Conference Agenda

Design is evolving from primarily human-centred approaches towards planetary concerns that re-centre more-than-human agency – a perspective that correlates with pressing ecological challenges emerging from global anthropogenic impacts. Against this backdrop, design education that equips graduates with the competencies to engage present and future complex socioecological challenges continue to develop. The authors discuss interconnected drivers that are shaping the wider field and advancing designers' roles before presenting a pedagogical model that supports design students to engage in academic-industry-community collaboration and forms of making to materialise complex systems and evolving epistemologies in accessible and tangible ways. The authors offer insights into how future educators and graduates might design with myriad forms of intelligence – human, artificial and ecological – to navigate poly-crisis issues such as the energy transition and nature restoration. These graduate attributes are positioned as an agile material practice, capable of advancing design for regenerative and just climate futures.

This paper investigates what it means to notice in practice. Carrying out field research situated on the edge of the River Taff, Cardiff, we interrogate what it means to notice through a more-than-human centred lens. We arrive at ‘noticing’ as a method from two different perspectives: ethnography and design. Utilising concepts from assemblage theory, deep time thinking and technological entanglement theory, we extend upon scholarly interpretations of noticing through autoethnographic accounts. Our choice of non-human participant (i.e. a river) forces us to consider more-than-human temporalities, geological time and the longue durée. We think about the ways in which technology disrupts our ability to be present and fully commit to ‘river time’. Similarly, we unravel subconscious hierarchies of knowledge and the urge to rely on scientific understandings. Finally, we reflect on our own noticing as a method alongside the ethics of engaging a non-human participant.

Eggshell waste, designated by the EPA as the 15th largest food-based pollutant, is reimagined here as a regenerative material through circular and reciprocal design practices. This research explores how discarded eggshells can be transformed into bioplastics, coatings, and modular construction elements. The project integrates ecological theory (Haraway’s “response-ability,” Kimmerer’s reciprocity) with hands-on material experimentation across diverse geographies, including India and Europe. Emphasizing student-led, non-hierarchical learning, it cultivates ecological care and interdependence between human and more-than-human worlds. Installations, workshops, and collaborations with local experts support regenerative construction practices rooted in local materials and needs. By challenging extractive, linear waste systems, the project aligns with the DRS2026 theme of Transitional Materialities, treating waste as offering and design as a practice of renewal. It proposes a speculative yet grounded approach to sustainable material futures: where fragility becomes a source of strength and design nurtures planetary repair.

Current human-computer interaction and more-than-human design increasingly emphasize affective experiences emerging from the dynamic interplay between humans and their environments. However, research in this domain remains largely anthropocentric, often translating non-human emotions in anthropomorphic terms and thereby neglecting their distinctive affective expressions and relational nuances. This paper draws on classical Chinese poetry, renowned for its profound sensory and affective engagement with nature, to analyze how nonhuman entities convey complex emotions such as tranquility, melancholy, and transience. Using grounded theory, we systematically code and categorize the representations of Shui (水, Water), flora, and fauna in poetic excerpts that convey specific affective states. Building on these insights, we propose a design framework that connects material and environmental cues with human affective experience. The main contributions include: (1) mapping nonhuman entities to corresponding emotional qualities; (2) establishing a cross-cultural affective design framework; and (3) demonstrating its practical and theoretical value through more-than-human design cases.

This practice-based research project presents BLX, a series of mycelium-based educational toys. Shaped like inflated building blocks, BLX invites children (early years to primary education) to construct playful structures whilst materialising biological and anthropogenic circularity through design. Unlike plastic toys that embody permanence, BLX can be played with, composted, or repurposed as plant pots—rendering regenerative processes tangible. Drawing on speculative design and material studies, the project positions mycelium as both educational medium and more-than-human collaborator. By embracing decay as (re-)generative, BLX challenges material cultures of permanence and offers children embodied encounters with temporality and transformation. This contribution is threefold: methodological by designing with living materials for pedagogy, conceptual by reframing temporality as pedagogical, and material by emancipating mycelium as an educational agent.