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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Agenda Overview | |
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Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres 40 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JX, UK |
| 11:00am - 12:30pm |
PAPERS: What is Regenerative Design Anyway? Foundations, Lexicons and Interdisciplinary Intersections Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Angela Kilford, Massey University Chair: Inge Panneels, University of Edinburgh 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 |
| 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
PHD HUB: The Diversity of Post-PhD Careers: Co-creating a toolkit to map your journey beyond a PhD Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres 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. |
| 9:00am - 10:30am |
PAPERS: Design and Sustainability: Values, Behaviour Change and Direct Action Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Michael Stead, Imagination Design Research Lab, School of Arts, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Chair: David Sánchez Ruano, Tec de Monterrey “Even if I do it, I cannot see any differences”: Designing Strategies to Facilitate Adolescents’ Low-Carbon Behavior Southern University of Science and Technology, China, People's Republic of Bridging Awareness and Action: Visual Communication Strategies for Sustainable Consumption in Fast Fashion TU Delft, Netherlands, The Buying, Consuming and Discarding: Consumer Value and Furniture Lifetimes Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom Heterodox economic perspective for designing sustainability transitions: Integrating fundamental human needs and the milieu approach 1: Mines Saint-Etienne, Univ Lyon, CNRS, Univ Jean Monnet, Univ Lumière Lyon 2, Univ Lyon 3 Jean Moulin, ENS Lyon, ENTPE, ENSA Lyon, UMR 5600 EVS, Institut Henri Fayol, F - 42023 Saint-Etienne France; 2: Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, Bordeaux INP, I2M, UMR 5295, F-33400 Talence, France; 3: Arts et Métiers Institute of Technology, CNRS, Bordeaux INP, I2M, UMR 5295, F-73375 Le Bourget-du-Lac, France Towards a more sustainable industrial design sketch modelling practice: An overview of associated materials and their life cycles University of Canterbury, New Zealand Should sustainability come second? Artifact analysis toward more positive outcomes through design 1: Syracuse University - School of Design; 2: Cornell University - Department of Human Centered Design |
| 11:00am - 12:30pm |
PAPERS: Design and Sustainability: Co-creation, Participation and Relationality Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Michael Stead, Imagination Design Research Lab, School of Arts, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Chair: David Sánchez Ruano, Tec de Monterrey Dropping Pebbles: The Ripple Effect of Designerly Co-creation in Steering Sustainability Transitions in Hospitals 1: Delft University of Technology; 2: Erasmus Medical Center Reciprocal value between learning and circular practices University of Pretoria, South Africa The environmental citizen’s playbook: A catalogue of playful participation for environmental action 1: Sooon Studio, Denmark; 2: Escola Universitària ERAM (Universitat de Girona); 3: Aalto University, Finland “Everything that no longer relates to anything”: Discard Studies for thinking through waste in design Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain Design, territory and gastronomy: Relational practices in local transformation processes Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil Playing Future Places Together RMIT University, Australia |
| 2:00pm - 3:30pm |
PHD HUB: How Do We Work Together? From Experience to Critical Understanding of Agency, Power, and the Conditions of Collaboration and Participation Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Harriet Simms (GSA); Yuanrong Guo (Edinburgh); Yitong Zhang (GSA) Collaboration and participation are central to many PhD projects, yet they are often understood and enacted in highly diverse ways across disciplines, methods, and research contexts. While these terms are frequently associated with inclusivity, co-creation, and shared authorship, they also raise critical debates about agency, power, decision-making, and the conditions under which participation becomes meaningful. This session invites doctoral researchers to move from situated experience towards a critical understanding of how collaboration and participation operate in doctoral research. Structured around two main participatory activities, participants will be organized into interest-based groups for a small-group mapping activity, where people examine concrete experience, tensions, responses, and shaping conditions. A gallery walk will follow, facilitating cross-group engagement and the identification of connections across different experiences. The session creates a space for exchanging situated practices while encouraging reflections on questions such as what influences collaborative processes, what is open to negotiation, and when participation becomes meaningful, symbolic, or limited. |
| 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
PAPERS: Discourses in Design Research: Critiques, Black-Boxes, and Translations Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Haian Xue, College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University Translating Industry: The Reception and Evolution of Industrial Thought in Early Modern 1: Royal College of Art; 2: Shanghai University Of Engineering Sciences The black box in spatial planning: visualizations of indeterminacy in cybernetics and model theory 1: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China); 2: Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China Environmentality's integrated design: ISO standards as infrastructural semiotics EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland Exploring Current Understandings of ‘Design Systems’: Toward a Conceptual Framework 1: Department of Communication & Culture, Aalborg University, Denmark; 2: Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark; 3: LEGO Group, Denmark; 4: IT University, Denmark Historicising Speculative Design with McLuhan’s Tetrad Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA User-Centered Dread: A Lovecraftian Critique of Design University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom |
| 9:00am - 10:30am |
PAPERS: Strategic Design Practices for Learning, Attention, and Co-Creation Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Ross Brisco, University of Strathclyde Inter-Poly-Creation (IPC): Unifying Mass Customisation and Co-Creation Loughborough University, United Kingdom The Studio model - creating space for continuous change Princeton University, University of Technology Sydney, Australia Linking an attention-based view of the firm and critical design in strategizing: Attention to harmful consequences University of Lapland, Finland |
| 11:00am - 12:30pm |
PAPERS: Human Experience in Product and Interface Design Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Anca Horvath, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology When can ASMR sound improve consumer product evaluation? Exploring the joint influences of ASMR sound and visual richness Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China, People's Republic of Understanding the Electric Vehicle Purchase Decision through the Lens of Experience National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan Can the Thumb Point Effectively in VR? An Evaluation of Different 3D Pointing Techniques 1: Modern Industrial Design Institute, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; 2: iQOO Software Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China Design considerations for effective in-vehicle interaction: The effects of icon type and individual heterogeneity Hunan University, China, People's Republic of Designing Motion Identity: Exploring the Aesthetic Expression of Brand Style through System Motion 1: Hunan University, China, People's Republic of China; 2: Lushan Laboratory, People's Republic of China Strategic thermal design for smartphones: An experimental analysis of zonal heat perception across hand contact regions School of Design,Hunan University, People’s Republic of China |
| 2:00pm - 3:30pm |
CONVERSATION: Exploring Temporalities for Transformative Futures Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres How can design help us explore questions of both possible futures ahead of us, and possible futures that never came to pass but continue to affect us? How could thinking about temporalities and dimensions be valuable for designers engaging with transformation, transitions, complexity, and pluriversal approaches to research and practice? Following popular Conversations at DRS 2022 (‘Designing Transformative Futures’: Light et al, 2022) and DRS 2024 (‘Mapping Constellations for Transformative Futures’: Speed et al, 2024), we propose a third in the series, turning our focus to time and temporalities in design’s relationships with futures. This highly participatory session combines ideas developed through previous Conversations with new perspectives from participants, to arrive at a shared, embodied creative mapping activity. In 2022 (Figure 1, left) with 100 participants, in-person and online, we explored what it feels like to be a designer situated within a world of uncertainties and structural forces, and how questioning our own practices can sow seeds of more radical transformation. In 2024 (Figure 1, centre / right) with 60 participants we used systemic constellation mapping, with participants positioning themselves into ‘constellations’ in which stances on ways the world could—or ought to—be come into tension with other conditions and actors. Exploring Temporalities for Transformative Futures 1: Norwich University of the Arts, United Kingdom; 2: Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands; 3: RMIT University, Australia; 4: RMIT University, Spain; 5: Malmö University, Sweden; 6: University of Sussex, United Kingdom; 7: Northeastern University, United States; 8: Indiana University Bloomington, United States |
| 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
PHD HUB: Exercise in Style: Exploring Expression in Design Research Writing Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Dan Mu (Edinburgh); Lemon Xueli Tang (GSA) This workshop is shaped by the idea that writing in design research is not simply a matter of following rules, but also a question of expression, framing, interpretation, and authorship. Within doctoral culture, writing and publication are often associated with pressure, confusion, legitimacy, and performance. This can make writing feel inaccessible or overly formal, especially for researchers working across practice, theory, and interdisciplinary contexts. The session takes inspiration from exercise-based literary structures, especially the idea of generating variation, reframing expression, and experimenting with form. This allows participants to encounter writing not only as a finished academic product, but as something that can be reworked, played with, translated, and reimagined. The final activity particularly emphasises design research’s interdisciplinary nature, encouraging participants to look beyond conventional academic outputs and consider how visual, poetic, fragmentary, or zine-like forms may also help articulate research thinking. |
| 9:00am - 10:30am |
PAPERS: More-than-Human in the Real-World: Regeneration, Radical Solidarity and Learning Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Iohanna nicenboim, tu delft Chair: Joseph Lindley, Lancaster University Grounding the Interspecies Playground: A More-than-Human Framework for the GOCCIA Project Department of Design - Politecnico di Milano Minamata’s Ecological Encounters Codesheet: Designing Remembrance Lenses through more-than-human and media archaeology Keio University Multispecies convivial learning: Art-based interventions at a Japanese public junior high school Kyoto Institute of Technology More-than-Human Perspectives in Teaching Technology Design: From Research to Classroom, to the Real World? 1: Malmö University, Sweden; 2: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands; 3: Aarhus University (DNK), Denmark Toward an ecology of imagination in Benwell 1: Open Lab - School of Computing- Newcastle University; 2: School of Architecture, Planning & Landscape - Newcastle University Towards a common language for representation tools in more-than-human design Koç University, Türkiye |
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| 11:00am - 12:30pm |
PHD HUB: AI in Design Research: Methods, Experience, and Agency Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Cecilia Chuan Jiang (Edinburgh); Hanwen Li (Edinburgh); Jiarong Yu (Edinburgh) Artificial intelligence is increasingly embedded in design research, not only as a tool, but as a force that reshapes how knowledge is produced, experienced, and negotiated. This PhD Hub session invites participants to critically reflect on how AI is transforming research practice across three lenses: methods, experience, and agency. Rather than focusing on technical applications, the session provides a structured space for peer exchange and collective reflection. It opens with a brief framing activity to surface participants' initial perspectives, followed by short provocations using research artefacts as discussion triggers, and structured small-group discussions that support honest articulation of how AI is shaping and unsettling research practice. Groups then share key insights and points of productive disagreement in a collective debrief. Participants will leave with new ways of thinking about their own AI-entangled practice, and connections with peers navigating the same tensions. No prior preparation is required. Participants are welcome to reflect on their own research experiences with AI, or to bring questions and uncertainties about where AI might fit into their work. |
PAPERS: More-than-Human in the Real-World: Resistance while Staying in the Trouble Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Cristina Zaga, University of Twente Chair: Iohanna nicenboim, tu delft Designing with Country: Relational infrastructuring beyond technocratic urbanism Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia Practical ways of staying with the trouble: Enacting posthuman ethics through design practice 1: Interactive Technologies Institute, I.S.Técnico, Portugal; 2: Northumbria University, UK Sounding Territories: Dis/identificatory Codings as Relational Worlding 1: Delft University of Technology; 2: Universidad Pompeu Fabra; 3: Politecnico di Milano; 4: Delft University of Technology Careful Configurations: An Exploration of Smart Technologies in More-Than-Human Innovation 1: New Design University, Austria; 2: University of Salzburg, Austria; 3: Loughborough University London, United Kingdom Material agents at work in alternative food networks 1: Istanbul Technical University; 2: Politecnico di Milano |
| 2:00pm - 3:30pm |
PAPERS: More-than-Human in the Real-World: Radical Solidarity and More-than-Human Solidarity Stacks Location: 40 George Square, LG.11 Zoom Link Accessibility: https://www.accessable.co.uk/the-university-of-edinburgh/central-area/access-guides/george-square-40-lecture-theatres Chair: Arne Berger, Hochschule Anhalt Chair: Claudia Garduño García, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Olfactory prototyping as diplomatic device: Codesigning a MorethanHuman ‘Us’ with two captive pumas Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile Co-evolution in practice: The wolf's disruptive return to the Netherlands Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, The From Decoration to Co-Presence: Reconfiguring Human–Plant Relations in Urban Workplaces Through Aesthetic Bio-Feedback 1: Tsinghua University, China; 2: University of Michigan, the United States; 3: Dalian University of Technology, China; 4: Tongji University, China Designing with Shape-Changing Materials as Co-Agents of Interspecies Encounters Politecnico di Milano, Italy Towards More-than-Human Inclusion: Designing Artefacts that Cultivate Attentiveness for Engaging with More-than-Human Worlds University College London, United Kingdom |
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