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Designing Motion Identity: Exploring The Aesthetic Expression Of Brand Style Through System Motion, Xinyi Xie, Yinman Guo, Zican Chen Jun 2026

Designing Motion Identity: Exploring The Aesthetic Expression Of Brand Style Through System Motion, Xinyi Xie, Yinman Guo, Zican Chen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study investigates how system motion enhances aesthetic experience and shapes users’ interpretation of brand style. Using Windows 11, macOS, and HarmonyOS as representative cases, the study analyses four categories of system animations through a motor-level framework comprising temporal, spatial, and transformational attributes. Twelve motion samples were coded, and participants evaluated each sample using perceptual adjectives. The results show that consistent attribute patterns across functional categories lead to stable aesthetic tendencies, while differences emerge from how each system repeatedly applies these attributes. These attribute biases create distinct perceptual profiles, indicating that motion can function as a subtle medium for expressing …

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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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Tagus Estuary Color Swatch – Materials As Affective Mediators In More-Than-Human Temporalities, Mariana Simoes, Mariana Pestana, Frederico Duarte, Valentina Nisi Jun 2026

Tagus Estuary Color Swatch – Materials As Affective Mediators In More-Than-Human Temporalities, Mariana Simoes, Mariana Pestana, Frederico Duarte, Valentina Nisi

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper reimagines material catalogues not as static inventories but as archives of deep-time and affect: tools for sensing, caring for, and reconfiguring our relationships with the more-than-human world. It presents Tagus estuary colour swatch, a Research-through-Design exploration in which bio-pigments derived from local plant, mineral, algal, and waste streams form a colour palette embodying the estuary’s ecological rhythms. The project reframes materials beyond inert resources but rather as affective mediators of and for more-than-human temporalities – by embodying and expressing temporal processes and by enabling designers and audiences to engage with them. Positioned against the extractivist legacy of traditional …

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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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Inclusive Co-Learning In Transnational Design Classrooms: Bridging Linguistic And Cultural Gaps Between Chinese Students And British Curricula, Linli Zhang, Jinze Hao, Yaqi Wang, Liang Xiao Jun 2026

Inclusive Co-Learning In Transnational Design Classrooms: Bridging Linguistic And Cultural Gaps Between Chinese Students And British Curricula, Linli Zhang, Jinze Hao, Yaqi Wang, Liang Xiao

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores inclusive co-learning strategies in transnational design education, focusing on Chinese students enrolled in a joint program jointly delivered by Beijing Jiaotong University and Lancaster University within China. These students complete their entire undergraduate studies domestically, without the opportunity to immerse themselves in an English-speaking or multicultural environment. As a result, they often rely on translation tools to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers when engaging with British pedagogy. Drawing on classroom observations, student interviews, and reflective teaching practices, the study proposes an Inclusive Co-Learning Framework that integrates linguistic scaffolding and cultural mediation to foster language development, cultural understanding, …

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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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Mechanical Jewellery As Epimethean Practice: Staying With The Trouble Of Human–Machine Entanglement, Zhiyang Ding, Guang Dai, Beverley Hood, Sarah Kettley Jun 2026

Mechanical Jewellery As Epimethean Practice: Staying With The Trouble Of Human–Machine Entanglement, Zhiyang Ding, Guang Dai, Beverley Hood, Sarah Kettley

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how mechanical jewellery can serve as an Epimethean design practice that rethinks human–machine relationships through care, hesitation, and affective engagement. Drawing from post-anthropocentric design discourse and new materialist theory, the research investigates how low-tech, playful, and speculative prototypes can undo conventional narratives of technological progress. Through a practice-based workshop conducted at Fringe Arts Bath 2025, the study examines how wearable artefacts exhibiting unpredictable motion provoke emotional response and relational awareness in participants. The findings suggest that mechanical jewellery can operate as a modest yet generative medium for staying with the trouble of human–machine entanglement, foregrounding absurd materiality, …

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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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Relational Embodiment: Rethinking Artifacts As Mediators Of Being-With-Others, Yufei Zeng, Junjie Zhang Jun 2026

Relational Embodiment: Rethinking Artifacts As Mediators Of Being-With-Others, Yufei Zeng, Junjie Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Grounded in theories of embodied cognition, extended mind, and mediating artifact, this paper proposes a human–artifact–human perspective to explore the relational mediation of artifacts in social interaction. Through a systematic review of 30 key studies published between 2010 and 2025, a four-dimensional analytical framework is constructed—embodied cues, interaction modes, mediating artifact features, and affective outcomes—to reveal how embodied design generates relations among the body, artifacts, and society. The analysis shows that embodied interaction is shifting from functional control toward relational generation, presenting four tendencies: micro-intimacy, ambient co-presence, culturally embedded bodily rituals, and slow relational rhythms. Building on these insights, the …

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Body Class, The Grand Museum And The Queer Archive, Tadeas Riha Jun 2026

Body Class, The Grand Museum And The Queer Archive, Tadeas Riha

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Tělák, a Czech slang term for physical education (PE) that also echoes tělo - body, is a theatrical exhibition, developed by an interdisciplinary team of educators, activists, architects, and theatre professionals, introducing expressions of gender as a spectrum for teenage audiences. The exhibition unfolds across two layers. The first is a scenography evoking the familiar spaces of PE; corridors, changing rooms, bathrooms, gyms, reassembled within the museum’s own charged normative setting. The second is an archive of personal stories: fragments of experience retold by actors in sound, and others inscribed in situ by a local artist. This practice-based paper traces …

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Co-Designing Co-Design Workshops With Adhd Adults, Patrick Brundell, Emily Thorn, Teresa Castle-Green, Paul Tennent, Juan Martinez Avila, Sachiyo Ito-Jaeger Jun 2026

Co-Designing Co-Design Workshops With Adhd Adults, Patrick Brundell, Emily Thorn, Teresa Castle-Green, Paul Tennent, Juan Martinez Avila, Sachiyo Ito-Jaeger

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The increased recognition that minoritised people should play a more significant role in the research and design of technologies aimed at them is welcomed. Though Interaction design research has begun to address the needs of neurodivergent people, the epistemic framing of the research aims, and practical co-construction of technologies are still infrequently from a lived-experience perspective. This work sought to address some of these concerns through a series of interaction co-design workshops with ADHD adults framed as technological design for wellbeing. This paper reflects on our adaptive use of Soma and Co-design workshop methodologies to account for and speak to …

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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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Appropriating Edinburgh’S Dead: Exploring The Potential Of Edinburgh’S Historic Burial Grounds As Sites For Designerly Conversations About Grief And Loss, Richard Thompson, Diane Willis, Kirstie Jamieson Jun 2026

Appropriating Edinburgh’S Dead: Exploring The Potential Of Edinburgh’S Historic Burial Grounds As Sites For Designerly Conversations About Grief And Loss, Richard Thompson, Diane Willis, Kirstie Jamieson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

There are five unique historic burial grounds within the proximity of Edinburgh’s city centre. Cross-sector consultations with police, heritage and council officials decry the decline of these spaces. Each is at risk; erosion, limited resources, and perceived anti-social behaviour obscure their value as social spaces apt to explore, share and process grief. The potential of these historic sites has been limited to imagining convivial and heritage-aligned uses of graveyards. This case study explores their potential as unique spaces to publicly discuss bereavement, mortality and grief through design workshops. It argues that designing provides an appropriate process to scaffold these conversations …

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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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