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Articles 3931 - 3960 of 577660

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Strategies For Successful Collaborative Engagement: Navigating Organizational Dynamics, Sylvan Lobo, Ravi Mahamuni Jun 2026

Strategies For Successful Collaborative Engagement: Navigating Organizational Dynamics, Sylvan Lobo, Ravi Mahamuni

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Typical organizations are characterized by complexity, comprising individuals working in isolated groups with competing priorities. Structural and cultural factors often hinder effective collaboration, despite organizational efforts. This paper examines collaboration dynamics in organizations through the lens of behaviour-change. It introduces the CraftChange framework for behaviour-change for promoting collaborative participation, demonstrating the approach through an analysis of two real-world organizational projects. The paper argues that genuine participatory engagement cannot be achieved solely through top-down directives or establishment of support units like innovation labs, design thinking or prototyping teams. Instead, there is a need to focus on bringing behaviour-change through a stagewise …

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The Future Of Designers: A Study On The Transition Of Designer Occupations And Corresponding Strategic Responses, Yeonghun Kim, Chajoong Kim, Sangyeol Kim Jun 2026

The Future Of Designers: A Study On The Transition Of Designer Occupations And Corresponding Strategic Responses, Yeonghun Kim, Chajoong Kim, Sangyeol Kim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The design industry is experiencing significant occupational shifts driven by rapid technological advancements, evolving market demands, and other pressures. Traditional roles like 2D rendering, mock-up production, and market research are declining. This research systematically explores these declining roles through comprehensive desk research, expert focus group interview, and in-depth interviews. The study identifies a clear trend: manual, routine processes are being replaced by digital tools, automation (like generative AI and 3D visualization), and multifunctional roles. Societal shifts toward digital content, economic imperatives, and policy frameworks accelerate these changes. To address these transformations, the study proposes a strategic framework: individual designers should …

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Small Ai: A Degrowth Imaginary For Designing With/For Artificial Intelligence, Roy Bendor, Dave Murray-Rust, Rainer Rehak Jun 2026

Small Ai: A Degrowth Imaginary For Designing With/For Artificial Intelligence, Roy Bendor, Dave Murray-Rust, Rainer Rehak

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper presents Small AI as a conceptual lever for designers to resist the ‘bigger is better’ trend in the discourse and development of Generative AI. We explore different types of Small AI: initially in relation to the size of models, as smaller models require less computational resources for both training and inference, thus implying a smaller ecological footprint. However, we extend the meaning of smallness to apply to political, epistemic and cultural domains as well. In this vein, the paper posits Small AI as an imaginary-in-the-making, and a rallying concept for an alternative innovation agenda that holds, in the …

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In Kinship With Harakeke Phormium Tenax: How One Plant And Its Materials Facilitate Transitional Knowledge Through Inter-Indigenous And Inter-Cultural Exchange., Angela Kilford, Sonya Withers, Faith Kane, Huhana Smith Jun 2026

In Kinship With Harakeke Phormium Tenax: How One Plant And Its Materials Facilitate Transitional Knowledge Through Inter-Indigenous And Inter-Cultural Exchange., Angela Kilford, Sonya Withers, Faith Kane, Huhana Smith

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Abstract: This paper considers how one plant, harakeke (phormium tenax), native to Aotearoa New Zealand embodies the natural attributes to mitigate climate change and support transition to more sustainable and equitable material futures. Through interaction and collaboration, harakeke demonstrates how circular and regenerative textile design systems are manifested. In the interest of learning from harakeke the authors, working from multiple perspectives, position the plant as tohunga (knowledge expert) and themselves as tauira (learners) to share and reflect upon their engagements with the plant and its fibre. From harakeke we learn about familial relationships to whenua (land) and to each other, …

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Understanding Designers’ Activities And Cognition In Co-Creation With Textual Genai: Do Prior Experience And Ai Literacy Matter?, Yulu Song, Ying Hu, Zihan Zhou, Yiming Bai, Xing Du, Ziling Liang, Yunxiang Shi, Wentao Deng Jun 2026

Understanding Designers’ Activities And Cognition In Co-Creation With Textual Genai: Do Prior Experience And Ai Literacy Matter?, Yulu Song, Ying Hu, Zihan Zhou, Yiming Bai, Xing Du, Ziling Liang, Yunxiang Shi, Wentao Deng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Artificial intelligence is bringing comprehensive impacts to the approaches, methods, and efficiency of creation. As a result, designers are being driven to tackle more untried tasks, rather than engaging in work they have long been proficient in. This study organised a co-design experiment involving novice designers and Textual GenAI to investigate the influence of prior experience and AI literacy on collaborative design outcomes. We conducted a detailed coding of collaborative activities in the design process. This uncovered the activity characteristics, shifts, and collaboration patterns in the co-creation process. These findings deepen the understanding of the Human-AI collaborative design process and …

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Visualisation For Citizen Participation: Data Practices In The Copenhagen Climate Citizens' Assembly, Daniele Dell'orto, Amalia De Götzen, Mathieu Jacomy Jun 2026

Visualisation For Citizen Participation: Data Practices In The Copenhagen Climate Citizens' Assembly, Daniele Dell'orto, Amalia De Götzen, Mathieu Jacomy

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The recent popularisation of data and their visualisation has offered new opportunities for spaces of citizen participation around contested issues, such as climate assemblies. The potential of data visualisation in opening and supporting discussions has been widely recognised, but so has the risk it carries of naturalising certain perspectives and delegitimising others. Still, the roles played by data visualisation in the specific context of climate assemblies remain unaddressed. This paper investigates those roles through field observation and desk research around a case study, the Københavnernes Klimaborgerting. The study explores which data were visualised, how, by who and why. What emerges …

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The Transformative Nature Of Food And The Transition Of Traditional Desserts Into Industrial Products: A Case Study Through A Transformational Design Lens, Burcu Torum Jun 2026

The Transformative Nature Of Food And The Transition Of Traditional Desserts Into Industrial Products: A Case Study Through A Transformational Design Lens, Burcu Torum

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines the transformation of traditional Turkish desserts into contemporary industrial food products through the framework of transformational design. Grounded in the premise that food functions not only as a biological necessity but also as a carrier of cultural memory, identity, and social meaning, the study explores how traditional foods can be reinterpreted within modern production systems, consumption patterns, and sustainability expectations. Drawing on student projects from a food design course in an industrial design department during the 2024–2025 academic year, the research analyzes how desserts are redesigned according to industrial constraints and contemporary lifestyles. Using thematic analysis, findings …

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The Fair Share Of Care: A Distributed Care Account Of Circular Design, Ida Krstulović Jun 2026

The Fair Share Of Care: A Distributed Care Account Of Circular Design, Ida Krstulović

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how the ethics of care can be applied to circular product design. Although the concept of care is compatible with circular design, individualistic models of care place excessive focus on single actors, such as designers, while approaches of shared or collective care risk the diffusion of responsibility, making it unclear who should act in order for certain needs to be met. These approaches fail to adequately address three interrelated problems: moral distance, influence (or lack thereof), and the diffusion of responsibility. Consequently, this paper introduces the concept of distributed care, an approach that focuses on assigning care …

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In Vegetal Terms: Temporal Lenses In Human-Plant Interaction, Clee Zhuo Wang, Jeffrey C. F. Ho, Bow Yiying Wu Jun 2026

In Vegetal Terms: Temporal Lenses In Human-Plant Interaction, Clee Zhuo Wang, Jeffrey C. F. Ho, Bow Yiying Wu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper highlights temporality as an important more-than-human design strategy and expands multiple lenses for engaging with the temporal complexity of more-than-human. Reflecting on the dominance of anthropocentric and industrial notions of time in design, we choose plant as a paradigmatic case for otherly temporality. We take stock from interdisciplinary literatures and introduce six temporal lenses: rhythm, horizon, continuity, duration, genealogy, and incompleteness, to articulate how plants live, change, and relate through multiple overlapping temporalities. Connecting these lenses to human-plant interaction design practice, these temporal lenses enables designers to recognize temporal frictions, attend to vegetal rhythms, and cultivate responsive and …

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From Speculation To Strategy Reflection: A Case Study Of Design-Led Foresight Workshops At Revigrés, Gisela Pinheiro Agostinho, Teresa Franqueira Jun 2026

From Speculation To Strategy Reflection: A Case Study Of Design-Led Foresight Workshops At Revigrés, Gisela Pinheiro Agostinho, Teresa Franqueira

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article presents a case-based investigation of design-led foresight in practice through a series of international workshops conducted in Denmark and China within a doctoral action-research programme with Revigrés, a Portuguese ceramic manufacturer. Grounded in a structured trend cartography clustered into fifteen domains, multidisciplinary teams employed lightweight foresight methods, including personas, rapid scenario visioning, and low-fidelity prototyping, to explore possible housing futures for 2070. Twelve speculative design visions emerged, ranging from bio-integrated habitats and privacy-legible smart homes to circular neighbourhood systems and programmable interiors. Rather than treating these visions as predictive outcomes, the study examines how workshop artefacts functioned as …

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Olfactory Prototyping As Diplomatic Device: Codesigning A Morethanhuman ‘Us’ With Two Captive Pumas, Marcela Mora, Pablo Hermansen Jun 2026

Olfactory Prototyping As Diplomatic Device: Codesigning A Morethanhuman ‘Us’ With Two Captive Pumas, Marcela Mora, Pablo Hermansen

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper extends cosmopolitical prototyping into the olfactory domain to examine how smell can operate as a diplomatic device for interspecies coexistence. Building on a longitudinal, autoethnographic research through design project, we report multi session fieldwork with two captive pumas—Huilo (older, methodical) and Maqui (younger, playful)—at Refugio Animal Cascada, Chile. The study sought not to apply enrichment as an external fix, but to co constitute a situated more than human we in which animal, designer, materials, climate and infrastructures jointly stage conditions for safe relationality. We designed textile olfactory braids (reused cotton braids and burlap sachets) infused with botanicals (e.g., …

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Towards Equitable Participation Of Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing People In Co-Design Research: An Initial Working Framework, Barbara Hein-Machado, Cecilia Landa-Avila, John Alexander Rey-Galindo, Carlos Aceves-Gonzalez, Rebecca Cain Jun 2026

Towards Equitable Participation Of Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing People In Co-Design Research: An Initial Working Framework, Barbara Hein-Machado, Cecilia Landa-Avila, John Alexander Rey-Galindo, Carlos Aceves-Gonzalez, Rebecca Cain

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Research involving Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants remains limited in its ability to include and engage with diverse participants lived experiences, weakening research rigour, relationships with communities, and perpetuating existing inequalities. The use of co-design approaches to address these needs, by positioning lived experience as an additional form of expert knowledge, has increased in recent years. However, the ways in which practices genuinely empower DHH participants, enabling participation that advances justice within and beyond the research setting, have not been translated into co-design research. This paper proposes an initial participatory framework for exploring DHH engagement in research, examining how models of …

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Co-Evolution In Practice: The Wolf's Disruptive Return To The Netherlands, Laurens Kolks Jun 2026

Co-Evolution In Practice: The Wolf's Disruptive Return To The Netherlands, Laurens Kolks

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Dutchmen like to pride themselves on having ‘successfully conquered nature’ through engineering, management and design. Currently, however, this triumphant spirit has been dampened by global, regional, and local developments that expose established Dutch notions of malleability and control as fallacies. This paper uses the unsolicited return of wolves to the Netherlands as an explanatory case study to illustrate how in this unfolding controversy problem and solution spaces co-evolve and thus call for all-but-reductionist design and management approaches. Building on the crucial difference between problems (that can be solved) and issues (that can be stabilised), a model is proposed that explicates …

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When Can Asmr Sound Improve Consumer Product Evaluation? Exploring The Joint Influences Of Asmr Sound And Visual Richness, Huan Chen, Peiyao Cheng Jun 2026

When Can Asmr Sound Improve Consumer Product Evaluation? Exploring The Joint Influences Of Asmr Sound And Visual Richness, Huan Chen, Peiyao Cheng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As immersive media grows, brands increasingly adopt multisensory design, with ASMR emerging as a key auditory tool. How ASMR interacts with visual content to influence consumer product evaluation remains underexplored. Grounded in multisensory integration and processing fluency theory, this study employed three experiments (N=630) to examine their joint effects on immersive experience and purchase intention. Results indicate that ASMR generally enhances consumer evaluation, but its effect depends on visual richness. With low visual richness (color), ASMR adds sensory cues and enhances immersive experience. With moderate visual richness (3D), ASMR’s effect diminished. With high visual richness (close-up), ASMR may induce overload …

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Reflecting With Eco Material Libraries: Bridging Material Experimentation, Teaching, And Sustainability Discourse, Beth Ferguson, Sam Edens, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez Jun 2026

Reflecting With Eco Material Libraries: Bridging Material Experimentation, Teaching, And Sustainability Discourse, Beth Ferguson, Sam Edens, Eldy S. Lazaro Vasquez

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Eco material libraries are emerging in design education as more than repositories of samples. We define them as pedagogical material infrastructures that combine samples, recipes, documentation, and situated curation to support hands-on experimentation and reflection. Drawing on two case studies at the University of California Davis and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we examine how these libraries are built, maintained, and engaged in practice through interviews with faculty curators and a preliminary student survey. Across both sites, the findings suggest that eco material libraries extend conventional material-library models by linking material selection to making, comparison, documentation, and student contribution. They …

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Transforming A Precarious Equilibrium: Embracing Complexity In Public Design Practices, Thomas Van Arkel, Nynke Tromp, Deger Ozkaramanli Jun 2026

Transforming A Precarious Equilibrium: Embracing Complexity In Public Design Practices, Thomas Van Arkel, Nynke Tromp, Deger Ozkaramanli

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper examines how design space for engaging with complexity was constrained, negotiated and expanded within a Dutch public sector organisation providing occupational disability services. While systemic design calls for transformation and embracing complexity, practical understanding of enacting this within a political-administrative context remains limited. Through critical analysis of a participatory action research project, we trace six key moments where possibilities for transformation were opened up or constrained: from processing the initial individual-centric framing, through recognising relational complexity, to translating insights into interventions. Our analysis reveals tensions between systemic aspirations and organisational realities: while the project successfully reframed reintegration from …

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A Perceived Value Framework For Automotive Design Innovation: Rethinking Strategic Transition Of Incumbent Oems In The Post-Ice Era, Zikun Song, Shizhu Lu, Yaqin Peng, Lixin Song Jun 2026

A Perceived Value Framework For Automotive Design Innovation: Rethinking Strategic Transition Of Incumbent Oems In The Post-Ice Era, Zikun Song, Shizhu Lu, Yaqin Peng, Lixin Song

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As the industry moves beyond the internal combustion engine, incumbent original equipment manufacturers (incumbent OEMs) need a systematic, experience perception-centred way to evaluate design. We introduce a Perceived Value Framework (PVF) derived from a 2015–2025 review that defines six dimensions: perceived functionality, performance, intelligence, aesthetics, brand, and sustainability, each linked to sensory indicators. These dimensions are mapped to the emotional design model’s visceral, behavioral, and reflective levels to connect first impressions, in-use experience, and long-term meaning. Comparative case analyses of four OEMs’ 2024–2025 products validate how these dimensions operate across distinct value orchestration and design transformation initiatives. Cross-case results reveal …

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From Fragile Remnants To Regenerative Systems: Circular Design Through Eggshell Waste, Hasti Valipour Goudarzi, Esther K. J. Clifford, Ramkumar S Jun 2026

From Fragile Remnants To Regenerative Systems: Circular Design Through Eggshell Waste, Hasti Valipour Goudarzi, Esther K. J. Clifford, Ramkumar S

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Eggshell waste, designated by the EPA as the 15th largest food-based pollutant, is reimagined here as a regenerative material through circular and reciprocal design practices. This research explores how discarded eggshells can be transformed into bioplastics, coatings, and modular construction elements. The project integrates ecological theory (Haraway’s “response-ability,” Kimmerer’s reciprocity) with hands-on material experimentation across diverse geographies, including India and Europe. Emphasizing student-led, non-hierarchical learning, it cultivates ecological care and interdependence between human and more-than-human worlds. Installations, workshops, and collaborations with local experts support regenerative construction practices rooted in local materials and needs. By challenging extractive, linear waste systems, the …

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Older Adults As A Critical Group In The Design Of A Mobile Application For Hearing Screening And Monitoring, Emilene Zitkus, Leonardo Morgadona Tosi Rodrigues, Vinicius Dantas, Leticia Santos, Patricia Campos, Ana Laura Oliveira, Rikarla Sales, Lucas Vieira, Sheila Andreoli Balen, Deborah Ferrari Jun 2026

Older Adults As A Critical Group In The Design Of A Mobile Application For Hearing Screening And Monitoring, Emilene Zitkus, Leonardo Morgadona Tosi Rodrigues, Vinicius Dantas, Leticia Santos, Patricia Campos, Ana Laura Oliveira, Rikarla Sales, Lucas Vieira, Sheila Andreoli Balen, Deborah Ferrari

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The global population is aging rapidly. Hearing loss (HL) constitutes the leading cause of years lived with disability for individuals over 70. With 42% of the 430 million people experiencing disabling HL aged 60 or older, and the majority of them residing in less developed regions, accessible intervention strategies are essential. This paper details an initial study from an ongoing project to develop a digital health intervention (DHI) for hearing screening and monitoring, specifically considering the difficulties faced by older users living in Brazil. User needs revealed critical design requirements, including simplified language, the need for adding images for guidance, …

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Crafting Legacies With Care: Speculative Frameworks For The Digital Afterlife, Sara Bilić, Jessica Sorenson Jun 2026

Crafting Legacies With Care: Speculative Frameworks For The Digital Afterlife, Sara Bilić, Jessica Sorenson

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Emerging grief technologies promise to preserve the dead through data, yet often neglect the relational, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of memory and identity. This paper proposes a care-centred framework for digital legacy design, grounded in the speculative concept of A Living Will, which uses augmented reality to enable co-created posthumous memories between the living and the deceased. Through autoethnography, participatory workshops, and theoretical analysis, the study critically examines how care ethics and co-authorship can transform digital legacy from an act of preservation to one of participation. By treating identity as distributed and legacy as relational, we reframe grief technology as …

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Systematic Material Experimentation With Photosynthetic Biomineralisation Across Waste Substrates For Circular Product Design, Hyejo Shin, Lorraine Archer, Matt Malpass, Carole Collet Jun 2026

Systematic Material Experimentation With Photosynthetic Biomineralisation Across Waste Substrates For Circular Product Design, Hyejo Shin, Lorraine Archer, Matt Malpass, Carole Collet

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In response to escalating planetary challenges, circular bioeconomy frameworks are increasingly vital for sustainable resource management. Biomineralisation, a natural process in which organisms produce inorganic materials, has been extensively studied in engineering but remains underutilised in circular product design. This paper investigates systematic material experimentation with photosynthetic biomineralisation across diverse waste substrates for circular product design. Through a practice-based biodesign methodology integrating biological protocols with design experimentation, the study developed a material sample collection of eleven waste substrates biomineralised by cyanobacteria. The findings reveal that the type of waste substrate influences material formation, consolidation, and aesthetic qualities, informing distinct design …

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The Who Cares? Approach: Materializing Values In Community-Based Participatory Research, Logan Wilkinson, Collen Reid, Caylee Raber, Jon Hannan Jun 2026

The Who Cares? Approach: Materializing Values In Community-Based Participatory Research, Logan Wilkinson, Collen Reid, Caylee Raber, Jon Hannan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Emerging from a three-year arts-based participatory design and research collaboration, the Who Cares? Approach is a framework for social change developed to understand how a community in rural British Columbia could cultivate a system of support for aging. Through iterative cycles of team retreats, including creative engagement and group interviews, project members developed a framework grounded in values of trust, presence, creativity, storytelling, relationality, and acknowledgement of the unknown. By transforming value statements into diagrams, installations, and participatory events, the project demonstrated how design artifacts can act as mediators of shared meaning and catalysts for ethical reflection. The resulting visual …

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Reconfiguring Industrial Heritage: Human-Centered Narrative Design For Reconciliation And Inclusive Storytelling, Yiling Fu, Marco Borsotti Jun 2026

Reconfiguring Industrial Heritage: Human-Centered Narrative Design For Reconciliation And Inclusive Storytelling, Yiling Fu, Marco Borsotti

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This article takes the Shenyang China Industrial Museum as an example to expose the interpretation and design of China's representative industrial heritage museums dominated by authoritative narratives and technocratic biases. Through the case study of the “Steel Home Still” exhibition, explore how narrative design can reconstruct industrial archives and challenge their power structure. This article conducts a comparative analysis of two cases based on three parameters: narrative themes and strategies, representation of individuals and workers, technology narratives and human engagement, discussing how human-centered exhibition narratives reposition human memory at the core of industrial heritage, transforming it from static representations of …

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Is This The “Me” They Want To See? Exploring Near-Future Adaptations Of Ai For Professional Visibility And Self-Presentation, Forouzan Ebrahimi, Mahan Mehrvarz, Nazli Cila Jun 2026

Is This The “Me” They Want To See? Exploring Near-Future Adaptations Of Ai For Professional Visibility And Self-Presentation, Forouzan Ebrahimi, Mahan Mehrvarz, Nazli Cila

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As professional collaboration increasingly shifts to digital and asynchronous modes, workers use collaboration technologies not only to coordinate tasks but also to manage their professional visibility and reputation. To examine how these practices could evolve as AI becomes more embedded in the collaboration environment, a speculative design approach was adopted to make near-future scenarios experiential. We prototyped speculative AI systems that support visibility through employee self-report reflection, performance scoring, AI-enhanced meeting appearance, communication delegation, and AI-use disclosure as probes for a series of immersive and interactive scenario-based interviews. The findings uncover selective disclosure of AI use to manage professional image, …

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A Slow Ethos In A Fast World: Persistence And Compromise In Craft Commercialization, Shih Chieh Shen, Yueh Hsiu Giffen Cheng Jun 2026

A Slow Ethos In A Fast World: Persistence And Compromise In Craft Commercialization, Shih Chieh Shen, Yueh Hsiu Giffen Cheng

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study explores how a micro craft brand sustains its original sincerity toward craftsmanship while confronting the challenges posed by industrialized production processes and economic constraints. Based on a fifteen-year practice-led case of craft entrepreneurship, it analyzes reflective negotiations between persistence and compromise, ideal and capital, craft and industry. Employing the Double Diamond model and Aristotle’s Four Causes, the research interprets the process of craft commercialization and examines the underlying motivations that sustain the existence of micro craft brands. The findings reveal that practical limitations can be transformed into drivers of creativity. “Compromise” no longer signifies failure but, when approached …

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Imagining Speculative Design Tools With A Capability Approach, Olga Barbara Lackner Jun 2026

Imagining Speculative Design Tools With A Capability Approach, Olga Barbara Lackner

DRS Biennial Conference Series

While the more-than-human is often made visible on the individual, contextual level, it is nevertheless vital to shape sustainable practices at policy and industry level to create sustained change. If it was a necessity to include non-human stakeholders in the creation of new buildings, in the manufacturing of new products and more, what could the needed design tools look like? This paper envisions design practices shaping a world where the more-than-human is already accepted and anchored in law through narration. Subsequently, an attempt is made to create tools that find practical application in this speculative scenario, creating a more-than-human practice …

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Making-With Biomaterials: Attuning To More-Than-Human Temporalities In Growth And Decay Practices, Javier De Urquijo Isoard, Joshua Riesel Jun 2026

Making-With Biomaterials: Attuning To More-Than-Human Temporalities In Growth And Decay Practices, Javier De Urquijo Isoard, Joshua Riesel

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper explores how design practices involving biomaterials can promote attuning within more-than-human temporalities. Drawing on two comparative case studies working with decomposing organisms to make and unmake materials, it examines how growth and decay unfold across different ecological timescales. Through concepts of noticing, pace, and rhythm, the studies explore how designers negotiate when to pause, accelerate, or distribute agency within multispecies collaborations. Rather than treating biomaterials as substitutes for synthetics, the paper positions them as temporal components of ecosystems shaped by humidity, temperature, and microbial diversity. Attuning emerges as a practice of more-than-human coordination and care. The findings contribute …

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Craft As Experiential Knowledge: Designing Workshops And Record-Keeping Practices For Cultural Transmission Among Young Generations, Kai Kishita Jun 2026

Craft As Experiential Knowledge: Designing Workshops And Record-Keeping Practices For Cultural Transmission Among Young Generations, Kai Kishita

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This study demonstrates the potential of an experiential learning approach combining craft production experiences, dialogue with craftsmen, and record-keeping activities for young people. An ageing workforce and declining demand contribute to the loss of cultural identity and intangible value that craftsmanship culture provides to contemporary Japanese society. However, opportunities to engage with crafts beyond mere consumption remain limited. Using Kyoto roof tiles (京瓦 / Kyō-gawara) making as a primary case study, this research examines how experiential knowledge can promote cultural transmission and education through workshops and record-keeping (聞き書き / kikigaki). Through hands-on making and record-keeping, participants gained technical skills and …

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Speculative Socially Engaged Design Interventions In Menopause Health And Post-Extractive Environmental Regeneration, Chantelle Baistow, Katherine Moline Jun 2026

Speculative Socially Engaged Design Interventions In Menopause Health And Post-Extractive Environmental Regeneration, Chantelle Baistow, Katherine Moline

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Rarely does speculative socially engaged design reflectively compare different approaches. This paper reflects on two speculative socially engaged design projects that employ materials-based participatory methods to explore the supports and barriers to the continuity of healthcare and the remediation of environmental pollution. The first project, TheChange@Work, engaged hospital staff and outpatients in exploring menopause-related workplace stigma through colour, collage, and textiles, to reflect on diverse experiences of dynamic hormones. The second project, From Waste to Care, involved communities in 3D-printing ceramics from coal ash waste, addressing the remediation of toxic materials remaining from energy production. We analyse the blind spots …

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Between Consumption And Care: Restorative Design And Cultural Memory In Hong Kong Coffee Shops, Ada Ying Man Chan, Victor Manuel Serrano Jun 2026

Between Consumption And Care: Restorative Design And Cultural Memory In Hong Kong Coffee Shops, Ada Ying Man Chan, Victor Manuel Serrano

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Hong Kong’s specialty coffee shops embody a paradox in the city’s cultural landscape. They are products of consumption with atmospheres curated to attract customers while many also draw on “Old Hong Kong” material culture to invoke a sense of care for the past. This paper explores the tension between consumption and responsibility by investigating how coffee shops in Hong Kong mobilise adaptive reuse design practices. Building on a previous survey of 706 coffee shops, the study identifies four interlinked modes of practice: material reuse, spatial staging, narrative framing, and participatory engagement. These modes enact forms of restorative design, revealing how …

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