Conference Agenda

This study examines how present-day smell encounters stimulate participants to reflect on possible futures and those scents that are emergent or susceptible to becoming transformed or lost altogether. We describe our speculative design setup whereby participants assumed the persona of an olfactory researcher from the year 2100, armed with a smell passport and set of vials, and tasked with time-traveling back to 2025 to capture scent samples. Smellwalk observations span three themes: environmental awareness of scent, the functional role of future scents, and social and cultural dimensions of olfaction. We discuss those scents which participants found to be particularly salient or at risk of becoming extinct, along with those which were perceived as 'natural', culturally relevant, and worthy of preservation. This work positions the smellwalk as a novel sensory method for doing active futuring research, while contributing to an emerging set of approaches for facilitating smellscape experiences as knowledge contributions.

Disappearing tacit knowledge in high-end craft industries and expert industries, stresses the need to examine the workings of crafting to maintain and gain competitive advantage. To pursue this study, we have been conducting interviews with craft professionals and apprentices to gather insight into their rapport with their practices. Using quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods, we have identified specific moments of a craftsperson’s discourse when relating to their practice, revealing distinct emotional states during the interaction with the material. These findings support enquiry into the craftsperson’s emotional states during the craft practice, to expand knowledge transfer.

At the early design stage, users’ verbalized thoughts lack in-depth analysis due to technological and cost constraints, hindering designers' creative future design. This study presents the results of a co-creation workshop with eight designers. Taking autonomous eVTOL flight as an example, this study developed the VR eVTOL cabin—an immersive experiential space where participants experienced story scenarios spanning boarding, flight, and landing. Participants’ verbalized thoughts about safety are collected through the think-aloud method. Subsequently, this study presents the reflective inference card to help participants comprehensively analyze the triggers behind these thoughts, their mental mechanisms, and propose design strategies for enhancing perceived safety. The results show that verbalized thoughts, as raw experiential knowledge, can be transformed into static and dynamic experiential knowledge. We hope that this method can help designers achieve multi-dimensional creativity at the early stage of design.

This article introduces Attuned Design Practice (ADP) as an umbrella term for studying embodied knowledge at the intersection of artistic and scientific inquiry. It addresses an epistemological gap across design and human–computer interaction, dance and somatics, and disability studies. Building on an existing framework of embodied knowing, we examine domain-specific traditions and expose the threshold between these knowledge domains. We propose Open Rehearsals as experimental settings for co-performance among human and non-human actors. Within this context, attunement is introduced as a performative materiality that enables relational, situated, and operational forms of understanding across disciplines. An eighteen-month field study in design, performing arts, and engineering reveals recurring dynamics and patterns of interaction. Rather than defining a fixed framework, ADP is presented as a sensitizing approach, offering provisional vocabularies and analytical entry points for future research toward inclusive and transferable embodied knowledge.

During the Fuzzy Front End (FFE), the early and uncertain stage of the design process, creatively framing design problems plays a critical role in shaping direction and originality of outcomes. While the value of problem framing is well established, the cognitive mechanisms for innovation developed through industrial experience by which expert designers navigate ambiguity, remain comparatively underexamined. Guided by the C–K Theory, this study examines how expert designers leverage experiential knowledge when transitioning between concept (C) and knowledge (K) spaces. Using a qualitative approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews and real-time framing tasks with 12 expert designers (5+ years of practice). Visual mapping and temporal-bracketing analyses reveal three experience-mediated reasoning modes of alternating exploration and consolidation. The findings advance understanding of experiential design cognition gained from practical industrial experiences, offering insights for adaptive AI-supported design tools that respond to shifting cognitive modes, and new pathways for structured design thinking education.

This study examines critical feedback shared by arts festival participants on social media. These posts, as a unique form of reflective user experience data, can spark dialogue and spread widely, helping to identify potential needs and key service touchpoints in the design of cultural and creative activities. Using purposive sampling, 104 relevant posts were collected and analysed thematically based on Buchanan’s four orders of design as a framework. The findings indicate that participant discontent stems from overlapping conflicts across different design orders, characterised by a lack of authenticity, value conflicts, and service limitations. Furthermore, the study emphasises the pivotal mediating role of creators in reconciling these orders, offering empirical insights for the experience design of cultural and creative activities.