Conference Agenda

Reciprocal Sensing is an alternative way of body mapping that draws from Indigenous Lenca ontologies, which understand matter as animate and relational. It expands body mapping to account for culturally specific contexts and ways of knowing. The proposed method invites participants to (1) link each felt experience to a worldly source (the non-human agent or co-actor) and (2) visualize the direction of these sensory flows. Using an autoethnographic approach, iterative body mapping sessions revealed recurring patterns of exchange between the body and its material environment. This informed the development of Reciprocal Sensing as a culturally situated, more-than-human perspective to soma design. Grounded in Honduran Lenca and Mestizo perspectives, our approach builds on embodied knowledge as shaped through environmental reciprocity and opens body mapping to reflect indigenous ways of such relational embodiment.

Grounded in theories of embodied cognition, extended mind, and mediating artifact, this paper proposes a human–artifact–human perspective to explore the relational mediation of artifacts in social interaction. Through a systematic review of 30 key studies published between 2010 and 2025, a four-dimensional analytical framework is constructed—embodied cues, interaction modes, mediating artifact features, and affective outcomes—to reveal how embodied design generates relations among the body, artifacts, and society. The analysis shows that embodied interaction is shifting from functional control toward relational generation, presenting four tendencies: micro-intimacy, ambient co-presence, culturally embedded bodily rituals, and slow relational rhythms. Building on these insights, the study proposes a human–artifact–human relational framework to explain how embodied mediation operates across individual, social, and cultural contexts, and advocates a relational and affective approach to embodied design that provides theoretical grounding and future directions for understanding artifacts as relational mediation.

This paper presents the design and building of an experimental pavilion using a novel technique of extruded cob manufacture. Design Research is presented as the co-exploration of a sequence of semi-controlled variables by a shifting body of researchers, facilitators, students, and makers where authorship becomes suffused amongst these collaborators. This co-created knowledge is rightly presented as a paper co-authored by the student interns and academics involved. Phases of architectural design, material investigation, manufacture, and construction are discussed as an episodic series of inter-connected prototyping dialogues between human, machine, and material actors; and as emergent making where embodied knowledge is inherent in the processes of manufacture and construction. In ‘Cob Club’ - situated between UWE’s Centre For Print Research and School of Architecture & Environment - design research proceeded as a series of foolish exchanges that reveal the creative benefits of unmanaged collaborative spaces within the rational processes of research institutions.

This paper investigates the feminist identity transformation strategies of "self-combing" women in late nineteenth-century China, who resisted patriarchal marriage identity by enacting alternative female identities through "Goddess Fictual" practice (goddess fiction belief and ritual performance). Through fieldwork of the historical residences and spiritual spaces of self-combing women, this paper identifies the goddess shrine as their new female identity performative site. It was within this specific site that spiritual goddess belief and identity ritual performance converged to support these women’s identities. Inspired by this historical experience, we translate this feminist practice into a new design methodology. It demonstrates how this historical "Goddess Fictual" practice can function as a modern feminist design methodology. We propose a four-stage framework called Design Goddess Fictual. This framework empowers women navigating identity dilemmas to find their voice, reimagining new identities that disrupt inherent ones to facilitate a plurality of women’s identities.

Typography has increasingly been recognised as a valuable lens for cultural and urban analysis. This literature review extends such perspectives by examining how design-led approaches can support the documentation, reinterpretation, and revitalization of urban letterforms as cultural heritage. Drawing on typographic studies, geosemiotics, and design research, it focuses on urban typography — typographic landscapes — understood as spatial and multimodal carriers of memory, identity, and cultural value. While existing scholarship has explored the semiotic and aesthetic dimensions of typography in the urban environment, and some have proposed design-led interventions, connections between theory and practice remain open to further development. The review synthesises interdisciplinary literature, clarifies key terminology, and establishes a conceptual foundation for a practice-based inquiry. It argues that typography, beyond its communicative role, contributes to the material and mnemonic fabric of cities, and that design can support the preservation and reactivation of these typographic forms in response to ongoing urban change.

The production of knowledge in data visualisation can serve as a space for the reproduction of social hierarchies; therefore, there may be an intrinsic relationship between normative parameters in design and power structures. This study examines normative biases in information design and presents counterpoints to the predominance of these hegemonic values from a feminist perspective. Drawing on a theoretical framework that challenges established norms, this paper proposes a

critical analytical and methodological tool to transcend normative bias in the design process. The tool supports the analysis and creation of visualisations from a humanistic and feminist perspective. To validate its potential, it is applied to data visualisations from journalistic sources addressing the underrepresentation of women in politics. The analysis demonstrates the tool’s effectiveness in highlighting biases and gaps in information design artefacts, confirming its ability to promote a fairer and more critical design practice.