Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
Reframing cityLabs: Worldbuilding as situated pedagogy for public design learning
1: Koç University, KUAR Research Centre for Creative Industries; 2: University College Cork, School of Engineering and Architecture; 3: University College Cork, School of the Human Environment
Learning design capabilities in public administrations through sandbox experiments: Insights from a 12-City EU network
1: Aalborg University; 2: University of Southern Denmark
Learning to Design with Communities: Situated Public Design Education through the ROOTS Project in The Gambia
1: Esade Business School, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya; 2: Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Situated Pedagogies for Public Design through GenAI
1: University of Salford; 2: Indiana University Bloomington
Beyond Assumptions: Identity Mapping as a Tool for Inclusive Public Design Learning
1: Independent researcher; 2: Carleton University
Historical materials as materials for design
The University of Queensland, Australia
In search of the definitions for biodesign: Practice, identity and biodesign literacy
1: Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering (UVic-UCC), Spain; 2: Politecnico di Milano
Is the trend your friend? Exploring the interior shape and material use across Australian ‘Car of the Year’ winners
1: School of Design, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; 2: Department of Design, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Material articulation: Toward an ornamental thinking in digital tectonics
Materiability Research Group, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Dessau, Germany
Balancing aesthetics and protection: How digital artists navigate structural inequities through aesthetic watermarking
School of Design, Hunan University, China
Expanding curriculum and pedagogical strategies in architecture education with developments on additive manufacturing and wood composites
University of Idaho, United States of America
Positioning wearable design: Research-practice gaps and a practice-informed model
Monash University, Australia
Critical minerals in the body: towards re-use in orthopaedic healthcare
1: Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom; 2: British Columbia Children’s Hospital, Canada
Affective materialities and textile Agency: The apron as a device of gender and class
Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
The didactic body: Interdisciplinary design pedagogy in 1970s Denmark
Royal Danish Academy, Denmark
Exploring embodiment’s impact on autonomy and agency in behavioral design
Institute of Design, Illinois Tech, United States of America
Divergent Thinking to design a musical instrument
1: CIAUD, Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal & Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo, Rua Escola Industrial e Comercial de Nun’Álvares, 4900-347, Viana do Castelo, Portugal, Portugal; 2: CIAUD, Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal & Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Redefining design practice as a sensory and decentred experience
1: Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia; 2: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; 3: Ontario College of Art & Design University, Canada
Projects as Actors in Design Education
1: Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 2: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
A Researcher and a Guide Talk Into a Paper: A Dialogue on Being Many Things at Once
1: Srishti Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India; 2: Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
The meandering practitioner: When research emerges in relational resistance and intentional ambiguity
1: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China); 2: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China); 3: Independent researcher, Hong Kong SAR China; 4: Independent researcher, Hong Kong SAR China
Integrating co-design and auto-ethnographic approaches: a preliminary review of methods, intentions, and potential
1: Design, Monash University Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Caulfield East, Australia; 2: ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University
NarratAIve: Using Narrative for Human–AI Co-Creation in Intelligent Cockpits
1: School of Design,Hunan University, Changsha, China; 2: Research Institute of HNU in Chongqing, Chongqing, China
Bringing Characters to Vitality: Enhancing Credibility of Original Characters in Narrative Works by making the OC a Generative AI agent
1: School of New Media Art and Design, Beihang University; 2: State Key Laboratory of Virtual RealityTechnology and Systems, Beihang University; 3: Acadamy Art and Design, Tsinghua University
AI-enhanced Chinese style furniture design: Integrating CNN cultural recognition with latent diffusion generation
1: School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710072, China; 2: Key Laboratory of Ministry of Industrial Design and Ergonomics, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China; 3: Shaanxi Engineering Laboratory for Industrial Design, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China; 4: Sustainable Building and Environmental Research Institute, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710129, China;; 5: Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, 430068, China
Learning from inexperienced users’ early engagement with food tracking
1: University of Cincinnati, United States of America; 2: Ozyegin University, Turkey
Understanding designers’ activities and cognition in co-creation with textual GenAI: Do prior experience and AI literacy matter?
1: School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China; 2: College of Engineering and Design, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China; 3: Huawei Technology, Shanghai, China; 4: School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom
The In-situ AI Pattern Merchant: A Speculative Intervention in Huayao Embroidery Futures
1: Hunan University, China, People's Republic of; 2: University of the Arts London
Evaluating creative efficacy in human-AI design convergence: An experimental study of support modes
1: Tongji University,Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems, China; 2: Tongji University,College of Design and Innovation,China
Designing for Node-Based AI Tools: An Analysis and Synthesis of Design Principles
Hunan University, China, People's Republic of
Paper, pixels, and play: Designing a trauma-informed AI assessment toolkit
1: The University of Queensland; 2: Australian National University; 3: Central Queensland University
Enframing Creativity: Speculations on Design Education's Transformations in the age of Generative AI
Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Whose voice is it anyway?: Design resources for safely navigating deceptive AI voice scams
1: The University of Queensland, Australia; 2: Swinburne University of Technology
Design knowledge archaeology: Developing the body of design knowledge and theory
1: Center for Design Research, Mechanical Engineering Design Group, Stanford University, United States of America; 2: Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Aalborg University Business School, Denmark; 3: Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University, United States of America
The “P” in Design: Towards a Genealogy of the Political in the Field
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Design Research Laboratories: A historical review
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU)
How to observe design practices
Université de Montréal, Canada
Problem–solution co-evolution research in the DRS conference community (2001-2025)
1: Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; 2: Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, the Netherlands; 3: Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology, Avans University of Applied Sciences, Breda, the Netherlands
Toward an Architectural Model of Design Methods: Meta-Methods, Proto-Methods, and Method Building Blocks
1: Indiana University Bloomington, United States of America; 2: Pratt Institute, United States of America
Reframing design through events: Generative events as ontological units in object-oriented design ontology
Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Bias Reconsidered: Ecologically Rational Heuristics in Design Cognition
Purdue University, United States of America
Making Worlds Thinkable: Design as diffractive sensemaking.
Universidad de Navarra, Spain
The Embodied Turn in Design Cognition and the Implications from the “Shensi” Aesthetics
Sichuan University, People's Republic of China
Does knowledge in design require a distinct epistemology? A Critical Rationalist perspective
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Fine observation and material care: An interactionist approach to design aesthetics
1: Aalto University, Finland; 2: Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Hidden Constellations: Mapping Queer Sapphic Spatiality in New York City
Independent Researcher
Queer/cuir methodological approaches in activist design and art research in contemporary Brazil.
University of São Paulo (USP), Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), Brazil
Queering Design with a Queer Community: Co-creation, Translation, and Application of Queer-positive Design Principles
University of Cincinnati
Unmaking AI’s classificatory ontologies: Situated annotation as design inquiry in human–AI assemblages
1: Institute of Design (IDe), University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Mendrisio, Switzerland; 2: School of Design, RMIT Melbourne, Australia
Hacking as a queering design practice. Insights from a visual analysis of product hacking scenes in movies.
Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering (UVic-UCC), Spain
Queer(ing) Epistemology by Design: TMI-WEB—A Relational Knowledge System for Intersectional Data Science and Affective Queries
1: DePaul University, Chicago, IL, United States; 2: Organization for Ethical Source (OES), Chicago, IL, United States
How epistemic uncertainty tolerance affects creative idea generation in design
1: Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands; 2: Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; 3: Department of Psychology, University of Atlántico Medio, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain; 4: Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology, Avans University of Applied Sciences, 's Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
Absent Voices, Alternative Futures: What Design Issues Didn't Say About Design (1984-2025)
1: Future Design School, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China; 2: Haikou University of Economics, China
Queering empathy in/for/with/by design
DePaul University, United States of America
Designations drift: Exodesign and the epiphylogenesis of practice
Australian National University, Australia
Negotiating Control with Materials: Progressive Modes of Engagement in Design Practice
Southern University of Science and Technology, China, People's Republic of
Bodies in play: queering AI, sport, and medicine through design
German International University Berlin, Germany
Disrupting gender binaries in product language: A workshop on gender awareness
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Imperfect utopias: Norms in VR design and queer counter-strategies
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Queering Portobello Promenade: testing ‘queer’ inclusive spatial design and thinking.
1: Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom; 2: University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Body Class, The Grand Museum and the Queer Archive
Royal College of Art
Menopause Technologies Beyond Ableism and Normativity
1: University of Salzburg, Austria; 2: Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Salzburg, Austria
Bridging the Community-Institution Divide: Multi-Level Community-Based Participatory Design for Migrant Health in China
1: ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University; 2: Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh; 3: Faculty of Art Design and Architecture, Monash University
Co-what? A new perspective on participation and collaboration with vulnerable populations in design studies: Methodological inquiry
1: NHL Stenden University, Netherlands, The; 2: Utrecht University Medical Center, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Designing within the clinic: A situated co-design approach for healthcare provider engagement
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA
How can a participatory process improve the patient experience during oncology consultations? An Emotional Design Approach
1: Aragon Institute for Engineering Research (i3a), Department of Engineering Design and Manufacturing, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain; 2: Water and Environmental Health-IUCA Research Group, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain; 3: Aragon Institute for Health Research (IIS-A), Miguel Servet University Hospital, Zaragoza, Spain; 4: Medical Decision Making, Department of Biomedical Data Sciences, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands.; 5: Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Design with Empowerment: Developing a framework and Toolkit for Chronic Disease Management
Design Lab, University of Sydney, Australia
Designerly Ethics: reflections on shadowing cancer patients and ideas for embedding ethics in practice
1: University of Zaragoza, Spain; 2: Erasmus MC; 3: IISA – Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Aragón; 4: Fractal Strategy
Making Sense of Pain: Participatory Design Approaches to Understanding and Supporting People Living with Chronic Pain
Auckland University Of Technology, New Zealand
Using design artefacts to transform doctor-parent communication in neonatal care
1: Lincoln Institute for Rural and Coastal Health, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom; 2: École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne EPFL, Switzerland; 3: Peking University Third Hospital, Peking University, China
Designing Integrated, Trauma-Informed Care Pathways for Co-occurring Addiction and Trauma: Insights from Two Interrelated Co-design Workshops
1: Monash University, Australia; 2: Hamilton Centre, Australia.; 3: Spectrum, Australia.; 4: Phoenix Australia, Australia.
Supporting mental health and wellbeing through a staff home food-growing project
1: University of strathclyde, United Kingdom; 2: NHS24; 3: NHS Highland
Designing hospitality through sensory workshops for Autistic people with eating disordered behaviour
1: University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom; 2: Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom
Digital Platform to Foster Social Engagement for the Visually Impaired
1: Statement University of São Paulo - UNESP, Brazil; 2: Federal University of Maranhão - UFMA, Brazil
Understanding Digital Health Engagement Among Older Adults in India: A Cultural Probe Based Study
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
Promoting equity, accessibility, and trust through co-design: Shaping a living evidence architecture for South-East Asia and the Western Pacific
1: Monash University, Australia; 2: Monash University, Indonesia; 3: University of Sydney, Australia
Distributed care hubs: Rethinking disability care policy through participatory research
1: Lehigh University, United States of America; 2: Bard College, United States of America
Uncovering the Health Impacts of Extreme Temperatures in Western United States Prisons through Interdisciplinary Architectural and Epidemiological Methods
1: University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Environmental Design; 2: University of Colorado Anschutz, Department of Internal Medicine; 3: University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Environmental Studies; 4: Free World
Exploring intentions and use scenarios behind Geomatic Data Artefacts for public health policies in Québec from a co-design perspective
École de technologie supérieure, Canada
Symbiotic Behaviors and Strategic Design: A Situated Participatory Framework for Organizations Led by/for Older Adults
Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
Becoming Designers: Studio Instructors as Catalysts of Designerly Identity Formation
Istanbul Technical University
Interiority as a pedagogical approach in interior design studio education
Yasar University, Turkiye
Influence and potential of quintessential forms as inspirational stimuli
LAB University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Cultivating a Teaching Mindset: Persuasive Strategies for Developing Design Thinking Skills
1: National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan; 2: Chiba University, Japan
Supporting deep(er) engagement with site through blended resources: A case study across two design studios
The University of Melbourne, Australia
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
1: TU Delft, The Netherlands; 2: University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands
Learning through Alternatives: Fostering Reflection through Design Interventions
1: Iran University of Art; 2: Iran University of Science and Technology
Sherlock Holmes in the studio: Supporting deductive and inductive reasoning skills in design education
Istanbul Technical University, Turkiye
Design-driven reflection: A children's metacognitive cultivation system integrating physical interaction and digital narrative
Hunan University
IkigAI: Co-Reflection with AI to Enhance Career Direction Clarity in Design Education
1: Inholland University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands; 2: Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Motivation and Reflective Processes in Service-Learning Design Projects: Insights from a Visual Communication Design Studio
1: Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile; 2: Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile; 3: Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile; 4: Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile; 5: Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Chile
Designing under uncertainty: How novices rationalize prototype choices before and after parallel testing
1: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, United States of America; 2: Human Factors & Ergonomics Program; 3: School of Product Design
Contextual intelligence for AI in design: A liberal education lens
FLAME University, India
AI' s Brush on Novice Posters: Unfolding Visual Competence Shifts of Design Students
School of Design, Hunan University, Changsha, China
Interface Cultures, Forever: speculative prototypes for technological awareness
Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy
The influence of generative AI on design students' confidence and self-efficacy: A case study of logotype design
1: School of Architecture, Art and Design, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico; 2: HUMAN-tech, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain; 3: Institute for the Future of Education, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
Efficiency and Empathy: Integrating AI into User Research in an Undergraduate UX Design Course
Central Connecticut State Universtiy, United States of America
Reimagining ID education with AI: Perceptions, practices, and pedagogical implications of AI adoption
North Carolina State University, United States of America
Habitability in extreme environments: A participatory design approach to assess wellbeing.
1: Technical University of Crete, Greece; 2: Technical University of Crete, Greece; 3: Technical University of Crete, Greece
Understanding Sleep Challenges in Shared Dormitories: A Co-design Inquiry
Lancaster university, United Kingdom
Landlords' attitudes towards age-friendly adaptations: Implications for the well-being of older private renters
1: Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium; 2: School of Educational Studies, Hasselt University, Diepenbeek, Belgium; 3: Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Not Just One "Best" Green: Soundscape Determines the Optimal Green Wall Form
Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, School of Art and Design
Designing for generativity and wellbeing: Insights from visitors at the Hong Kong Space Museum
1: Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; 2: School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China
Psychological Responses to Green-Wall Layouts in Office Environments: A Virtual-Environment Study
Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, shcool of Art and Design
Designing for being mindful: A non-instrumental turn to mindfulness technology
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
ALONG the line of emotional support: Reimagining AI companions for young adults’ wellbeing
1: Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, Italy; 2: Research Center in Communication Pyshology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Integrating Attachment and Social Identity Theories in the Co-Design of a Hokkien Nursery Rhymes App
Griffith University, Australia
When grief takes shape: Codesigning creative modalities in grief support groups for children
1: University of Southern Denmark, Denmark; 2: University of Southern Denmark, Denmark; 3: University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Breaking the cycle: Understanding Self-Experimentation as a health behavior change approach for young adults with ADHD
Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
Enhancing social connections through co-illustration workshops among solo-living young adults
School of Arts, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Design for Adversarial Growth: Post-Traumatic Growth, Resilience and Subjective Wellbeing
1: School of Design, Southern University of Science and Technology; 2: College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University; 3: Department of Design, Management and Production, University of Twente
Fictionalized Affective Relations:Rethinking wellbeing in Human–AI Interaction from a Design Perspective
1: Guangdong University of Technology, China, People's Republic of; 2: Tongji University, China, People's Republic of
Exploring Value Perceptions and Identifying Integrated Value Propositions of AI-Enabled Smart Homes for Solo-Living Older Adults’ Wellbeing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China)
Design for well-being: A preliminary investigation on design interventions in the context of loneliness economy
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Support designer’s wellbeing: Understanding resilience in design education as a wicked challenge
University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Measuring service-related subjective wellbeing in paediatric oncology
1: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; 2: Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; 3: Georgia Institute of Technology, United States of America
Contextualising soil to soil textile production in Aotearoa
1: Independant, Aotearoa; 2: Papahoa Fibreworks; 3: Te Waka Kai Ora
Where Regenerative Design Theory Meets Ground: A Case Study of XREEF on Weizhou Island
1: Politecnico di Milano, Italy; 2: Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Designing for Radical Renewal: Innovation Outcomes Across Circular and Regenerative Approaches
Aarhus University, Denmark
Creating a regenerative design practice that gives back to people and planet: Lessons from stakeholder interactions in industrial agriculture
1: Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Norway; 2: Bioregion Institute, Norway; 3: UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, Norway
Three-Eyed Seeing: A framework for regenerative ecological design
1: LUT Business School, LUT University, Lappeenranta, Finland; 2: School of Design, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
An exploration into the value of ‘gap system’ within regenerative design
1: Centre of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology; 2: TU Delft
Jamie Donaldson (OU); Brandon Lenoir (Edinburgh); Peining Sheng (Edinburgh)
In the context of a competitive and changing job market, PhD students often find themselves at a crossroads, where they need to explore a diversity of career paths by reflecting on and reconfiguring their existing skill sets. This workshop provides an opportunity to co-create a toolkit that supports the opening up of a new space for PhD students to consider positions “in between” academic and non-academic pathways in their post-PhD careers. Join us for a hands‑on, creative workshop where we’ll work together to identify the skills you’ve developed or will develop during your PhD and learn how these can open up opportunities at the intersection of academic and non‑academic careers. Expect creative activities, practical mapping, and a fresh way of seeing your strengths to prepare you for what is next.
Mapping the identity design process for AI co-creativity: Interviews with 20 Graphic Designers
1: Abadir Academy, Catania, IT; 2: Queen Mary University of London, UK
Changing Skills of Industrial Designers in the Age of GenAI: A Systematic and Practice Based Study
1: Istanbul Ticaret University, Türkiye; 2: Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Türkiye
Deconstructing the Designer-genAI Interaction in the Design Process: A Framework for Surfacing Micro-Dynamics and Agency
1: Design Department, Politecnico di Milano, Italy; 2: Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering (UVic-UCC), Spain
Co-speculating with AI: From prompts to practices
1: Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, Italy; 2: School of Arts, Lancaster University, UK; 3: Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino, Italy; 4: Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Co-living with agentic AI: Reframing design research for experiential trust in everyday domestic life
Carnegie Mellon University, United States of America
Uncertainty in the studio: AI as a material in the design of tangible products
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, The
Plundergeist: Exploring generative AI through vibe coding as reflective design practice
The Open University, United Kingdom
Critical Reflectors, Bridge-Builders, and Sense-Makers: How Designers Intervene in AI’s Reproduction of Gender Inequality
University of Sydney, Australia
AI and Thou: empathy, artificial intelligence and alterity in design
Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom
Small AI: A degrowth imaginary for designing with/for artificial intelligence
1: Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; 2: Weizenbaum Institute, Germany
The Hauntology of Generative AI in Design
1: Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden; 2: University of Gothenburg, Sweden; 3: Uppsala University, Sweden
Generative analogical intelligence: Speculative co-design through the fabric of analogy
Texas State University, United States of America
Experiencing the More-than-Human Through Human Augmentation
1: Reality Design Lab; 2: University of Oxford; 3: China Academy of Art
Biodiverse Design and the Ethics of Bioempathy in Practice
Pennsylvania State University, United States of America
Becoming humus: Embodied ecological literacy through designing
Berlin University of the Arts, Germany
Nature-centred Biodesign for Regeneration. Design understandings in Europe.
1: ID+ Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture, University of Aveiro, Portugal; 2: Regenerative Futures Lab, Urban Reef, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; 3: New Media, The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada; 4: University of the Aegean, Department of Product and Systems Design Engineering, Syros, Greece
Shifting from Creativity to Sympoiesis: A Site-Oriented Design Inquiry of More-than-Human Creative AI
1: Division of Media Technology and Interaction Design, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; 2: School of Interactive Arts & Technology, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Design through co-elaboration: Friction, dysfunction, and more-than-human
École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris Sciences et Lettres University (PSL), France
This Conversation addresses an emerging orientation in design research toward the concept of ‘design beyond the human’ (Caccavale and Hush, 2026), with a specific focus on how embodied, relational, and more-than-human methods can operate as rigorous and accountable design research practices. This conversation foregrounds practices and rituals around food and water as methodological apparatuses for thinking-with and -through, enabling engagement with epistemic, ontological, and axiological questions that are increasingly central to design research in contexts of ecological transition, and long taken up, by example, by Indigenous Feminist scholars (eg. Moreton-Robinson, 2013). Furthermore, the concept of scale, as proposed by design anthropologist, Jamer Hunt (2020), is leveraged as a methodological lens through which these concerns can be productively examined.
Entangled Responsibilities: Food, Scale and Design Research Beyond the Human
1: Umeå University, Sweden; 2: Glasgow School of Art; 3: University of Southern Denmark
This Conversation proposes to bring together MTHD researchers and practitioners to facilitate community articulation and to ask: What actions are needed to sustain a convivial MTHD community at a moment of rapid growth and diversification, within and beyond DRS?
To guide this inquiry, we will explore the following sub-questions:
1. How do we understand the current landscape of MTHD across the multiple DRS tracks? How does it relate to the work that is being carried out in other fields?
2. What shared concerns, emerging themes, and unresolved tensions shape our ability to act as an inclusive and supportive community while maintaining disciplinary plurality?
3. What could a community of practice on MTHD look and feel like to mobilise collective efforts? What organisational, institutional, and territorial infrastructures do we need to build, and who needs to be involved?
4. How can we, as human participants, include and empower nonhuman participants? What would it mean to give them roles not only in local, concrete projects but also in shaping the “constitutions” and governance of our institutions (e.g., a SIG)?
5. How do we work effectively with stakeholders across policy, governance, science, industry, and community contexts to mobilise the change and transformation needed for future practice, while respecting diverse ways of knowing and supporting social justice?
This Conversation offers an opportunity for the growing MTHD community to see itself, speak with itself, and imagine itself, laying groundwork for future collaboration within design and across neighbouring fields (from biology and ecology to law and jurisprudence, to name a few). The field is maturing, but without shared spaces for exchange, the risk of siloing grows.
More-than-Human Design: Toward A Convivial Community
1: Politecnico di Milano, Italy; 2: University of the Arts London, United Kingdom; 3: University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom; 4: University of Twente, The Netherlands; 5: Interdisciplinary Transformation University, Austria; 6: Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands; 7: Stockholm University, Sweden; 8: The University of Melbourne, AU
Holding the Question offers a pause in the rush toward answers: a space to stay with questions long enough for something honest to surface. Design research has strong conventions for stabilising knowledge, but fewer shared practices for working with fragility, taboo, or emotional charge. Many questions collapse when pushed too quickly into clarity, losing texture, stakes, and lived complexity.
The conversation builds on The Young Questions, , a long‑term editorial research practice by The Young in Rotterdam. The series emerged from repeatedly encountering topics that are clearly alive in culture yet consistently postponed and only addressed when they become personal, bodily, or politically unavoidable. The Young Questions exists as physical publications that circulate between clients, collaborators, and the public; publishing is treated as a research method rather than a final output. Across editions on vulva, death, union, and denim, we work with interviews, fragments, contradictions, and careful editing to hold questions open rather than close them down.
This conversation will run in dialogue with Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS Some Reservations Exploration session, which examines how design artefacts mediate research on taboo topics. Holding the Question serves as a conceptual prelude, focusing on the pre‑artefact phase when taboos are still emerging and forming language. Together, both sessions trace the movement of a question – from sensed, to spoken, to materialised – bridging conversational and artefactual mediation.
Holding the Question - Taboos, translation, and the limits of research formats
1: The Young; 2: Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS
Higher education in prisons remains both insufficiently available and structurally marginalised within the UK prison education system. Prisoners’ Education Trust reports that provision in prisons in England continues to focus predominantly on literacy, numeracy and vocational education, with higher education opportunities largely restricted to distance learning and a small number of fragile prisons university partnerships. These arrangements are widely recognised as insufficient to meet learner needs or support meaningful progression into higher levels of study. Participation in education has also declined in recent years, alongside deteriorating prison regimes and reduced time out of cell (Prisoners’ Education Trust, 2024). While design research has a strong tradition of engaging with complex public services, prison education remains under-examined as a site for systemic design inquiry (University of the Arts London, 2021).This Conversation addresses that gap by bringing together design researchers, many of whom will have little direct familiarity with the prison education policy landscape, to collectively explore how universities might contribute to more inclusive and sustainable higher education provision in low-security prison contexts. The aim is not to propose solutions, but to identify tensions and generate new research questions for the design research community.
Design through deliberation: Higher Level Education in UK Prisons
University of Brighton, United Kingdom
In a period of rapid change, this conversation will provide an opportunity for participants to better understand how design instructors are making decisions regarding AI in the classroom. Some might fear repercussions for their actions or feel pressure to implement AI against their judgment. Are individuals actively rejecting recommendations? Teaching against their values? How much do they agree or disagree with policy that trickles down from leaders in the school? How are these difficult questions and the confusion caused by the unleashing of AI into the university affecting teaching in general, not only for students but for instructors as workers? Our objective is to enable design faculty to compare notes on this topic and share resources in order to dispel confusion and offer more clarity for those facing difficult decisions and potential consequences. Through this session, design educators will not only learn about the range of others’ experiences negotiating the gaps between their course policies and institutional stances, but also leave with potential strategies to alleviate the confusion of this volatile period in order to confidently teach. We especially hope to unearth tactics that educators are adopting when their attitude toward AI differs from that of their institutions. Design education is uniquely positioned: it values creativity, critique, and ethics, yet faces industry pressing demands to incorporate emerging technologies. Our conversation will support reflection on this situation in relation to the particularities of design in higher educational institutions, and to offer design educators a supportive place in navigating this complex new terrain.
Against the AI Tide: Institutional Stances and Design Educators’ Responses
1: Arizona State University, United States of America; 2: Rice University, United States of America
In recent years, Transition Design and Systemic Design have both emerged as prominent design-led responses to complex, interconnected societal challenges such as climate change, social inequality, and long-term sustainability transitions (Irwin, 2015; Jones & Van Ael, 2022). Both foreground systems thinking, multi-scalar intervention, and the need for design for systems change (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016). As a result, the two are increasingly referenced together in research, education, and practice.
This conversation proposes an open, collective inquiry into the boundaries, tensions, and field-level implications of Transition Design and Systemic Design. By assembling conveyors and participants from diverse institutions and geographies who bring a multitude of perspectives together from research, education, and practice, the session aims to surface shared foundations, productive frictions, and unresolved questions within and between Systemic Design and Transition Design. In doing so, this conversation seeks to contribute to a more explicit articulation of how these approaches can strengthen design’s future capacity for systemic change, and to identify directions for further research, theory-building, pedagogy, and practice.
Beyond Overlap: Transition Design and Systemic Design
1: TU Delft, Netherlands, The Netherlands; 2: Aalto University, Finland; 3: Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway; 4: Loughborough University, The United Kingdom
The use of ‘live’ briefs and project-based learning models have been widely adopted in design education and are often presented “as best practices in design education” (Noel, 2021:256). DiSalvo (2021) warns us that the uncritical application of design methods to address societal issues risks “reproducing and re-asserting structures of power over [the] communities we work with” (Potter et al., 2025: 2). This conversation seeks to bring together design educators and researchers to discuss the risk of extractive pedagogies in such learning models and explore how these risks might be managed. In particular, it will ask: Can ‘live’ student projects deliver true reciprocity with the communities with whom they partner?
Challenging Extractive Pedagogies: When students work with communities
1: Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom; 2: Virginia Commonwealth University, United States; 3: IE University, Spain
‘Ethical regime’, a concept introduced by Radin and Kowal (2015) within that scholarship, articulates that underpinning supposedly ‘universal’ ethical principles there are specifically and historically situated moral, political and economic stakes. Examples of ethical regimes include US and Australian scientific research ethics with roots in post-war responses to the atrocities of Nazi science and other infamous medical experiments. Importantly, they highlight ethical regimes critical of Western research, for example alternatives emerging since the 1980s from pan-indigenous rights movements in Australia.
Alternative ethical regimes are also evolving elsewhere, with notable examples including frameworks for research involving indigenous peoples and/or their land. For example, in New Zealand, ‘Te Ara Tika’ is well-recognized (despite uneven progress, Smith 2021). Canadian examples are seen as possible models across Sápmi (Drugge 2016) - while the Nordic countries have various stringent and advanced ethical research guidelines, the Sami perspectives is missing. While the UN-backed principle of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) is widespread, it has never been ratified in countries such as Brazil and Colombia (but can be part of challenges brought by the indigenous peoples’ organization APIB to the International Criminal Court in the Hague).
Design researchers have engaged critically and creatively with ethical regimes. Critical studies trace design within medical science ethics abuses of colonial subjects and women (e.g. Prado 2015). This conversation will engage critically and creatively with diverse ‘ethical regimes’, specifically our universities’ ethical regulation of research in relation to principles developed with/within indigenous contexts.
Conversation: Design Research Ethics in Indigenous Contexts
1: Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Canada; 2: University of the Arts London, United Kingdom; 3: University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil; 4: University of Lapland, Finland; 5: University of Los Andes, Colombia; 6: Aalto University, Finland
As design researchers increasingly adopt generative AI tools across the research lifecycle, questions about when and how to trust these tools have become increasingly urgent to explore and address. From planning studies and generating tasks to analysing qualitative data and communicating findings, AI systems are now integrated into many aspects of design research work. However, these tools are frequently used based more on institutional demands, tool availability, and efficiency perceptions rather than on clear methodological or ethical considerations. This Conversation explores trust as a context-dependent judgment influenced by specific situations, tasks, and associated risks.
Although concerns about AI's reliability and ethics are valid, the increasing interest in these tools is understandable. Many researchers are drawn to AI for its ability to streamline labour-intensive tasks, accelerate workflows, generate new insights, or support accessibility. For instance, transcription tools, automated tagging, and language generation systems are already embedded in research workflows and often seen as low-risk or beneficial. These perceived strengths raise important questions: What value do these tools offer? Under what conditions are they helpful? And when might apparent benefits obscure potential risks?
This Conversation invites participants to examine how trust in AI is experienced, questioned, or withheld across the design research process. Rather than assuming AI tools either clearly belong in research practice or should be rejected outright, we ask where, when, and under what conditions they can play a role, and where they should not.
In AI We Trust? A Critical Examination of AI’s Role in Design Research
1: North Carolina State University, United States of America; 2: SAS Institute, United States of America
This proposal opens with the term maraña, a Spanish word that resists translation and serves as a conceptual provocateur. Instead of seeking clarity—often presumed as the goal of design—maraña encourages participants to inhabit discomfort, density, and entanglement. Marked by the “ñ,” it signifies complexity as a condition of life, not a problem to solve. Etymologically, maraña relates to material conditions of entanglement: thickets, tangled threads, or intricate situations that cannot be separated without loss (Malkiel, 1948). It names material situations of coexistence where separation is never neutral and never without loss.
Drawing on the contrast between Prometheus and Epimetheus—anticipation versus understanding after the fact— this proposal rejects fully anticipated futures. Instead, it positions design as a practice of learning to live enmarañados, cohabiting complexity through praxis, staying with unresolved conditions rather than resolving them. It aligns with Haraway’s call to “stay with the trouble” (2016), using imagination not to escape, but to refuse fixed realities.
In this Epimethean view, prototyping becomes a research method of learning-after: iterative redesigning with what already exists (in line with panel 1.5 Restaging Doing and Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design). Prototypes are seen as incomplete, open to revision, allowing uncertainty and unforeseen relations to persist (Hermansen & Tironi, 2024). This method facilitates staying-with marañas, slowing certainty and fostering situated engagement with resistance to closure.
This entails an ethical shift away from binary logic toward inhabiting interstices, co-operations, and tensions. The Aymara concept of ch’ixi—heterogeneous elements coexisting without fusion—becomes central: a condition where “something is and is not at the same time” (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2015). Designing thus becomes a process of learning to read, touch, and hold knots—accepting tension as an epistemic and coexistence mode (Sánchez-Aldana, 2025).
Textile-thinking matters here as a material mode of perceiving and composing entanglement (Barad, 2003; Sánchez-Aldana, 2025). Maraña shifts from a word to a practice, emphasizing entanglement as inherent in everyday practices, infrastructures, bodies, and technologies —especially within the Capitalocene, where separation without loss is unfeasible.
Participants are invited to collect real marañas—not metaphors or drawings. The session will produce photographic maraña specimens that record entanglements as they exist. These images are not mere documentation but prototypes that can be handled, compared, re-tagged, and reclassified. This photo-prototyping aims to let relations and frictions emerge through cycles of arrangement, testing, and revision. By sharing and handling images and textile marañas, the focus shifts to proximity, contact, and material engagement over abstraction and disembodied reflection.
Maraña specimens: Photo-Prototyping in textile logic for Coexistence in the Capitalocene
1: Universidad de los Andes, Colombia; 2: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; 3: Independent Researcher
Disability research has long grappled with questions of power, voice, participation, and representation. The disability rights movement’s foundational demand—‘nothing about us without us’ (Charlton, 1998)—challenged centuries of research conducted on rather than with disabled people. The social model of disability shifted focus from individual impairment to disabling environments and attitudes (Oliver, 1996), while emancipatory disability research (EDR) insisted that disabled people must control research agendas, methods, and outcomes (Oliver, 1992; Barnes, 2003). Hamraie and Fritsch's Crip Technoscience Manifesto (2019) argues that disabled people are already designers and expert knowledge-makers of their own access—hacking, adapting, and innovating in ways that formal design rarely recognizes.
Participatory research methods—Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), and community mapping—have transformed how researchers engage with marginalized communities, shifting from extractive models toward collaborative knowledge production. These methods offer rich foundations for disability research, yet their application in disability contexts remains underdeveloped. This
Exploration asks how design can contribute to adapting these participatory methods. Design brings distinct capacities: material and spatial thinking that reshapes how participation physically happens; prototyping approaches that allow iterative testing of engagement formats; multi-modal communication strategies that expand beyond text-dominant research; and attention to embodied experience that foregrounds how bodies interact with research processes. These design opportunities can extend participatory methods’ emancipatory potential, centering disabled expertise and deepening meaningful participation across diverse access needs and capacities. This Exploration is co-led by disabled and non-disabled researchers, reflecting a commitment to accountability structures that keep research answerable to disability communities (Stone & Priestley, 1996).
Design for Emancipatory Practice: Adapting Participatory Methods for Disability Research
Lehigh University, United States of America
Reflecting the posthuman shift in Design, More-than-Human (MtH) temporality has emerged as a critical dimension of how we could design with other-than-human beings. Building on theoretical discourses calling to reevaluate concepts of Western time (Bastian, 2009), and to incorporate plural perspectives of time (Eschrich et al., 2025; Rifkin, 2017), this session will explore practical approaches to engage with MtH temporalities through time as an experience of kinship (Vaughan-Lee, 2024; Whyte, 2021). Kinship time, building on the concept of “kincentric ecologies” in which humans perceive all natural elements of an ecosystem as kin (Salmon, 2000), is an understanding of time not as uniform, linear units but as shifts in kinship relationships, calling for an ethics of shared responsibility and interdependence (Whyte, 2021).
Our session will examine the potential of embodied and in situ approaches to foster reflection on kinship time and temporal interactions with MtH, and identify tensions and opportunities in Design for future engagements, fostering more diverse notions of MtH time. It is part of a broader research that asks how, through collaborative, embodied, exploratory activities, we can develop new forms of attunement to temporalities beyond Western-centric frameworks, and how place-based, kin-centric approaches can support the emergence of new temporal MtH relationships.
Specifically, the session will build on existing approaches engaging with MtH temporalities, such as visual mapping and participatory design (Zohar et al., 2024), the MtH Temporal Ontologies' booklet (Nisi et al., 2026), and meditation practices on kinship time (Vaughan-Lee, 2024), allowing us to interact with MtH temporalities at multiple scales and accounting for changes over various timeframes, such as historical growth cycles or future migratory patterns. We will introduce participants to an exploratory design-based probe packet for reflecting on MtH temporalities and kinship to ground conversation, exploration and discussion. Together, participants will cooperatively materialize artefacts that represent their understanding of and encounters with MtH temporalities in the form of a mobile sculpture. This kinetic artefact, materialising kinship time relationships in the landscape, will prompt further exploration of time’s materiality and of humans' responsibilities in fostering those relationships, as well as unpack the tensions and opportunities for engaging with MtH temporalities through design.
Kinship Time: Designing with More-Than-Human Temporalities
1: Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisboa, Portugal; 2: School of Architecture, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States; 3: University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Ruderal Definition seeks to co-create a definition of regenerative design through collaborative documentation and critical reflection. Regenerative Design as a theory and a practice is increasingly invoked across a multiplicity of design domains, yet its meaning is fluid and unresolved, and our lexicon is fragmented—inviting both productive plurality and the risk of greenwashing and dilution. Our exploratory workshop treats this disturbed semantic ground as ruderal: a site where meaning can coalesce and stabilise through shared inquiry. The session positions regenerative design as an emergent practice and seeks to produce artefacts, specifically mapping, concepts, and relationships, that will help designers speak rigorously across fields without eclipsing industry- and place-based differences. We aim to surface productive tensions and generate a living, publicly accessible knowledge artefact that captures the multiplicity of regenerative approaches while identifying areas requiring further conceptual development.
We will address three connected research questions:
How do researchers-designers understand regenerative design principles across diverse contexts, and what tensions, gaps, or insights emerge when we map our practices against a collective, proposed theoretical framework?
How can collaborative mapping serve as a rigorous method for recording, verifying, and interrogating design research knowledge beyond traditional textual formats?
What new relational understandings emerge when place-based regenerative practices are situated in cross- and transdisciplinary dialogue, revealing patterns, absences, and possibilities across cultural, industry, and economic boundaries?
To paraphrase Randolph Glanville (1981), design research is not just a practice of creative exploration for desired change in products and systems, but a model for better research, a designed process for scientific discovery, as well as the invention of artefacts.
This workshop seeks to create and test a definition of regenerative design that emerges as a system of looking with, thinking with, and responding with the world we are entangled in. Can this definition hold across academic fields, geographies, and praxes, and can we discover shared phenomenologies of this robust design definition in a collaborative creative exercise?
Through documentation, word play, critical reflection, and collaborative mapping, we seek to create research knowledge, in real time, among the communities in which it will be used. We will then document these findings through photography, ephemera, and field notes.
Co-Creating a Ruderal Definition of Regenerative Design as a Living System
1: Material Encounters; 2: Office of Planetary Research
Artificial Intelligence is now part of design education, which raises the question of whether these tools build students' critical thinking and creative voice, or quietly erode them. This workshop treats participants' own tool use as the object of study. In small groups, students, educators, and practitioners work with NotebookLM environments that are preloaded with research, institutional AI policies, and classroom resources. They will use the system as a thought partner while documenting their exchanges. They isolate sources, capture notes, and participate in a structured reflection during which they examine how that mediation shaped their reasoning and discussion. The aim is to test our understanding of how AI tools can cultivate authentic creative voices and critical thinking skills.
Note: This workshop is best experienced with a Google account. Facilitators recommend that participants bring a laptop that is logged into a personal Google account or a mobile device with the NotebookLM app already downloaded and logged into.
Thinking Partners or Thinking Replacements? Interrogating AI’s Role in Design Learning
1: North Carolina State University, United States of America; 2: Parsons School of Design, United States of America; 3: Interdisciplinary Transformation University IT:U, Austria
How can rich user scenarios become engineering specifications without losing the user experience they are meant to preserve?
In interdisciplinary product development, user scenarios are often used to communicate context, goals, and lived experience. However, when these narratives are transferred to engineering teams, their experiential intent can become diluted, requirements may become ambiguous, and specifications may lose traceability to the original user need. This workshop addresses this challenge as the experience–specification gap.
In this 90-minute hands-on Explorations session, participants will work in teams to translate an elder-care robot scenario into engineering specifications using the Action Steps method. Rather than treating scenarios as informal design stories, the session uses them as structured evidence for specification development.
Participants will work with Novy, a smart elder-care robot designed to support nocturnal awakening, medication access, safe movement, and nighttime assistance. Through a guided six-step sprint, teams will identify scenario elements, form user–product interaction sequences, derive functional requirements, select components, define target specifications, and evaluate component placement.
The session will conclude with peer review and group reflection on traceability, interdisciplinary negotiation, and artifact quality. Participants will leave with a practical framework, a practitioner manual, a workbook, working examples, and reusable templates for teaching, research, or practice.
This workshop welcomes participants from any background who are interested in human-centered design, engineering design, product design and development, scenario-based design, robotics, healthcare design, interdisciplinary collaboration, or design research methods. No prior experience with the method is required.
Action Steps sprint: translating user scenarios into engineering specifications with interdisciplinary teams
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea
To address the persistent gap between the acknowledged relevance of images and their practical implementation in research communication, this exploration asks: How can design scholars write with and through images? Through a workshop format combining critical analysis, discussion, and hands-on exploration, we will articulate possible frameworks for producing, evaluating, and publishing visual essays within design research contexts. In doing so, we aim to address the implementation gap by moving from theoretical justification to practical capacity-building. Specifically, the workshop seeks to identify and experiment with ways of communicating academic knowledge in design with and through images. Following the workshop, insights on how to provide evidence and argumentation in visual form and how peer-reviewers can balance evaluating scholarly rigor alongside visual experimentation will be summarized in a reference paper. Participants and the wider community will be then invited to contribute to a special issue on visual essays for Design and Culture.
How to Write with Images? Exploring Visual Essay Formats for Publishing
1: Carleton University, Canada; 2: University of Split, Croatia; 3: University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Reproductive experiences are deeply shaped by stigma, legislation, and intense emotional dimensions (Mohammadi 2016; Lusi et al. 2024; Stangl et al. 2013). These experiences are navigated within healthcare infrastructures that often prioritize standardized protocols over lived experience (Naghdali 2025; Ross 2020). As a result, dominant representations of reproductive health rely on sanitized and medicalized narratives that flatten complexity, reinforce normative reproductive timelines (Kessler 2008), and marginalize experiences that fall outside idealized notions of healthy or “normal” bodies. Structural barriers, delays in care, and persistent stigma erode trust in healthcare infrastructures and medical advice, as disclosure itself can feel emotionally risky (Fox 2025). Consequently, much of what is lived, felt, and negotiated remains difficult to articulate within existing representational frameworks (Dubriwny 2012).
This 90-minute exploration adopts a speculative and performative approach, using dolls as material and symbolic media through which reproductive health experiences can be explored, deconstructed, and reimagined through play. Doll-based methods have been framed as design practices of perspective- and role-taking, facilitating empathetic engagement (Jakobsen, 2012). Indeed, Persona Dolls have been used in participatory and educational settings as culturally situated figures to support inclusion and challenge discrimination (Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2022). Dolls help participants adopt users’ perspectives and explore scenarios during early ideation (Kagohashi et al., 2020). In therapeutic contexts, dolls support expression through play and making, offering material ways to articulate experiences that may be difficult to verbalize (Krystyniak, 2020).
At DRS 2026, we invite participants to hack dolls to explore and represent reproductive health experiences, including menstruation, endometriosis, pregnancy, abortion, postpartum, menopause, and many more—across both first-person experiences and those encountered as loved ones or caregivers. We will provide second-hand dolls, props and craft materials, to support sketching, annotation, and reflective note-taking throughout the session. Participants will be invited to use the props to hack the dolls bodies and imagine, or stage interactions to explore bodily change, complications, care practices, unpredictability. We explore how hacking dolls can surface and document reproductive health experiences that resist articulation within dominant biomedical and service representations, extending prior workshops in reproductive health (Ahmed et al. 2025, Gamboa 2024, Hansson 2023, Kumar 2019, Lusi et al. 2024, Reime et al. 2022, Petterson 2025, Tuli 2025). We propose three interrelated thematic areas:
- how reproductive health experiences such as pregnancy, abortion, surrogacy and more, unsettle the notion of a singular, bounded body, including the material, symbolic, and ethical implications of distributing risk across bodies.
- how reproductive health stories are shaped collectively, for example in relationships with partners, families, and institutions.
- how reproductive health experiences might intersect with other health conditions such as chronic illness and mental health, reflecting on bodily and psychological experiences that both shape and are shaped by reproductive health.
Hacking Dolls: Performing Reproductive Health Experiences through Design
1: Queen Mary University of London; 2: University of Twente
Design landscapes are undergoing a profound transformation, exploring new pathways that embrace new kinds of materialities (Barad, 2007; Bennett, 2010; Murphy, et al., 2021; Tilman, 2015), led by alternative epistemologies that embrace post-phenomenological worldviews, such as more-than-human design (Giaccardi, et al., 2025). The rise of complex tailoring in applied design contexts, such as bespoke design (Farrugia, et al., 2023; Campbell, et al., 2003), orpersonalized prosthetics (Whatley, et al., 2023; Zhou, et al., 2023) creates an increasing potential to design for ultra-personalized solutions (Hasani et al., 2025; Ozdemir, et al., 2022), that can attune to post-phenomenological (Merleau-Ponty, 1968), and radical phenomenological (Seyler, 2013; Henry, 2012) understandings of sensitive and intimate qualities of lived body experiences. However, integrative approaches towards understanding lived body experiences through the lens of disability (Siebers, 2013; Mairs, 1986), that are provide a radical rethinking of bodily norms (Kuppers, 2022; 2013) are still under-explored in the context of design, human-computer interaction, robotics (Alonzo and Hassan, 2025; Xu, et al., 2025; Correia de Barros, 2022), or assistive technologies. The domain of Dance has a vast knowledge on choreography, movement practice, dance analysis, but also somatic work (Whatley, 2014; Block, 2021; Hanna, 1995; Eddy, 2009; Imus, 2020; Imus and Young, 2023;
Joyce, 2023). Hybrid practices at the intersection of disability, dance and/or design (Fdili Alaoui, 2023; De Blanc, 2024; Loke and Robertson, 2010; Ferri and Leahy, 2025) can invite the potential to attend to the hidden layers of bodily experience during dance work, exploring the thresholds between knowledge domains. In our workshop, we shift the conversation from headspace to body-space, cultivating integrative approaches of collaborative design-making. We use the epistemological strategy for embodied knowing (Barbour, 2001) (Figure 1) as a reference framework, which integrates four knowledge paths: a path for scientific inquiry, for artistic inquiry, for the process of creation, and five epistemological positions (silence-received -subjective -procedural -constructed) (Belenky, et al, 1996). These knowledge paths converge at the centre, wherein action, performance, and illumination engage in ‘moving-with’ and ‘making-with’ practices through which interdisciplinary design teams can scaffold experiential, affective, and relational qualities of bodily mattering (Barad, 2007). We employ dance work to advance the knowledge base of ‘embodied knowing’ in Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Robotics, and Assistive Technologies.
Dance, Disability, and Design: towards an advanced understanding of embodied knowing at the intersection of artistic and scientific inquiry.
1: University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, The; 2: University of Antwerp; 3: University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, The; Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands, The
