosmologies And Scientific Knowledge For Climate Change Adaptation Through Value-Led Design, Natascha Ng, Alphayo Lutta Jun 2026

Design As A Mediator: Bridging Traditional Cosmologies And Scientific Knowledge For Climate Change Adaptation Through Value-Led Design, Natascha Ng, Alphayo Lutta

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Sub-Saharan Africa is at the frontline of climate change, with impacts particuarly acute in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs). This study examines how value-led design can mediate between traditional cosmologies and scientific climate knowledge to strengthen adaptation. Focusing on pastoralist communities in Kenya’s Maasai Mara region, it applies the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) as a participatory reflection tool. Findings show how value-led design can advance equity by embedding community voices and centring values in decision-making, contributing to broader debates on design’s role in fostering systemic transitions amid climate uncertainty, safeguarding against maladaptation. It presents the MLP as a tool for value-led …

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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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Computational User Research For A Public Helpline For Continuous Service Improvement: Parents Anonymous® As A Service Ecosystem, Ali O. Ilhan, Elizabeth C. Harris, Isil Oygur Jun 2026

Computational User Research For A Public Helpline For Continuous Service Improvement: Parents Anonymous® As A Service Ecosystem, Ali O. Ilhan, Elizabeth C. Harris, Isil Oygur

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Parents Anonymous®, a social service agency, provides a comprehensive ecosystem of supports to parents through its National Parent & Youth Helpline and mutual support groups. The verbal support provided through the Helpline is the core of this public service. We present a computational user research approach that learns from call transcripts to guide continuous improvement across the helpline–group system. From real conversations, we extract clear, actionable signals: how emotions shift during a call, which needs recur over time and when people are most likely to reach out. These insights feed back into everyday practice: refining counsellors’ training and responses, timing …

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Strategic Positioning In Design Agencies: Achieving Optimal Distinctiveness Through Portfolios, Bingqing Tian, Antonius Van Den Broek, Mikko Koria Jun 2026

Strategic Positioning In Design Agencies: Achieving Optimal Distinctiveness Through Portfolios, Bingqing Tian, Antonius Van Den Broek, Mikko Koria

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The growing recognition of design’s value to business and society has driven rapid expansion in the design industries, intensifying competition among designers and design firms. Despite an increased scholarly attention to the strategic role of design, there is a lack of understanding how design businesses strategize and position themselves in the market. We aim to revitalise this debate by reviewing a diverse range of literatures on strategic positioning of design agencies and suggest a focus on the theory of optimal distinctiveness. This theory argues that to be successful, firms need to find an optimal balance between being different to be …

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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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Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks, Cagri G. Varli, Stefano Maffei Jun 2026

Material Agents At Work In Alternative Food Networks, Cagri G. Varli, Stefano Maffei

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, their material dimension as active design agents (artefacts and infrastructures) remains largely unrecognized. This study challenges the positioning of packaging and distribution tools as passive elements, repositioning them as entities that shape the ongoing negotiation of ethics, responsibility, and co-dependence within food systems. Drawing on interviews, thing ethnography, and relational mapping across two alternative food network case studies, the study examines the roles of these material agents. The findings show that material artefacts contribute to the organization of care, responsibility, and continuity across both pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of food networks. Differences in …

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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 Coastal Futures: Rethinking Space And Time With A More-Than-Human And Transcultural Lens., Serena Pollastri, Juan Montalvan Lume, Louise Mullagh, Suzana Ilic Jun 2026

Design For Coastal Futures: Rethinking Space And Time With A More-Than-Human And Transcultural Lens., Serena Pollastri, Juan Montalvan Lume, Louise Mullagh, Suzana Ilic

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Amid the intensifying challenges of climate change, there is an emerging consensus within coastal academic and practitioner networks on the importance of integrating design led-approaches that enhance resilience and foster the long-term adaptation for coastal communities. However, coastal environments present peculiar contexts for design actions, as the movement of water consistently challenges the boundaries between water and land, along with the relational interactions between human and non-human communities—both in cyclical and unpredictable ways. Drawing from the authors’ experiences in tidal coastal and estuarine areas across diverse geographies, this article proposes ways to cultivate design’s response-ability (Haraway, 2016) to the more-than-human …

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A Messy Substance: Mediating The Stigma And Lived Experience Of Endometriosis Through Participatory Design, Carolina Vaz-Pires, Ricardo Melo Jun 2026

A Messy Substance: Mediating The Stigma And Lived Experience Of Endometriosis Through Participatory Design, Carolina Vaz-Pires, Ricardo Melo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Endometriosis is a chronic condition often surrounded by taboo, silence, and misunderstanding. Although diagnostic uncertainty and epistemic tensions shape endometriosis care, little is known about how design can address the communicative and relational gaps between patients and gynaecologists. This article investigates how participatory and speculative design can support communication between these groups. Using a Research through Design approach, three co-design workshops were conducted with six individuals with endometriosis and five doctors. Participants created analogue artefacts including empathy maps, body maps, clay representations, written narratives, speculative futures and collective posters that materialised embodied pain, emotional burden and clinical perspectives. The workshops …

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Towards Positional Citizenship: Designing For The More-Than-Human Political, Vanessa Monna, Abhigyan Singh, Natalia Romero Herrera Jun 2026

Towards Positional Citizenship: Designing For The More-Than-Human Political, Vanessa Monna, Abhigyan Singh, Natalia Romero Herrera

DRS Biennial Conference Series

“We have never been modern” wrote Bruno Latour, proposing that the dualism between nature and society has represented a convenient fiction. If humans have never genuinely stood apart, what happens to one of its most anthropocentric fabrications, citizenship? Conventionally a marker of political agency, citizenship determines who can speak, act, and belong. This conceptualisation excludes the multiple more-than-human agents shaping collective experiences. Building upon Plessner’s concept of positionality, the paper introduces “Positional Citizenship” to transcend the Cartesian divide between humans and more-than-humans, reshaping the political as a relational space of co-presence. Building on this shift, design becomes a practice of …

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Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt Jun 2026

Exploring Embodiment’S Impact On Autonomy And Agency In Behavioral Design, Ruth Schmidt

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The field of behavioral design uses insight into humans’ cognitive tendencies to help people make better, more rational choices. Yet individuals’ perceptions of what seems rational—let alone viable, or even conceivable—are not universally shared and are often informed by their embodiment as much as cognition. For example, fear of being scolded can inhibit overweight or obese individuals from seeking preventive healthcare, people with ‘invisible’ disabilities may feel pressured to pass as able-bodied to fit in, and Black individuals may avoid ordinary activities likely to prompt ‘birding while Black’ confrontations. Depicting cognition as the single site of judgment and decision-making therefore …

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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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