Conference Agenda

Enquête d’âme is an interactive installation and research instrument that reimagines design impact assessment by shifting from affect detection to wellbeing articulation. A textile-covered keyboard allows participants to select from sixteen wellbeing dimensions; each input generates a coloured circle within a shared projection, forming an evolving visualisation of collective resonance. Three public deployments—a cultural event, arts festival, and university showcase—combined observations, brief interviews, and log analysis. Findings show that slow, tactile interaction fosters mindful engagement; participants treat the dimensions as reflective anchors rather than diagnostic labels; and aggregate patterns vary contextually (e.g., Optimism/Future-self in policy discussions, Playfulness/Participation in festival settings). The paper contributes: (1) an embodied method for participatory wellbeing visualisation; (2) a mixed-methods instrument coupling expressive self-report with analysable traces; and (3) a visual grammar that supports empathic, plural sense-making as an alternative model of design impact.

This paper develops a multi-scalar indicator framework that bridges macro sustainability goals with the realities of historic district regeneration, focusing on the Laomendong Historic District in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. The study translates top-down policies into meso to micro level design indicators that capture the spatial, social, and cultural dimensions of sustainability. Using a mixed-methodology approach, it combines policy content analysis to identify macro-narratives with grounded theory-based social media analysis to reveal bottom-up perceptions and everyday experiences. The resulting framework demonstrates how sustainable design can move beyond macroeconomic and environmental metrics, embracing a broader range of considerations. Findings suggest that while macro agendas emphasize economic growth and climate resilience, true sustainability emerges through micro-scale practices, inclusive public spaces, walkability, participatory management, and daily ecological behaviors. This study redefines design impact assessment as a context-sensitive, people-centered process.

Cultural institutions frequently use design to help audiences engage with scientific knowledge and understand environmental crises, yet evaluating design’s impact remains challenging. Existing frameworks focus on audience learning, demonstrated through feedback surveys, but such frameworks overlook how designers, scientists, museum staff, visitors and non-humans co-shape engagement and impact. This paper discusses the significance of distributed impact, and tests methods for evaluating how impact is distributed across stakeholders in a museum environment. The case study details a Museum-Lates event using experimental experience design to engage audiences with coral conservation. Using multi-method data collection across different stages of event production, we trace how moments of curiosity, collaborative making and contemplative sensorial encounters emerge and propagate. We propose a metaphorical Seeds of Care framework to conceptualise relational impacts in museum settings. We suggest design and evaluation strategies by mapping how reflections on more-than-human care are carried among stakeholders, supporting engagement with ecological conservation.

Design practitioners and educators play an important role in advancing inclusive societies. However, the impact of educational initiatives aimed at cultivating inclusive thinking and behaviour among designers remains underexamined. We address this gap by reporting phase 1 of a scale-development study to measure inclusive mindset, knowledge, and behaviour in design and engineering education. Building on the Inclusive Mindset Model, the study operationalises inclusivity into three scales and presents the initial item pool developed through item generation and content validation. Following established scale-development procedures, items were refined through feedback from six expert judges and eight engineering students, resulting in an initial pool of 95 items across the three scales. By positioning inclusivity as an assessable dimension, this work contributes to plural, multidimensional approaches to design impact assessment. This preliminary study provides a foundation for future psychometric validation and offers new possibilities for reflective learning and curriculum evaluation in design education.

While participatory design approaches such as co-creation and co-design are increasingly used to develop circular solutions, there are limited contributions on assessing their impact. This paper systematically reviews and compares fourteen existing evaluation frameworks and models for collaborative design approaches across domains such as public health, social innovation and energy transition. Through a systematic literature review and comparative analysis, the study examines how impact is conceptualised and assessed, the extent to which existing approaches are operationalised, and their applicability to circular transition contexts. Results show that most frameworks do not explicitly define or evaluate impact, offer limited operational guidance, and only partially address key dimensions relevant to circular transitions, such as multi-level and long-term effects. These gaps highlight the need for evaluation approaches that are both adaptable to the situated nature of co-creation and sufficiently rigorous to capture its contribution to circular transitions.