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Articles 391 - 420 of 36538

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Designing For Self-Tailoring In Adolescent Health Behavior Change, Timothy A. Houtman, Froukje Sleeswijk Visser, Ece Şekerli, Valentijn Visch Jun 2026

Designing For Self-Tailoring In Adolescent Health Behavior Change, Timothy A. Houtman, Froukje Sleeswijk Visser, Ece Şekerli, Valentijn Visch

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Digital behavior change tools increasingly use system-driven tailoring to guide users toward healthier choices. While well-intentioned, such approaches may undermine autonomous behavior change by removing users from decision-making processes and limiting opportunities to develop self-knowledge: a practical understanding of what works for oneself that can help regulate current and future behaviors. This is particularly consequential for adolescents, who are developing personal autonomy at a time when the health behaviors they establish can have long-term consequences. We propose that self-tailoring can enhance autonomy by actively involving users in constructing and adapting approaches to their own contexts. Through two studies, we investigated …

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The “P” In Design: Towards A Genealogy Of The Political In The Field, Silvia Cantalupi, Annalinda De Rosa, Laura Galluzzo Jun 2026

The “P” In Design: Towards A Genealogy Of The Political In The Field, Silvia Cantalupi, Annalinda De Rosa, Laura Galluzzo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper interrogates the persistent claim of design’s neutrality by tracing how notions of the political have surfaced, receded, and re-emerged across design discourses in Western contexts from the late 1960s to the present. Building on Arendt’s understanding of the political as the space of collective world-making through human plurality, and Mouffe’s agonistic perspective that foregrounds conflict and power, the paper proposes a genealogy revealing how design has always been entangled with ideological, economic, and socio-technical transformations. The analysis maps political trajectories across Radical Design, Participatory Design, Critical and Speculative Design, Social Design, Design for Social Innovation, Design Activism, Adversarial …

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Co-What? A New Perspective On Participation And Collaboration With Vulnerable Populations In Design Studies: Methodological Inquiry, Gijs Terlouw, Lars Veldmeijer Jun 2026

Co-What? A New Perspective On Participation And Collaboration With Vulnerable Populations In Design Studies: Methodological Inquiry, Gijs Terlouw, Lars Veldmeijer

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Although co-design is widely promoted in healthcare, it is seldom true co-design. In practice, power imbalances persist, and (former) service-users’ voices rarely shape design decisions. This study examines how design processes can nevertheless surface these much-needed perspectives. Using a multiple-case study design, nine peer-reviewed healthcare design projects were selected and reformulated into analytical scenarios, enabling systematic comparison of methodological strategies. Thematic cross-case analysis explored how user perspectives were elicited, how insights informed design decisions, and where representation broke down. A key finding is that lower levels of direct involvement require more methodological steps to capture and translate users' needs adequately. …

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Understanding The Electric Vehicle Purchase Decision Through The Lens Of Experience, Yen Chen Chang, Hsien Hui Tang Tang Jun 2026

Understanding The Electric Vehicle Purchase Decision Through The Lens Of Experience, Yen Chen Chang, Hsien Hui Tang Tang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study reinterprets the EKB model from an experiential perspective to examine electric vehicle (EV) consumer decision-making in Taiwan and extends the influence factors in the modified EKB model. Based on semi-structured interviews, the findings reveal how experience operates differently across five stages. Regarding internal factors, personal beliefs are identified as a long-term factors of problem recognition stage, while “Consumer experience with product/brand” is extended to include vicarious experience and experiential control. Post-purchase experience generates affect that, together with “Switching cost”, re-initiates evaluation cycles. Regarding external factors, real experiences from “Role of third parties” can shorten or bypass search and …

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Knowledge Products From Applied Design Research, Koen Van Turnhout, Wina Smeenk, Daan Andriessen, Miriam Losse Jun 2026

Knowledge Products From Applied Design Research, Koen Van Turnhout, Wina Smeenk, Daan Andriessen, Miriam Losse

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article examines how researchers can enhance the impact of their work on professional practice by developing effective knowledge products. This term refers to the means by which researchers enable others to learn from the knowledge they generate through their research. The concept of knowledge products is related to discussions on intermediate-level knowledge and alternative forms of research communication. Both elements contribute to the uptake in practice. Despite successful examples of knowledge product development, the design research community lacks a shared theoretical foundation for knowledge products. This paper addresses that gap by 1) framing knowledge products as mediating artefacts that …

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Transdisciplinarity In Practice: Challenges And Transformative Potentials Of Participatory Design In Sociobiodiversity Contexts, Denise Dantas, Suzana M. R. Álvares, Laercio Marques Da Silva, Neide Araujo, Joel Leandro De Queiroga, Luiz Octavio Ramos Filho Jun 2026

Transdisciplinarity In Practice: Challenges And Transformative Potentials Of Participatory Design In Sociobiodiversity Contexts, Denise Dantas, Suzana M. R. Álvares, Laercio Marques Da Silva, Neide Araujo, Joel Leandro De Queiroga, Luiz Octavio Ramos Filho

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article examines the epistemological, political, and practical challenges of transdisciplinarity in a participatory design project with agroforestry family farmers in São Paulo, Brazil, within the Design for Biodiversity initiative. By bringing together designers, scientists, and farmers, the project demonstrates how participatory design operates as a negotiation between institutional knowledge and vernacular expertise. Farmers’ experiential knowledge informed design decisions and interpretations of socioecological dynamics. Findings reveal tensions not only in interactions with farmers, requiring communication adapted to accessible language and local realities, but also within the academic team, due to differing worldviews and validation standards. Through a design-led action research …

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Sounding Out Service: Explaining Representational Capacity Of Sound In Service Design, Ana Kuštrak Korper, Vanessa Esperance Rodrigues Jun 2026

Sounding Out Service: Explaining Representational Capacity Of Sound In Service Design, Ana Kuštrak Korper, Vanessa Esperance Rodrigues

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Recent research has established the necessity to understand sound as a service design material since its unique qualities can enhance representational design methods and contribute to the understanding, communication, and collaboration in designing complex service situations. However, much is still unknown about the role sound plays in the service design process and how the nuances related to its representational capacity influence collaborative sensemaking. This paper explores these nuances by developing a framework that allows inclusion of sound in service design practices regardless of sound-related skill level. The framework was developed based on empirical input from a master level course in …

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Design As A Distributed Capability For Organizational Strategies Of New Product Development, Caterina Dastoli, Gabriele Goretti Jun 2026

Design As A Distributed Capability For Organizational Strategies Of New Product Development, Caterina Dastoli, Gabriele Goretti

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study positions Design as a distributed capability for New Product Development through ecosystems knowledge. While the strategic role of Design in local productive systems is well established, new technology affordances often necessitate the design and implementation of organizational strategies—beyond traditional business strategies—across SMEs from diverse industrial clusters. Consequently, technological evolution calls for a system-level positioning of Design interventions and a clear articulation of Design capabilities within the organizational dimension of an ecosystem, where multiple actors participate in strategic and operational decision-making for New Product Development. By conceptualizing Design as an organizational intelligence, this research highlights its potential to enable …

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Staging Dramaturgies: Supporting Urban Curators In Navigating Sustainability Transitions, Cristina Ampatzidou, Martijn De Waal, Linda Vlassenrood Jun 2026

Staging Dramaturgies: Supporting Urban Curators In Navigating Sustainability Transitions, Cristina Ampatzidou, Martijn De Waal, Linda Vlassenrood

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Urban curators, citizen-professionals with creative backgrounds, who mobilise their skills to orchestrate positive local change, require tools that help building community, engaging institutions and establishing legitimacy within complex transition dynamics. This paper examines Huis van de Toekomst (HvdT), a community space in a Rotterdam district undergoing a shift from natural gas to district heating, where using a participatory design approach, we co-developed a digital community visualization prototype. Using dramaturgical analysis, the study shows how the setting and composition of participatory events, and how different actors are addressed, influence how community and institutional dynamics unfold. The prototype functioned as a boundary …

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Rethinking Communication And Power Relations In A Collaboration Between Designers And Welfare Communites/Organisations, Zhixin Zhang, Sarah Kettley, Agnese Sile Jun 2026

Rethinking Communication And Power Relations In A Collaboration Between Designers And Welfare Communites/Organisations, Zhixin Zhang, Sarah Kettley, Agnese Sile

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents a disabled researcher’s reflection on communication and power relations experienced through direct participation in an Inclusive Design Workshop in Tokyo. It explores how designers collaborated with welfare facility communities to develop inclusive ideas and practices. The study conceptualises inclusion as a relational process that extends beyond accessibility compliance, shaped through communication, emotion, and care. Through a reflexive ethnography that combined participant observation and multimodal analysis, four key themes emerged: Communication Barriers, Effective Communication, Effective Operation of Design Decisions, and Responding to Communication Strategies. Insights suggest that institutional hierarchies and emotional asymmetries often acted to hinder participation but …

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Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall Jun 2026

Exploring Relationality For Future Care Technology Design, Kamila Anna Dzierzak, Erik Grönvall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores and unpacks aspects of relationality by examining design engagements in a Swedish municipal care setting. Our exploration of relational perspectives on homecare is grounded in home care workers’ (HCWs) use of a workday scheduling and planning app. This paper presents empirical data generated through interviews and participatory observations, and identifies three themes: Manifesting relationality, Affectionating relationality and Tensioning relationality. Based on our understanding of relationality as it is developed in social care and design research, we discuss how relationality develops in everyday care, by juxtaposing this with real-life accounts of relational care. Then, we deliberate on the …

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Nature-Centred Biodesign For Regeneration. Design Understandings In Europe., Nina Costa, Pierre Oskam, Helen Charoupia, Fátima Pombo Jun 2026

Nature-Centred Biodesign For Regeneration. Design Understandings In Europe., Nina Costa, Pierre Oskam, Helen Charoupia, Fátima Pombo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how design researchers in Europe understand and enact nature-centred biodesign for regeneration: an emerging approach that bridges design, biology, and ecology to foster regenerative futures. It proposes an evolutionary framework of design agency, mapping the transition from imitation to co-evolution and from instrumental ethics to ecological justice. The framework highlights four paradigmatic quadrants: Anthropocentric Planning, Emerging Bioeconomy, Socio-Ecology, and Regenerative Biodesign that capture how ethical, ecological, and material orientations shape practice. In parallel, it employs a qualitative analysis of a questionnaire with 32 researchers from COST Action DESIGNAE (2025), which investigates how design operates between scientific, material, …

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Making The Invisible Visible: Supporting Older Adults’ Expression Of Emotional Needs For Companion Robots Through Visual Co-Design Tools, Chuxuan Xu, Hua Dong, Mohammed Elsouri, Mingfeng Wang Jun 2026

Making The Invisible Visible: Supporting Older Adults’ Expression Of Emotional Needs For Companion Robots Through Visual Co-Design Tools, Chuxuan Xu, Hua Dong, Mohammed Elsouri, Mingfeng Wang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As populations age, companion robots are increasingly explored to support emotional well-being in later life. However, older adults often find it difficult to express abstract emotions or imagine interactions with unfamiliar technologies, limiting their participation in early-stage design. This study develops and validates a structured toolkit designed to support emotional articulation and co-design participation. The toolkit, consisting of companionship cards, robot role cards, and recording canvases, was refined through expert evaluation and user testing, and validated through comparative interviews with older adults (n=10). Results show that the toolkit supported richer emotional expression, smoother dialogue, and more sustained engagement, helping participants …

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Aesthetics As A Driver For Inclusion: What Recycling Rooms Reveal About Participation In Everyday Society, Anna-Sara Fagerholm, Henrik Haller, Anders Warell, Per-Olof Hedvall Jun 2026

Aesthetics As A Driver For Inclusion: What Recycling Rooms Reveal About Participation In Everyday Society, Anna-Sara Fagerholm, Henrik Haller, Anders Warell, Per-Olof Hedvall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how aesthetics can foster inclusion in everyday urban infrastructures, using recycling rooms in residential areas as a case study. Drawing on a design ethnographic study of 27 municipal recycling facilities, three interconnected dimensions – access aesthetics, communicative aesthetics, and spatial aesthetics – were identified. Environments that are neglected, dark, and smelly tend to exclude residents, while those designed with aesthetic considerations foster a sense of shared responsibility and well-being. By linking perceptions of aesthetics in recycling rooms to broader debates in universal design, this paper highlights how aesthetic qualities influence participation, social connection, and environmental practices. These …

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Holding Paradoxes Together: Navigating Institutional Complexity In Public Design, Luis Garcia, Geert Brinkman Jun 2026

Holding Paradoxes Together: Navigating Institutional Complexity In Public Design, Luis Garcia, Geert Brinkman

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores the evolving practice of design in the public sector. To do so, we initiated a reading group that brought together academics and practitioners from around the globe to discuss how public design is understood and practiced in different contexts. The common thread across the six reading groups held so far was that public design is inherently paradoxical. Three core paradoxes appear to characterize its practice: the identity paradox (blending in to stand out), the enablement paradox (constraining design by enabling it), and the political paradox (designing apolitically while designing politically). These paradoxes highlight the need for strategic …

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Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking Wellbeing In Human–Ai Interaction From A Design Perspective, Boyu Zhang, Li Zhang Jun 2026

Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking Wellbeing In Human–Ai Interaction From A Design Perspective, Boyu Zhang, Li Zhang

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As AI increasingly enters everyday life in intimate roles of companionship and emotional support, established understandings of wellbeing in design research are being challenged. Conventional approaches tend to frame wellbeing as an optimizable experiential state, typically enhanced by means of emotional design. However, as AI becomes a medium for emotional engagement, wellbeing shifts toward a relational outcome that emerges from ongoing interactions.This paper introduces fictionalized affective relations to describe how users, despite knowing AI lacks genuine consciousness and emotion, nonetheless disclose vulnerability, invest affectively, and derive experiences of intimacy. It identifies three ethical tensions: emotional capitalization, loss of affective sovereignty, …

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Educating Inclusive Human Augmentation By Design: A Triadic Definitional Framework And Pedagogical Validation, Keren Zhang, Huiyi Zhang, Ka Wing Tsang, Yijia Jiang, Shiyu Liu, Kin Wai Michael Siu Jun 2026

Educating Inclusive Human Augmentation By Design: A Triadic Definitional Framework And Pedagogical Validation, Keren Zhang, Huiyi Zhang, Ka Wing Tsang, Yijia Jiang, Shiyu Liu, Kin Wai Michael Siu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Advances in AI, wearables, exoskeletons, and BCIs are driving human augmentation (HA) into everyday use, yet education lacks a design-focused definition, a practical positioning language, and awareness of ethics. This study asks: How should HA be defined for design, and how can a critical, inclusive approach be taught and validated? Based on systematic reviews, we propose a three-part toolkit: a Human–Machine–Environment paradigm that redefines objects and boundaries; a map of design possibilities (dimensions, categories, intervention levels); and ethical dimensions spanning the thing, the human, the environment, and society. We validated the toolkit through three 8–11 week speculative workshops (n=45). Four …

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Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot Jun 2026

Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies Of Collective Imagination In Design-Based Education, Ricardo García Galiot

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores a pedagogical intervention that leveraged speculative enactment as a portal to utopian futures. During a Blended Intensive Program, students were presented with a design challenge that addresses workplace inclusion by reimagining it as a “future otherwise.” The challenge was projected into a future temporality, allowing participants to respond to contemporary challenges with radical imagination. Drawing on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as method and Bloch’s (1986) notion of concrete utopias, this study investigates how engaging with these enacted visions as sensorial expression serves as a mechanism to unleash potentialities latent in the present. Situated at the intersection of Design …

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Toward An Architectural Model Of Design Methods: Meta-Methods, Proto-Methods, And Method Building Blocks, Colin M. Gray, Shruthi Sai Chivukula, Abdul Moeed Asad Jun 2026

Toward An Architectural Model Of Design Methods: Meta-Methods, Proto-Methods, And Method Building Blocks, Colin M. Gray, Shruthi Sai Chivukula, Abdul Moeed Asad

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Design methods have long occupied a central yet ambiguous role in design research. They are invoked as distillations of procedural knowledge and recipes for action but also function as placeholders for more complex performances. Yet the persistent assumption that methods are checklists—mechanical sequences of steps that can be validated or optimized—has obscured their performative and situated dimensions. This paper revisits the nature of methods through an architectural model that distinguishes between meta-methods, proto-methods, and method building blocks. Drawing from historical, theoretical, and empirical discussions, we argue that methods are best understood as assemblages of prescription and performance, whose coherence emerges …

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How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros Jun 2026

How To Observe Design Practices, Aurelien Catros

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Aside from design theories and design methods, the design research field has built numerous methods for observing design practices. Most of them can be classified into two categories: ethnographies, which consist of sharing the daily lives of designers, and experimental approaches, which reconstruct design situations in the controlled environment of a laboratory. This study retraces the history of these methods, that exist almost independently from one another creating silos within the design research field. Throughout their respective developments, both ethnographies and experimental approaches indicate the same blind spot: the study of material traces of processes that have already taken place. …

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When Data Systems Meet Ecosystems: Tensions Between Ai Platforms And Vitality In Corporate Sustainability, Michelle Westerlaken, Sonja Rattay Jun 2026

When Data Systems Meet Ecosystems: Tensions Between Ai Platforms And Vitality In Corporate Sustainability, Michelle Westerlaken, Sonja Rattay

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Ecosystems are not computers. They are alive, endlessly complex, and deeply intriguing. What if the data systems used to better understand living worlds could embed this more-than-human vitality? This paper examines ecosystem data tools in corporate sustainability, where AI tools have become key mediators in sustainable transitions. Drawing on desk research and empirical data with biodiversity specialists at 13 large corporations, it identifies four tensions that reveal deeper mismatches between computational systems and ecological worlds. These arise between demands for certainty and the unstable dynamics of ecosystems; between the need for data as neutral evidence and as arguments towards managing …

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Designing A Toolkit To Explore The Design Space Of Woven Textiles, Milou Voorwinden, Savanne Klop, Holly Mcquillan Jun 2026

Designing A Toolkit To Explore The Design Space Of Woven Textiles, Milou Voorwinden, Savanne Klop, Holly Mcquillan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Driven by the potential of smart textiles, shape-changing structures, living textiles, and sustainable manufacturing methods, designers seek to push the boundaries of weaving. However, most existing industrial technologies are designed for mass-producing simple, flat fabrics. This has narrowed the collective understanding of the design potential of woven textiles, thereby restricting the development of complex, three-dimensional, and animated textiles. We present a toolkit, developed through an exploratory workshop and focus group discussions with academic and industry-based designers, that enables exploration and expansion of the design space for woven textiles. The card deck and canvas provide a shared language to externalise and …

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From Values To Metrics: A Methodological Framework For Early-Stage Design Of Rural Cultural Project, Rosana Sanz Segura, Giordana Gallina, Eduardo Manchado Pérez, Ignacio López Forniés Jun 2026

From Values To Metrics: A Methodological Framework For Early-Stage Design Of Rural Cultural Project, Rosana Sanz Segura, Giordana Gallina, Eduardo Manchado Pérez, Ignacio López Forniés

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents the methodological framework of an ongoing design research project focused on cultural creation in rural contexts. It structures the design work that precede co-creation workshops, including the design of tools, participant criteria, session formats and preliminary analyses to understand community needs. Based on design research in rural regions of Aragón (Spain), the study integrates human-centred and community-based design to adapt participatory processes to low-density territories. Initial results include a mapping of key actors, a first set of metrics for evaluating participation and collaboration, and the identification of gaps that justify a specific methodological guide for rural cultural …

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Design Through Co-Elaboration: Friction, Dysfunction, And More-Than-Human, Corentin Loubet Jun 2026

Design Through Co-Elaboration: Friction, Dysfunction, And More-Than-Human, Corentin Loubet

DRS Biennial Conference Series

AI devices are structured by “seamless” and “emotional” design, which conceals many underlying mechanisms and algorithmic rules. By contrast, behavioral objects – through defamiliarization and misbehavior – prompt critical reflection on our relationship with technological artifacts and expose their inner workings. However, most behavioral objects, particularly in art contexts, are designed to ensure predictable outcomes and audience interactions, revealing an underlying desire to tightly control the discourse produced by the work. This paper contends that their critical significance can instead emerge from their material presence through a frictional, more-than-human approach in which dysfunction becomes a source of unpredictable expressivity and …

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Degree Of Anisotropy: A Textile Epistemology Of Making, Sheetal Agrawal, Joy Ko Jun 2026

Degree Of Anisotropy: A Textile Epistemology Of Making, Sheetal Agrawal, Joy Ko

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This research demonstrates textiles as an analytical framework to encode forms of distributed intelligence inaccessible to computational modeling alone, challenging contemporary design's reliance on material homogeneity. Using 3D-printed Voronoi lattices on pre-stretched tulle substrates, we reconceptualize anisotropy (directional variation in material behavior) from engineering liability to design theory cornerstone. While conventional design favors isotropy for predictability, it has been long observed that biological textiles (skin, muscle tissue, tendons, spider silk, etc) have achieved adaptive functionality through engineered heterogeneity. By systematically varying infill patterns within Voronoi structures, we establish a methodology enabling textiles to hold contradictory mechanical states simultaneously and respond …

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Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers Jun 2026

Disruption As An Ecologizing Co-Design Method, Alp Yilmaz, Dennis Rolfes, Lutz Robbers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Conventional participatory planning and design practice imply linear accumulation of data, facts, and representations, predicting meaningful futures through consensus-driven strategies. Transformation is framed as the transparent management of knowable information towards a providential destiny. By reducing participatory reasoning to factual transfer and discursive negotiation, reductionist approaches fail to address the systemic complexity and contingent character of socio-ecological challenges. They overlook disruptive shocks (financial crises, pandemics) that reorder systems. We propose disruption as a co-design method: a deliberately staged technique that exposes boundaries, surfaces dependencies, and fosters collective sense-making under uncertainty. Drawing on 4E cognition and relational design theory, we propose …

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"That's Fine..." Uncovering Ambiguity Through Emotional Labelling In Scottish Design Students’ Design Process, Hazar Taissier Marji, Paul A. Rodgers, Ross Brisco Jun 2026

"That's Fine..." Uncovering Ambiguity Through Emotional Labelling In Scottish Design Students’ Design Process, Hazar Taissier Marji, Paul A. Rodgers, Ross Brisco

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Putting emotions into words is a natural human strategy for reinterpreting situations, even when done unintentionally. Evidence shows that this process, known as affective labelling, can reduce distress compared to non- affective verbalisation. Given that, the word 'fine' is widely used as a self-report label for emotional states, yet its meaning remains strikingly ambiguous. Limited research has explored such neutral or mid-spectrum emotional terms that are neither overtly positive nor negative but still shape the design process. This study examines how Scottish design students use 'fine' to describe their emotional experiences during their final design projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted …

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The Embodied Turn In Design Cognition And The Implications From The “Shensi” Aesthetics, Yu Zhi, Hanbing Ren Jun 2026

The Embodied Turn In Design Cognition And The Implications From The “Shensi” Aesthetics, Yu Zhi, Hanbing Ren

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In today's world, AI technology is reshaping design practice. The modern design cognition is shifting from Cartesian disembodied rationality to phenomenological embodied intuition. This study draws on Nigel Cross's research on design thinking and the concept of “Shensi” from traditional Chinese aesthetics. It reveals the embodied essence of design cognition as a dynamic network of body, technology, and environment. This network reconfigures design problems, structures, and meanings. By comparing "Shensi" (embodied, intuitive, humanistic) with AI-mediated design (logical, data-driven, efficient), this study proposes a new design paradigm based on Eastern wisdom to broaden theoretical understanding of design cognition.

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Understanding Digital Health Engagement Among Older Adults In India: A Cultural Probe Based Study, Radhika Sharma, Aakash Johry Jun 2026

Understanding Digital Health Engagement Among Older Adults In India: A Cultural Probe Based Study, Radhika Sharma, Aakash Johry

DRS Biennial Conference Series

India is moving towards a health crisis, with a rapidly increasing population of older adults who have to deal with chronic health issues and declining family support. Remote health monitoring technologies offer opportunities for improved healthcare management; however, existing design guidelines often fail to address the cultural realities of Indian senior citizens. In this study, we identified six critical interaction areas for remote cardiac health monitoring, including self-monitoring, emergency response, and assistance-seeking patterns. Targeted cultural probes were designed for each area to evoke natural behaviours from 27 participants, aged 59-86, across diverse living situations. This participatory approach revealed that elderly …

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Tangible Conversations For Uncertain Futures: A Design-Led Approach With Families Affected By Multiple Sclerosis, Alison Thomson, Hannah Scott, Ruth Dobson Jun 2026

Tangible Conversations For Uncertain Futures: A Design-Led Approach With Families Affected By Multiple Sclerosis, Alison Thomson, Hannah Scott, Ruth Dobson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Neurological prevention science is gaining traction, with implications for people at raised familial risk of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We examine how design can intervene in this emerging prevention space through Digesting Science (DS), a co-designed public engagement project that brings families affected by MS together through events and playful, hands-on activities in community settings. We analyse post-event open-ended evaluation forms and a follow up study using auto-photo-elicitation with semi-structured interviews with children and parents. Findings show that DS makes MS discussable without increasing anxiety, embodied activities create shared reference points and language for talking about symptoms, science and uncertainty. We …

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