Conference Agenda

Cuteness is often dismissed as trivial or decorative. Yet research across neuroscience, psychology, and cultural theory reveals it as a powerful affective force that captures attention, evokes empathy, and encourages prosocial behaviour and well-being. Cute’s affective potency also renders it ethically ambivalent, capable of manipulation as much as comfort. Despite its ubiquity, cuteness remains under-theorised in design research, a notable gap for a discipline concerned with communication, emotion, and human connection. Addressing this gap, this study conducts an interpretive systematic literature review of publications from 1943 to 2025, identifying 65 key scholarly sources. Interdisciplinary insights are synthesized into the ‘Cuteness Matrix,’ a diagnostic framework mapping two central tensions in cuteness studies: power and purpose. The study reconceptualises cuteness as a relational affect that can be intentionally designed to nurture empathy, participation, and care. Ultimately, it asks: can cuteness be reimagined as a purposeful and ethical design strategy—Cute for Good?

Designing drug instructions that communicate effectively to both experts and lay users requires understanding of their different information needs. This study examines how healthcare professionals and the public differ in their priorities and cognitive focus when interpreting drug instructions, offering design guidance for future instructions and labeling system. Using a two-stage approach, we conducted a survey of 111 professionals and 123 public participants to assess their perceived importance of 22 information items, followed by focus groups exploring perceptual and structural expectations. Professionals prioritized procedural accuracy and detailed guidance, while public users emphasized clarity and safety. Despite these differences, both groups shared six core items that informed a three-tier information framework: Basic Treatment and Safety, Professional Medication Support, and Additional Attribute Reference. By aligning distinct user needs with information hierarchy, this study advances inclusive communication design that enhances the usability, transparency, and safety of drug instructions.

Hospital lobbies are gradually transforming from traditional zones of circulation and waiting into multifunctional public spaces that integrate rest, cultural display, retail services, and social interaction. This study analyzes four tertiary hospitals in Korea using space syntax methods, specifically convex space analysis and visibility graph analysis, to quantitatively examine the integration and visual integration characteristics of various functional zones within the lobby. The analysis provides a systematic assessment of spatial accessibility and visual guidance within the lobby environment. From the perspective of enhancing user experience in healthcare settings, the study identifies four key design strategies aimed at optimizing circulation and functional layout, thereby improving users’ spatial orientation and overall comfort. These findings suggest that future hospital lobby design should prioritise clear circulation, visible core services, and context-sensitive integration of composite functions.

Japan, as the birthplace of Kansei Engineering (KE), has played a pivotal role in shaping this field, building a solid research foundation and accumulating extensive scholarly experience. A substantial body of valuable Japanese-language studies has been published in academic conferences and journals in Japan. However, current English-language review articles in KE rarely include these Japanese works. To address this gap, this study provides a preliminary attempt to compile and analyse Japanese publications that propose new concepts, theories, models, and frameworks within KE. The review highlights distinctive perspectives developed by Japanese scholars, revealing contextual and situational sensitivity, collective and social understanding, relational and multi-scalar dynamics, and cultural and value-based orientation. Based on these insights, the study introduces the concept of Field Kansei Engineering (FKE), which focuses on modulating the nested affective fields co-created by humans, artifacts, and environments, and highlights the systemic interdependence, reflexivity, and social meaning of Kansei.

Prevailing design methodologies and models tend to contain language specific to pragmatic and contextual foundations of design history and culture. Consequently, these models provide limited support for the diverse and constructive nature of contemporary design practice, and particularly, lack the presence of embedded reflexivity. This paper seeks to determine the predominant and excluded language of 66 design process models, which function as projections of instruction and value in design dissemination. In the analysis, special attention is given to omissions within these process models, as well as their differences among more recently documented methodologies. As a result, the paper explores reflexive language in contrast to dominant pragmatism as a significant area of potential for the future of design models and process evolution. The discussion concludes with reconsiderations of how language guides design processes, the impact of models on design practice, and an assessment of consistencies and opportunities within design model representations.

This paper presents the methodological framework of an ongoing design research project focused on cultural creation in rural contexts. It structures the design work that precede co-creation workshops, including the design of tools, participant criteria, session formats and preliminary analyses to understand community needs. Based on design research in rural regions of Aragón (Spain), the study integrates human-centred and community-based design to adapt participatory processes to low-density territories. Initial results include a mapping of key actors, a first set of metrics for evaluating participation and collaboration, and the identification of gaps that justify a specific methodological guide for rural cultural projects. The paper contributes to debates on how design research can scaffold ethical, inclusive, and context-specific processes, and shows how it can support social change by connecting cultural rights, territorial justice, and innovation for sustainable rural development.