DRSelects

Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I am a newly elected member of DRS’s International Advisory Council (IAC). I have a background in industrial design and professional experience at various design schools in Brazil and the Netherlands. My academic research is highly interdisciplinary, situated mainly at the intersection of design and the philosophy of technology. Currently, I explore how designers contribute to social justice in emerging technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence) through form-giving practices. Specifically, I am developing conceptual frameworks for designing technology-mediated human freedom, drawing on the Hegelian notion of intersubjective recognition.

Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

Within the IAC, I co-lead a working group dedicated to Designing. This is the upcoming official journal of the DRS, where I will also serve as a senior editor. Our primary objectives are to advise the DRS Executive Board on journal-related decisions and to develop internal policies and procedures that ensure its successful operation in collaboration with our publishing partner. Additionally, I contribute to another IAC working group focused on Plurality, Diversity, and Inclusion.

What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

The main benefit is to help strengthen the field of design research by drawing on a broad, diverse, and reputable academic community. As an IAC member, I am committed to increasing the global diversity of design publishing, particularly by fostering fairer conditions for design researchers from less privileged regions, contexts, or positions. I aim to achieve this by synergistically integrating my IAC role with my editorial position at the journal Designing, whose mission includes advancing design research across all regions of the world.

Those interested in becoming more involved with the DRS are welcome to reach out to me or any other member of the Designing working group or editorial team. We encourage discussions on the current state of representation in design research and invite ideas on how to further enhance global diversity.

Choose five items from the DRS Digital Library that you'd like to highlight.

The DRS 2024 International Conference in Boston was my first exposure to the DRS community. I was highly impressed by the diversity of perspectives and approaches to design research represented there. My selections come from the conference and highlight notable presentations I witnessed, as well as insightful works I discovered later while browsing the proceedings.

The first two are powerful, emancipatory works led by two young feminist academics.

Bibiana Oliveira Serpa and Marco Mazzarotto (2024). “Towards a design methodology against oppression.” https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.617

Valentina Volpi, Val Mitchell, Stuart Cockbill, and Ksenija Kuzmina (2024). “The road to cooptation is paved with good intentions: an anarchafeminist critique of empowerment ambiguity in DSI.” https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.942

The next three studies, highly praised by reviewers, are led by researchers from Turkey, Colombia, and India—countries less frequently featured in academic design journals.

Serpil Karaoğlu, Aslı Günay, and Ilgım Veryeri Alaca (2024). “Designing a crossover multisensory picturebook with older adults at a care home.” https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.780

Juan Mendoza-Collazos, María Astrid Rios Durán, and Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos (2024). “Colombia-Brazil dialogues. In search of a Latin American epistemology for design.” https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1143

Chhail Khalsa and Pranshu Kumar Chaudhary (2024). “Co-creation framework to develop and situate e-textiles with indigenous crafts.” https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.846

Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I have worked as a design practitioner, manager, educator, and researcher for the past few decades. I have carried out projects at various universities (e.g., Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Polytechnic University of Milan, Malmö University, and University of the Arts London), public organizations (e.g., the European Commission, the World Bank, UNICEF, and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and private companies. I now serve as an Associate Professor at Aalborg University, where my core focus is how design and arts can support personal, organizational, and community resilience, innovation, transition thinking, long-term strategic orientation, and positive and impactful change. Within DRS, I serve as a member of the International Advisory Council and co-convenor of the SIG Designing Change. I am also a yoga teacher, and I hope to offer some free yoga sessions to the DRS community on the occasion of future conferences! 

Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

During the past DRS Conference in Boston, the SIG Designing Change hosted a conversation that saw the participation of many conference attendees. It gave us the feeling that it is essential for the design research community to reflect on change dynamics and mechanisms that have the highest potential to transform our societies. This is why, together with my colleagues Sabine Junginger and Mauricio Mejia, we are assembling an edited volume to explore how different change theories and approaches have been used in specific design projects and with which results. Please let us know if you want to collaborate on these initiatives or if you want to be involved in future activities related to the SIG Designing Change. 

What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

Since I started my academic career, I have seen DRS as a welcoming and supportive community. There are several more specialized conferences and initiatives within design research, but DRS remains vital as it somehow manages to bring together all these different and more specialized research strands. The biannual conferences are a fantastic occasion to meet old friends and make new ones. 

 DRS Digital Library Picks

I would like to share a few papers that are somehow connected to another research interest of mine: how design can be integrated with contemplative practices (e.g., yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, etc.).

Berger, E. (2022) Design as posture: Developing enlightened subjectivity with the philosophy of yoga, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.222

Estelle has long worked on how yoga theories and practices can nurture design processes and projects. In this specific paper, Estelle uses the philosophical framework of the Samkhya, an early Buddhist philosophy at the core of Yoga, to propose a holistic model for designers' development. This model emphasizes mindfulness, deep understanding, ethical action, and interconnectedness as key elements in cultivating a more reflective and empowered design practice.

Valentine, L., and Follett, G. (2010) Craft as a Form of Mindful Inquiry, in Durling, D., Bousbaci, R., Chen, L, Gauthier, P., Poldma, T., Roworth-Stokes, S. and Stolterman, E (eds.), Design and Complexity - DRS International Conference 2010, 7-9 July, Montreal, Canada. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2010/researchpapers/119

This beautiful paper redefines craft practice, portraying it not just as "skillful making" but as a more complex, reactive, and evolving process. The authors use Mindful Inquiry, an approach that blends critical social science, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and Buddhist philosophy. As such, craft is portrayed as a transformative journey rich with intellectual depth and personal growth.

Michele Noera, F., Simeone, L., and Neuhoff, R. (2024) Using contemplative approaches in education as a pathway to cultivating hope in design-driven futuring, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.317

This paper reports on a study we ran in the past couple of years. We explored the potential of contemplative approaches, such as mindfulness and visualization, to cultivate a sense of hope among design students. After conducting two design experiments in Denmark and Italy - where we used time travel and stream-of-consciousness writing exercises to encourage students to envision desirable future scenarios - we found that these contemplative approaches fostered a sense of hope and empowerment among students, enabling them to imagine and work towards more sustainable and equitable futures. In a way, we believe that this study shows that integrating contemplative practices into design education can help students develop a more holistic understanding of their role in shaping the future.

Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I am an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Research in the Division of Industrial Design at the National University of Singapore. I lead the Service Design Lab Singapore, a research group focused on conducting constructive design research through service design projects as interventions. In 2024, I was elected as a member of DRS’ International Advisory Council (IAC).

Prior to joining Singapore, I did my doctoral study in Finland, at Aalto University, after my BSc and MSc studies at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). During this journey across the continents, I had a long-term interest in observing how design logic is developed in certain parts of the world and imported by other parts of the world, and how it evolves- or dissolves- in distinct ways. This exploration led me to publish a book on “Plurality and Cultural Specificity of Service Design in Asia”. My recent work applies service design principles to emerging technologies, such as AI, digital twins, and autonomous vehicles, aiming to inform the co-creative, ecosystemic, and ethical development.

Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

As a member of the IAC, I am involved in the working group of “Plurality, Diversity and Inclusion (PDI)”, aiming to embed PDI approaches within all DRS events and publications. I will also be assisting the development of a new journal alongside the wonderful fellows of the IAC. One of my interests for the DRS community is to promote pluralistic approaches in design—particularly in service design—across diverse regions. This initiative aims to advance the decolonization of service design practices, establishing them as dynamic and contextually responsive capabilities. It is essential to cultivate reflective sensitivity within communities, especially those adopting external design practices, encouraging them to critically assess their approaches and strategize for sustainable impact.

The upcoming IASDR 2025 conference in Taiwan will be a pivotal event to amplify underrepresented voices, raise awareness, and collaboratively envision future directions. I will serve as one of the co-chairs of the “Service Design for Public Service Policy” track at the conference.

What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

My involvement with the DRS keeps me informed on the latest and most critical discussions within design research communities, continuously enriching and shaping my own research programs—particularly through conferences, SIGs and publication archives.

DRS offers practical opportunities for collaboration with like-minded individuals internationally through SIGs, affiliated conferences like DRS, IASDR, or NORDES, and various events such as PhD courses, seminars, and reading groups. For PhD students and early-career researchers, I highly recommend attending the biannual DRS conferences to engage with emerging topics in design, network with established and up-and-coming scholars, and increase your visibility in the field.

DRS Digital Library Picks

Prakash, S. (2022) Preparing for the pluriverse: Embracing critical self-reflection in service design practice, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.566

• If you’re interested in the notion of pluriversity in service design and public sector design, this is a go-to paper. Prakash addresses how public sector service designers can integrate a culturally pluralistic perspective in their work, particularly when dealing with diverse communities. The paper highlights a gap in design practice where the cultural assumptions of designers may not align with those of the people they serve. The author offers a model helping a feedback loop of critical self-reflection within design, to help bridge this cultural gap.

Nilsson, F., and Vink, J. (2024) Critical Design Soaps: Resisting the Aesthetic Hygiene of Popular Design Methods, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.207

• Design communities have observed an overreliance on methods, especially with the widespread of Design Thinking among non-design practitioners. This paper offers a thought-provoking critique of mainstream design methodologies and explores how the "aesthetic hygiene" embedded in popular practices often limits the depth of critical engagement with social and cultural issues. The authors propose a playful yet rigorous approach to disrupt normative design aesthetics and foster meaningful dialogue. And it is a purely enjoyable read.

Baek, J., Yee, J., and Akama, Y. (2018) Editorial: Designing Social Innovation in Cultural Diversity and with Sensitivity, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.007

• This is an Editorial piece from one of the DRS’18 Special Tracks facilitated by colleagues who are co-founders and participants of a research network called Design and Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific (DESIAP). This Editorial, along with the papers featured in this Special Track, draws inspiration from postcolonial theory, feminist studies and cultural theory, and challenges an entrenched legacy of research towards replicable, generalizable knowledge and the Eurocentric design logic. The editors highlight the significance of embracing a pluralistic approach to design situated in diverse cultural contexts, and I believe this perspective represents a critical step toward the sustained growth of design as a discipline and a field.

Kim, S., and Park-Lee, S. (2024) Why we failed: Exploring the context of establishing a living lab in Korea, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.760

• This is one of the rare papers that contribute an Asian discourse on the role of design in the public sector to the global literature. This paper provides a critical examination of the challenges and complexities encountered in implementing a living lab within the Korean context. The authors assert the significance of understanding cultural, institutional, and contextual barriers that can hinder collaborative innovation initiatives and offer insights into how living labs must be tailored to align with local socio-cultural dynamics, rather than relying on generalized models.

Jackson, D., Sievert, J.R., Kim, M., and Bhatnagar, S. (2022) What legal design could be: Towards an expanded practice of inquiry, critique, and action, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.1083

• This Editorial from the DRS’22 Conference Theme Track sheds light on a new contribution area of design, i.e. the law. The Editorial, along with the papers of this track, explores the transformative potential of “legal design” beyond traditional applications. The editors advocate the reimagination of how design can engage with legal systems and emphasize the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to address systemic issues, democratize access to legal knowledge, and challenge existing power structures. This paper makes a significant contribution to expanding the scope and impact of design, prompting us to reflect and ask, “What’s next?”

1. Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

Stefano Delle Monache: I am currently transitioning to the Perception and Sound Design group at IRCAM STMS Lab, and I am a visiting researcher at TU Delft, Department of Human-Centered Design. My work is on sound-driven and listening-centered methodologies and tools for design research, with a focus on the semantic and cognitive aspects involved in co-creation. Specific lines of research investigate protocol analysis approaches to design processes incorporating sound and explore the argumentation logic of sound-driven design objects and representations. The aim is to advance the understanding of the embodied and multisensory nature of designing and to offer effective methods for practice and educational purposes.  

Nicolas Misdariis: I am currently the head of IRCAM STMS Lab / Perception and Sound Design group. My work falls within the scope of sciences of sound design within which I mainly develop research for and through design focused on either sound synthesis technologies, environmental sound and soundscape perception, auditory display, human-machine interfaces, interactive sonification, and more broadly, sound design or sound-driven design. Among others, I’m currently leading an applied project with the automotive industry that tends to bring solutions – but also knowledge – according to the issue addressed by the quietness of electric vehicles, and I’m the co-PI of a collaborative project which aims at exploring Augmented Reality ito reduce noise and/or conceal unpleasant sound sources, within shared space like, for instance, open working spaces.

Elif Özcan: Currently, I am leading the sound-driven design and research activities within Critical Alarms Lab (TU Delft) by which we focus on improving the sounds and soundscapes of healthcare environments. I am also a WP leader in a publicly funded EU Innovative Healthcare Initiative (IHI) project entitled “Smart and Silent ICU” through which we measure the physiological, biological and psychological effects of medical alarms on critically ill patients. Simultaneously I am starting up a research project “Auditory Footprints” funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO - Open Technology Programme) on developing novel technologies for monitoring environmental sounds.

2. Could you please give an introduction to your SIG, any recent events/outcomes and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

The Special Interest Group on Sound-driven Design brings together a plurality of researchers and practitioners interested in investigating and constructing a design culture around sound and listening, as a perceptual, socio-technological and situated phenomenon. The SIG’s interests span a variety of topics and fields, from basic research into the design methodology, practices and tools, to applied and evidence-based studies and interventions that have a societal impact (e.g. healthcare, mobility, sustainability, cultural heritage).

In this respect, the DRS2024:Boston conference successfully featured several initiatives aimed at promoting and consolidating a sound culture in design research:

• The theme track with two sessions curated by the Sound-driven Design SIG offered insights and actionable knowledge on both foundational and pragmatic approaches to sound-driven design, providing a valuable snapshot of the fervour of the field.
• The Conversation on “Designing for sustainability with sound” sparked rich reflections on how sound and listening can embody sustainability concepts and their complexity, and whether the current sound technology trends actually support sustainable behaviours.
• The DRS Lab on Sound/AI brought a broad range of local and international experts with backgrounds in acoustics, humanities, interaction design, philosophy, art and computer science to test the limits of socio-ethical decisions when it comes to using emerging AI-based technologies (e.g., machine listening and sensor technologies for audition) in sound-driven design.

Looking at future activities, we would like to enlarge our community and organise bi-monthly meetings open to the SIG members as well as to anyone interested in sound and design, where participants can propose topics of discussion, or reserve time for short presentations, so to e.g. look for collaboration / support, and activate researches. In the medium - long term, we would like to turn these meetings into light local events to be hosted at SIG members’ institutions. For this purpose, we plan to launch a survey soon to our members about their background, institutions, and status, in order to have a better understanding of the SIG audience. Moreover, as members of SIG, we also aim to be part of major design and engineering journals and conferences and serve in their editorial/technical boards in order to attract and stimulate research activities in our combined fields.

3. What are some of the benefits of being involved in the DRS through a SIG? How can those who are interested in becoming part of your SIG learn more?

Special Interest Groups provide a dynamic platform by which researchers, practitioners, lecturers, and students can group around a specific and shared topic of interest, which in our case is sound-driven design. The SIG is the place where the state of the art is continuously challenged and serves as an incubator for ideas, reflections, collaborations and critical discussions in a respectful and constructive manner. Each member brings their own resources, be it personal perspectives and expertise, or questions and challenges in their own field of work.

Listening in this respect becomes a fundamental ability.

Anyone who is interested in knowing more about the Sound-driven Design SIG or becoming a member can contact one of us: Stefano Delle Monache - stefano.dellemonache@ircam.fr, Nicolas Misdariis - nicolas.misdariis@ircam.fr, Elif Özcan, e.ozcan@tudelft.nl. We also have two online channels for communication and discussion (https://www.designresearchsociety.org/groups/sound-driven-design-forum, https://groups.google.com/u/3/g/drs-sounddd-sig). 

4. Suggested papers from the DRS library.

We browsed in detail the DRS library and looked for contributions which mentioned or used sound in their work and authored by non-SIG members. We distilled a small selection that provides an interesting picture of the pioneering, yet establishing presence of sound in design research. All the contributions are very recent and cover different areas, i.e. workplace wellbeing and interior design, service design, urban planning, AI driving assistants, and speculative futures, showing the pervasive and growing relevance of sound in the current design practices.

• Kustrak Korper, A.,and Rodrigues, V.(2023) “Ear opening”: Conceptualizing auditory representations in service design, in Holmlid, S., Rodrigues, V., Westin, C., Krogh, P. G., Mäkelä, M., Svanaes, D., Wikberg-Nilsson, Å (eds.), Nordes 2023: This Space Intentionally Left Blank, 12-14 June, Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2023.125  
• Yelmi, P.(2023) Sonic memories: towards a participatory memory archive, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.639
• Barbara Lackner, O. (2024) Embodying the Driving Experience Through AI Driving Assistants as a Means of Noticing the More-than-Human, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.343
• Fayyad, N., Lam, B., Evans, R., and Choi, Y. (2024) Workplace wellbeing and interior design: A systematic literature review, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.901
• Hepburn, L., Baki Ulas, E., Cabrera, D., Cooper, C., Gough, P., Grace, K., Hespanhol, L., Hoggenmueller, M., Hu, W., Ijaz, K., Meron, Y., Pinilla, A., Parker, C., Sosa, R., Tekmen Araci, Y., Watts, J., Wu, B., Zafeirakopoulos, M., and Lulham, R. (2024) Speculative design positions on future liveable cities, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.833

We also refer to our DRS2024:Boston editorial, where the reader can find further resources on sound-driven design.

• Delle Monache, S., Misdariis, N., Özcan, E., Hug, D., Lenzi, S., Pauletto, S., Rocchesso, D., and Spagnol, S. (2024) How do you sound design? Articulating experiences and cultures via listening, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.168

Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I am a research tutor at the Royal College of Art’s School of Design, where I lecture and tutor students in the Service Design MA and Design Futures MDes. I also supervise doctoral students whose research, like my own, is at the intersection of design studies, public administration, political sciences, and innovation management. As a researcher, I am particularly interested in how central and local governments can use design approaches in the development and implementation of public services and public policies to produce more equitable futures for the communities they affect.

Likewise, I am a Design & Futures Fellow with the UNDP’s Strategy and Futures Team, where I deliver future literacy training, sensemaking workshop facilitation, and policy note and report drafting.

In June of this year, I was elected as a member of DRS’ International Advisory Council (IAC) for a period of six years. Also, I am part of the convening group of DRS’ Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group (PoGoSIG), which brings together researchers, designers, and academics to critically examine, promote, and explore the effect of design on innovation in policy and governance.

Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

As part of PoGoSIG, together with Scott Schmidt, we have been producing Design for Society, a podcast about real-world innovation at the intersection of design, technology, government, and business. Each episode focuses on a different researcher, practitioner, or educator by examining firsthand their career and thoughts on a world in rapid transition. Our latest episode was recorded during the Design Research Society (DRS) 2024 International Conference at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, where we interviewed Prof Don Norman, Prof Ezio Manzini, and Prof Rachel Cooper on their take on the growing relationship between design and policy and governance. The interview resulted in a conversation between our three guests, and it went in some exciting directions.

Likewise, we are currently working on a number of different initiatives ranging from a PoGoSIG symposium for 2025 and an edited book aiming to capture, in a more long-term format, many of the conversations and research projects that have been discussing ‘design for policy’ at DRS and other design research fora.

What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

I started my involvement with The Design Research Society as a Master’s student, and since then, I have been increasingly involved in different capacities. In my experience, being involved with the Design Research Society offers numerous benefits to design researchers, practitioners, and educators. Being a global, multi-disciplinary community, DRS provides an invaluable platform for networking, knowledge exchange, and collaboration. Many of the projects I work on nowadays are largely linked to exchanges and conversations that started at DRS conferences. Also, through publications and Special Interest Groups like PoGoSIG, members can stay at the forefront of design research and contribute to shaping the future of the field.

One of the key advantages of DRS membership is the opportunity to engage with a diverse international community of design researchers. This exposure to varied perspectives and approaches can significantly enrich one’s own research and practice. Having the opportunity to directly engage with researchers who have shaped my own journey in design research has been invaluable to me.

Lastly, as you become more involved, I would recommend everyone to consider running for positions on committees, such as the International Advisory Council, or join Special Interest Groups. I cannot think of a better way to contribute to the growth and development of the design research community as a whole.

DRS Digital Library Picks

As announced by Prof Paolo Ciuccarelli in Boston, DRS2024 showed a strong emphasis on foresight, speculation, and prospective thinking condensed under the term ‘Design Futures’. To reflect this, I have selected five readings from the latest conference that delve into different aspects of the close epistemological relationship between designing and futuring. Yet, given the search of the term “futures”, returns over 390 results (and that is only for 2024!) I encourage readers to explore DRS Digital Library for a more comprehensive understanding of the diversity of research projects in this space.

Yu, S. (2024) What Kind Of Futuring Is Transition-Oriented Futuring? Conceptualising And Expanding Notions of Futuring in Transition Design, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.328 

Samuel Yu’s is a relevant contribution to the evolving field of transition design and design futures. It bridges concepts from futures studies with design practices, offering a more robust theoretical foundation for transition-oriented futuring. The expanded approach proposed could significantly enhance the effectiveness of transition design projects by broadening the scope of futures considered and explored.

While the practical implementation may face challenges, the theoretical framework provided offers a solid foundation for further development and refinement of transition design methodologies (another big topic at the latest DRS conference!).

Tekogul, I., and Forlano, L. (2024) Cultivating Future-Oriented Responsibility in Design with Care, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1295  

This paper presents a timely and essential contribution to the field of design research. By integrating care ethics into design futures, the authors offer a promising avenue for addressing the challenges of precarity and uncertainty. To do this, the authors outline three guiding research questions that shaped their inquiry:

1. What are current practices of corporate future-making, foresight and design futures?
2. How are design practitioners addressing precarity in future-making?
3. How can we design futures with care?

The ethnographic examples provide valuable context, showing how these ideas might manifest in real-world settings.

Moreover, the paper’s emphasis on moving beyond human-centred design to consider more-than-human worlds and future generations is particularly noteworthy. This aligns with growing trends in design research towards posthuman and entanglement theories.

With a solid theoretical foundation, this paper opens up important avenues for future exploration in design ethics and futures studies.

Mauricio Mejía, G. (2024) Strategic Design Futures: Exploring strategy and futures to learn and practice design for intentional change, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.675 

Arizona State University’s Prof Mauricio Mejía’s paper is highly relevant to design education research, particularly in the areas of strategic design and futures studies. It offers a practical framework for teaching complex design approaches and highlights the challenges and opportunities in integrating these concepts into design curricula.

His paper uses a case study approach, describing and analysing three iterations of a graduate-level course. Prof Mejía, who is also the course instructor, provides reflective insights on the course structure, activities, and outcomes. This approach allows for a detailed examination of the teaching process and its evolution over time.

The paper concludes that the Strategic Design Futures (SDF) approach offers a valuable framework for teaching and practising design for intentional change, extending beyond traditional artifact-focused design. Despite its limitations (some related to the student’s length of engagement), the SDF approach provides crucial skills for designers to imagine desirable futures, intentionally drive change, and anticipate the consequences of their work.

Ye, Y., and Zhang, D. (2024) Co-creating pluralistic futures: A systematic literature review on participatory speculative design, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1316 

For this paper, Yingfei Ye and Prof Duoduo Zhang conducted a systematic literature review, analysing 18 articles from the past decade that explicitly combine speculative design and participatory design methods. They used thematic analysis to answer two research questions:

What are the practical pathways of participatory speculative design across different problem domains?

Under different practical pathways, what participatory methods can be used in participatory speculative design to co-create pluralistic futures?

The paper identifies three practical pathways (Technical, Social, and Integrated Speculation) and seven participatory methods in Participatory Speculative Design (PSD). It also proposes a four-phase framework for PSD flow, which integrates different levels of participant involvement throughout the design process.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to the emerging field of Participatory Speculative Design by synthesising current practices and proposing a structured framework for implementation. It also highlights important considerations for future research, particularly in cross-cultural contexts and developing countries.

Mintrom, M., Sumartojo, S., Grocott, L., Korsmeyer, H., and Doughty, M. (2024) Policy Design, Lived Experience, and Speculative Futures, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.192

This paper makes a significant contribution to the field of policy design by introducing the innovative “Tomorrow Party” method, which aligns with emerging interests in incorporating lived experience into policymaking processes. It argues compellingly for a creative, speculative approach to policy design that bridges traditional analytical methods with more participatory, future-oriented techniques. The authors discuss four key findings from their pilot studies, providing a fantastic resource for policy researchers and practitioners interested in developing this growing field. By understanding the multiple perspectives that can emerge when addressing policy challenges through creative engagement, this paper supports future researchers in selecting suitable strategies for incorporating lived experience into policy design. The paper concludes with a discussion of how artefacts from the Tomorrow Party might be used in policy advocacy, inspiring future research on integrating speculative methods in policy processes. It is a must-read for any policy researcher or related disciplinary expert pursuing innovative approaches to policy design that centre on lived experience and creative futures thinking.

Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I am a Surrey Future Fellow, a Surrey AI Fellow and Fellow of the Centre of Excellence on Ageing, based in the People-Centred AI Institute (PAI) at University of Surrey. I was recently elected as a new member of the International Advisory Council (IAC) in June this year. In this role, I am making it my mission to ensure the Design Research Society (DRS) becomes a springboard and catalyst for a new design research area called “Design for People-centred AI”. “Design for People-Centred AI” aims to build global communities investigating how design research, such as participatory design and co-design methods, can be used to collaboratively develop AI for societal wellbeing with end-users. Within this area, I am currently focusing on “Designing AI for Home Wellbeing” to explore how AI could be purposely designed to support home wellbeing, such as the basic and psychological needs support by the home. I am uniquely positioned to lead these research areas within DRS with a PhD in “Designing for Home Wellbeing”, and six years’ experience researching new technologies through design research, such as sound sensing AI for home and workplace wellbeing.

Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

I am currently in the process of establishing a new Special Interest Group (SIG) called “Design for People-Centred AI” that will align and collaborate with other SIGS such as SIGWELL and Inclusive Design. I also plan to use my AI networks at PAI to contribute to decision-making around AI and design, such as the design of future conference theme tracks and other related initiatives. Additionally, I hope to support the working group for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion to promote the creation of diverse, equitable and inclusive practices in both design research and AI research. In the past, I have run public and academic events exploring related topics such as “Research and Innovation in Technologies for Home Wellbeing” and “Envisioning Future Homes for Wellbeing”. Going forward, I will look to run another event converging scholarship related to “Designing AI for Home Wellbeing” to continue to grow and encourage collaborative research between AI experts and design researchers and to promote inclusive practices.

What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

By being involved with the DRS, I am afforded many opportunities to interact with design researchers from around the world and expand my design research network through engagement with upcoming design events, different SIGS and International Advisory Council (IAC) meetings. The DRS also offers a platform for me to explore ideas for future design events supportive of the DRS aims and led by me, such as those promoting “Design for People-Centred AI”, that could be advertised through the DRS networks. I would encourage current members who want to gain the full benefit of their membership to join relevant SIGS, take part in relevant online discussions, collaborate on SIG specific organised events, attend and submit papers to affiliated conferences, attend open IAC meetings, as well as volunteer to support the biennial DRS conference.

 DRS Digital Library Picks

Hwang, E., and Lim, Y. (2020) Tuning into the Sound: Discovering Motivational Enablers for Self-Therapy Design, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.287

Acknowledging the lack of effective design enablers for self-therapeutic experiences to counteract the voluntary hyper productivity of modern-day life, this paper explores the use of sound as a design material to support self-therapy as well as enablers that can bring self-therapeutic value to design. I was particularly intrigued to read this paper as I have previous experience in research exploring sound sensing AI for wellbeing where we asked participants to listen to routine sounds in their home and workplaces. Indeed, we found this research activity to show self-therapy potential as it encouraged participants to practice a mindfulness towards emerging sounds. The paper proceeds by presenting the methodology and findings for a novel “Tune-In” diary study, based on Gaver et al.’s (1999) cultural probe approach, to understand what process, means and quality aspects of active reflection on mundane sounds can promote self-therapeutic experience. Overall, the paper offers some inspirational prompters to support future design for self-therapeutic experiences and demonstrates everyday sounds as promising design tool in this.

Kelliher, A., Barry, B., Berzowska, J., O'Murchu, N., and Smeaton, A. (2018) Conversation: Beyond black boxes: tackling artificial intelligence as a design material, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.784

This Conversation resonated with my research interests in designing for people-centred AI as it is invites participants to view AI as a formative “design material” that can be consciously shaped to support societal wellbeing and enhance human experiences. It begins this exploration with five panellists from diverse backgrounds introducing their related expertise and experiences such as in home-based stroke rehabilitation, digital mental health, reminiscence therapy and curatorial practice. The main question, “How can we enhance and evolve the intelligence, abilities, and experience of all human actors in AI supported systems?”, then invites wider discussions from participants. An outcome of particular interest was the agreed upon need for “situated communal AI knowledge systems” that could support distributed local centres of access, control and accountability to overcome widespread public concerns about safety and security of data usage in AI systems. I know from running similar events myself that concerns of privacy and surveillance continue to permeate and disrupt people’s willingness to embrace AI powered technologies.

Nicenboim, I., Giaccardi, E., and Redström, J. (2022) From explanations to shared understandings of AI, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.773

This paper starts to tackle some of the key issues around explainability of AI and offers some encouraging design strategies to support the diverse learning and understanding needs of various users in different contexts. Rather than explore ways to describe the technical workings of an AI system, new approach is proposed to enable people to understand if decisions made by that system can be trusted. Such an approach calls for people and AI systems to be treated as active agents in everyday experiences and to comprehend how such experiences create shared understandings.  Using a more-than-human design perspective, the paper presents two intriguing design strategies for moving beyond explanations to shared understandings such as “looking across AI” and “exposing AI failures”. “Looking across AI” involves an attempt to map and visualise the multiple interactions between human and non-humans to contextualise why certain AI interactions come about. “Exposing AI failures” includes illustrating the limitations of AI, ultimately allowing users to explore alternative interactions to support better user experiences.  Moving beyond the user as passive and neutral participant in explainable AI, the presented design strategies show promise in situating users as active agents in the conceptualisation and understanding of AI.

Auernhammer, J. (2020) Human-centered AI: The role of Human-centered Design Research in the development of AI, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.282

This paper aligns beautifully with my research interests in collaboratively designing people-centred AI by arguing the need for a pan-disciplinary design approach for driving forward human-centred AI. It discusses eight human-centred design (HCD) approaches and how they might be applied to support human-centred AI development, providing a fantastic resource for design researchers and other experts interested in developing this growing field. Understanding the multiplicity of ethical perspectives that can emerge when addressing AI from different HCD approaches, this paper’s presentation of such supports future researchers in selecting suitable strategies. The paper finishes with a representation of how a pan-disciplinary design approach might operate to inspire future pan-disciplinary research. It is a must read for any design researcher or related disciplinary expert pursuing research in human-centred AI.

Harbers, M., and Overdiek, A. (2022) Towards a living lab for responsible applied AI, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.422

Moving beyond theorical notions of ethical AI, this paper starts to explore what ethical AI means in practice. Specifically, this paper investigates how the ethical dimensions of AI can be practically investigated in a living lab setting as an alternative to traditional AI ethics research that focuses on providing overarching guiding principles open to different interpretations. The term “Responsible Applied AI” (RAAI) is coined to describe how AI can be applied ethically in real world situations and five requirements for building a successful living lab for such purposes are put forward. I particularly enjoyed reading this paper as it highlights the socially constructed, temporal and contextual nature of what we deemed to be fair and ethical, highlighting the need for RAAI. Furthermore, it emphasises that solutions for ethical AI may not always be technical and could indeed be social interventions that evolve with the AI system as it learns and changes over time.

1. Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

Li Jönsson: I am a senior lecture at Malmö University, School of Arts and Communication (K3). I am currently working in the research projects Design after Progress, Reimagining Design Futures and Histories and Grief and Hope in Transition.

In uncertain times, with anthropogenic climate change, geopolitical instability and biodiversity crises it seems ever so important to expand and renew how such challenges can be responded to through design. As a constructive design researcher, I aim to accommodate a designerly engagement that does not contribute to quick solutions to a problem but a practice that opens alternative ways of understanding, intervening, and expanding issues by making proposals into the world. These are manifested through objects and materials as tangible and performative design experiments that explore new expressions to serve as entry points for developing other imaginaries and sensibilities in current times with a focus to contribute to publics experience and engagement to the natural world. That, among other things, relates to how democracy and sustainability can be better configured.

Through my research I address questions concerning the more-than-human futures, feminisms, public participation and engagement, and situated aesthetic experiences.

2. Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

Having recently been elected to be a member of the International Advisory Council I am mostly trying to understand DRS better, and how it at a community level can hold different, multidiciplinary, non-uniform ways of doing design research well. I will be more specific soon I hope.

Upcoming and happening events? Well, I would definitely like to share the Nordes PhD Summer School with the title “Socio-ecologically Just Design after Progress”. To get updates from the PhD course, follow the instagram (designafterprogress). However, I am pretty sure some of the work done here will also be featured at the upcoming Nordes conference.

3. What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

The benefits of being involved in DRS is because one contributes to a structure and support for the messy grounds of making knowledge in multidiciplinary fields such as design research. By that, I mean that it is imortant that the Society can host many forms of different design research – which of course – relies on the participation of its members to make it interesting. Get involved!

I would like to recommend:

1. “Letters South of (Nordic) Design” (Nordes 2017), a very important paper in terms of topic as we follow an e-mail exchange between colleagues, countrymen and friends – one located in Brussels (Belgium) and the other in Bogotá (Colombia). Different to traditional academic articles, there is no initial hypothesis proven throughout the text, but a narrative emerging from the conversation among peers.

 Salazar, P.C.,and Borrero, A.G.(2017) Letters South of (Nordic) Design, in Stuedahl, D., Morrison, A. (eds.), Nordes 2017: Design + Power, 15 - 17 June, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway. https://doi.org/10.21606/nordes.2017.040

1.  Sarah Penningtons paper “Taking Care of Issues of Concern: feminist possibilities and the curation of Speculative and Critical Design” where she explore the intersection between the curation of Speculative and Critical Design (SCD) and the notion of ‘care’ as a question that has arisen in the work of feminist scholarship in technoscience. This is a well-written paper that brings together theory and practice in a interesting way.

Pennington, S. (2018) Taking Care of Issues of Concern: feminist possibilities and the curation of Speculative and Critical Design, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.632

1. A bit of a classic paper “Design, Democracy and Agonistic Pluralism” by Carl DiSalvo that has been very important for expanding and making alternative approach to ‘design for democracy,’ drawing on the notion of agonistic pluralism. 

DiSalvo, C. (2010) Design, Democracy and Agonistic Pluralism, in Durling, D., Bousbaci, R., Chen, L, Gauthier, P., Poldma, T., Roworth-Stokes, S. and Stolterman, E (eds.), Design and Complexity - DRS International Conference 2010, 7-9 July, Montreal, Canada.https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2010/researchpapers/31

1. As I keep being curious on the notion of prefiguration in design I want to recommend Alix Gerbers paper “Prefigurative Politics and Design”.

Gerber, A.(2021) Prefigurative Politics and Design, in Leitão, R.M., Men, I., Noel, L-A., Lima, J., Meninato, T. (eds.), Pivot 2021: Dismantling/Reassembling, 22-23 July, Toronto, Canada.https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2021.0005

1. And finally Pablo Hermansen and Martín Tironi “Designing and worlding: Prototyping equivocal encounters” that attentively follows the destruction of prototypes by the two chimpanzees Judy and Gombe. As argued by the authors, the “value of prototyping does not lay in the agreements reached or in the technical qualities of the artifact, but in the mistakes, problems, and destabilizing aspects that the prototyping process generated".

Hermansen, P., and Tironi, M. (2022) Designing and worlding: Prototyping equivocal encounters, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.330

1. Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

Mauricio Mejía: I am a Professor of Design at Arizona State University. My work is about strategic design and intentional change, with a specific interest in service design, co-design, and design futures.

Luca Simeone: I am an Associate Professor at Aalborg University, and I have conducted research exploring the managerial, strategic, and organizational aspects of design.

Sabine Junginger: I am a Full Professor of Design and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Northumbria University with a focus on human-centered design. Design and change are inseparable for me as nobody can design anything without changing something.

2. Could you please give an introduction to your SIG, any recent events/outcomes and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

The Designing Change Special Interest Group brings together a plurality of researchers and practitioners interested in understanding how design fosters change - for example, individual behavior change, organizational change, or societal change. Members engage in the study of change theories and the analysis of approaches that support designers to be intentional and strategic about desired changes.

Historically, the SIG Designing Change had focused on Behavioral Change. We see a need and an opportunity to broaden the scope to fill a gap in design research both on a theoretical and practical level. This way, we can account for design’s role in systemic changes on different scales.

Our recent conversation session at the DRS Boston was successful in framing the scope and agenda of the SIG’s new direction. Our conversation connected international researchers, educators, and practitioners who want to contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationship between design and change. We were joined by Professor Jeanne Liedka, who presented us with a provocative theory that inspired a lively discussion on the value and relevance of a design-specific change theory. The insights and concepts that emerged will now form the foundation for Designing Change SIG’s new direction. Moving forward, we are planning several activities with our SIG members and those who want to join. These include:

1. An online meeting to expand the DRS conversation this fall. We invite members and other interested researchers to present different positions and to engage in a discussion to reflect, assess, and expand on them.
2. A viewpoint article by the co-convenors in collaboration with Jeanne Liedkta where we aim to conceptualize current designing change practices across different academic fields (especially management and organization studies but also innovation and policy).
3. Several topical keynotes at the international conference What’s Around Design? in October in Portimão, Portugal, by the SIG co-convenors. This will provide an opportunity to discuss designing change in the context of environmental challenges.
4. A manuscript for an edited book with contributions from select SIG members. We are in conversations with a publisher conceptualizing the direction of this book.

3. What are some of the benefits of being involved in the DRS through a SIG? How can those who are interested in becoming part of your SIG learn more?

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) allow researchers, educators, and practitioners to dive deeply into a topic of shared interest. It is not unusual for someone to be a member of more than one SIG as there are always some overlaps. Designing Change offers designers addressing increasingly complex challenges a space where they can share, reflect, assess and develop theories and practices to inform their own thinking and doing. If change is a core intention and consequence of design, we can expect design research to engage in a central debate of what works, what does not, what is design-specific, what is not, etc. Our members strive for a critical and respectful engagement with the topic through communication. After all, communication is the context for change (Barnlund).

Anyone who wants to learn more and join our SIG, please email one of us: (Mauricio Mejía mauricio.mejia@asu.edu, Luca Simeone lsi@create.aau.dk, or Sabine Junginger sabine.junginger@northumbria.ac.uk). In the meantime, feel free to join the DRS discussion online here: https://www.designresearchsociety.org/groups/behaviour-change-sig

4. Suggested papers from the DRS library.

Hammond, C., Yee, J., Junginger, S., Brooks, S., Saylor, J., and Michlewski, K. (2018) Editorial: How Organisations Employ Design as Vehicle for Change, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.78

Irwin, T. (2018) The Emerging Transition Design Approach, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.210

Mandhre, R. A., Mejía, G. M., Zheng, W., Jung, K., and Wu, X. (2024) Visioning and managing change: analyzing strategic designers' approaches in salient podcast episodes, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.1106

Mortati, M., Bresciani, S., Kim, E.,and Junginger, S.(2023) Changing organizations and policies: Equipping design for systemic transformation, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.890

Mejía, G. M. (2024) Strategic Design Futures: Exploring strategy and futures to learn and practice design for intentional change, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.675

Niedderer, K., Ludden, G., Desai, S., and Hermsen, S. (2022) Design for Behaviour Change: Taking the Long View Fast, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.1075

Wang, G., and Zhu, H. (2024) Co-design towards positive change, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.153

Zohar, H., Simeone, L., Morelli, N., and de Götzen, A. (2024) Fostering Pluriversal Perspectives in Theory of Change: A Case of an Urban Regeneration Project, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.287

1. Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

Hi, My name is Katelijn Quartier and I am an Associate Professor in retail design at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts of Hasselt University, where I am also the academic director of the Retail Design Lab knowledge center. I and the Lab are researching what the store of tomorrow should look like, what the role of design and other spatial cues plays in it, and what the role of the physical store should be as such. We focus on topics such as experience and sustainability.

Starting from scientific insights, I advise Belgian and international stores and retail chains to improve their store experience. I wrote my first very own book The big book of retail design, which tels you everything you need to know to design an good store.

I became involved with the DRS at the start of my PhD in 2006. I have participated in many of the DRS conferences since then and have been an active member since 2020 when we launched our SIG designing retail and service futures.

2. Could you please give an introduction to your SIG, any recent events/outcomes and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

With the SIG we strive to get a better understanding of the value of design in the commercial sector, including closely linked disciplines, such as branding, marketing, strategic design, design management and consumer psychology. Design and the value of it has been a subject of study for many years and from many different disciplines (ranging from product design to marketing, business economics, service design, management, environmental psychology, (interior)architecture, etc), but in a rather fragmented way, and with each their own research methods. Recent developments, that have been accelerated by the pandemic, show that in practice services are becoming a part of retail and vice versa. It all starts from the need of the consumer and to be able to better serve him/her. It is only natural that the research world follows this trend. So, there is a need to bring these disciplines and related knowledge and insights together to calibrate terms and meanings, to understand each other and to work together. 

We organise an event every year. In between the DRS conferences we organise a colloquium with a specific theme. The first time we organized the colloquium in Londen (UAL) on the experiential theme. In 2025 we will organize our second colloquium, in Milan this time (Politecnico di Milano) on sustainability. Another event that we organise yearly is the online and free Retail Design Fest for students all over the world. We invite partitioners and academics to speak about retail design. Last year it was hosted and broadcasted from by Hasselt University and next academic year Boston University will host and broadcast it. 250 Students took part in the event last year. And last but not least, we try to have a special track at the DRS conference.

3. What are some of the benefits of being involved in the DRS through a SIG? How can those who are interested in becoming part of your SIG learn more?

Since the SIG's start-up, our network has only grown. We started with a team of senior researchers but soon some PhD students joined us. Now, at every event we organise, we notice that our network is growing. We have a newsletter and we meet online every two months to network and share knowledge. We are a young, dynamic SIG that is also still a bit searching for how we can share more knowledge apart from our events. 

There are different ways to be part of our SIG. Of course, you can be an active member by organising events as a leader or sitting on the scientifc committee. Most of our participants attend our bi-monthly meetings. Besides, it is also just nice to have a network of like-minded people.

 DRS Digital Library Picks

As a first paper out of the DRS digital library I chose “Interaction design and service design: Expanding a comparison of design disciplines., Nordes 2007: Design Inquiries, 27-30 May, University of Arts, Craft, and Design, Stockholm, Sweden, by Stefan Holmlid.” I chose this paper because this is also a first attempt to compare two disciplines, interaction design and service design, and look for common ground. With our SIG, we also want to bridge different design disciplines: retail design, service design and hospitality design. In practice, these dsiciplines overlap but not really in research. 

A second paper comes from Guida and Finesso: The Brand as a Place. For a Model Interpreting Identity in the Digital Age., in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. This paper explores brands and spaces. When we buy items or use services or come into contact with any expression of a brand, we come into contact with its being. Whether these are points of sale, events, websites, packaging and products, touchpoints help the consumer enter the world of the brand and experience it. It charges that brands should become worlds that people like to interact with, that they come to love. That, I think, is the future of brands.

Thirdly, “Retail Design and Sensory Experience: Design Inquiry of Complex Reality, in Durling, D., Bousbaci, R., Chen, L, Gauthier, P., Poldma, T., Roworth-Stokes, S. and Stolterman, E (eds.), Design and Complexity - DRS International Conference 2010, 7-9 July, Montreal, Canada” is chosen. The key factors found are (1) visual cues are most evident in retail interiors; (2) non-visual stimulations are evident in design narratives revealing emotional domains; (3) interior detailing appear to impact all senses. This indicates what to think about in the future. We are sensory beings and responding to this deeply enriches our experience.

As a fourth paper selected is “Design for Future Retailing: an investigation into the changing status of city-basedretailers in the UK, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland, by Huang and Hands.” This paper shows the transforming consumer behaviour patterns of today and links these with city lifestyle transformations. In other words, retail is the mirror of society, making it a very dynamic discipline.

A last paper that reflect current trends is the paper “Integrating Sustainability Literacy into Design Education, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom, by Quam.” The papers states that sustainability should universally be integrated into design education programs and their curricula. I fully agree with this. We need our future designer to be aware of and knowledgeable about how to take better care of our planet and everything living on it. Within our SIG we put extra attention to this topic. It will also be the theme of our next colloquium.

We’re kicking off our 2024 DRSelects series with new articles from the convenors of the DRS’ Special Interest Groups. Our first article comes from Scott Schmidt, convenor of the Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group (PoGoSIG). Keep reading to learn more about Scott, PoGoSIG and highlights from the DRS Digital Library around design and policy.

Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

My name is Scott Schmidt, and I serve as founding Chair for the Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group (PoGoSIG) in the Design Research Society. I am an Adjunct Lecturer at Georgetown University in the Design Management and Communications program. My current research examines the interplay between design, policy, planning and computation.

What is PoGoSIG? Are there any recent or upcoming events you’d like to share?

PoGoSIG aims to bring together researchers, designers and academics to critically examine, promote and explore the effect of design on innovation in policy and governance in an international context. We are always up to quite a bit of activity! Last year, our focus was on leading a track at the International Public Policy Association 6th International Conference on Public Policy. Currently, we are leading a track at the upcoming DRS2024 conference in Boston and waiting to see if several of our workshops have been accepted. We also recently launched a member reading group which keeps up with the latest articles on the subject and host a semiregular podcast, Design for Society.

What are some of the benefits of being involved in the DRS through a SIG? How can those who are interested in becoming part of PoGoSIG learn more?

Being involved in a SIG through DRS brings you closer to a niche community of individuals interested in the same thing as you which helps with collaboration. When you work in a particular area you tend to bump into many of the same individuals repeatedly and the SIG helps formalize those relationships. Also, most importantly, involvement in a SIG allows a direct path for individuals with new ideas to join in on the conversation. We are always welcoming new members and encourage anyone interested to get in touch at PoGoSIG.DRS@gmail.com to be added to our mailing list and get involved.

Please choose five items from the DRS Digital Library that you'd like to highlight.

The DRS Digital Library is an incredible resource for researchers, practitioners, and teachers. I use it often in my classes with students who are just becoming familiar with design research to find entry level articles and then progress to more foundational articles. There really is something for everyone! Choosing only five items from the library is difficult, as there are so many that should be highlighted. However, in anticipation of our PoGoSIG theme track at the upcoming DRS2024, I narrowed down the list to a brief survey of mostly recent DRS Biennial Conference Series articles that highlight the growing relationship between design and policy.

Design for public policy: Embracing uncertainty and hybridity in mapping future research (Published 06/2022)

Authors: Lucy Kimbell, Liz Richardson, Ramia Mazé, Catherine Durose

In this paper, the authors, leading voices in the field, assess the potential of ‘design for policy’ while also mapping out key areas of recent debate. This is a good place to start if you are new to the field. Be sure to also check out their equally excellent final report on the Design and Policy Network.

On the importance of an enlarged ‘design for policy’ framework within the public policy cycle (Published 06/2022)

Authors: Rui Monteiro, Bruno Giesteira, Anne Boddington, Cristina Farinha

Written by a great team of authors, this paper examines foundational elements related to the public policy cycle. It is a solid example of how key features of public policy studies can be viewed through the lens of design studies.

Design for Policy and Governance: New Technologies, New Methodologies (Published 06/2022)

Authors: Marzia Mortati, Scott Schmidt, Louise Mullagh

This paper is a product of PoGoSIG and in many ways connected to our 2022 Special Issue on the international practice of design for policy. The paper gives an overview of topics presented in our theme track on policy and design at DRS2022.

Design prototyping for policymaking (Published 08/2020)

Authors: Diana Pamela Villa Alvarez, Valentina Auricchio, Marzia Mortati

This group of authors has written a number of excellent papers on the subject within the conference series, so I suggest taking a look at all of them. This one recognises the value of prototyping as an instrument for policy development.

The introduction of design to policymaking: Policy Lab and the UK government (Published 06/2016)

Authors: Jocelyn Bailey, Peter Lloyd

Again, authored by two great voices, this paper is a bit older than the rest but can be seen as foundational in its examination of the relationship between policy and design.

1. Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I am Tincuta Heinzel, Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University, (UK) School of Design and Creative Arts, and elected member of the International Advisory Board of the DRS. With a background in visual arts and textiles design, cultural anthropology and ethnography, philosophy of arts and technology, as well as media studies, my research focuses on the way material and digital assemblies are informing designers’ way of working, as well as society’s ways of functioning. I am interested in arts and design epistemologies, and the philosophies of making. This is the reason why theory and practice are playing an equal place in my research. In the latest years my projects focused on electronic and reactive textiles, interactive and tangible interfaces, nanotechnologies and the new materialisms paradigms, as well as the interplay between cybernetics, AI, industry, and economy. I had the chance to work in different contexts (Romania, France, Germany, UK, USA, or Norway) and I have coordinated and curated a series of projects such as “Designano” (2020), “Utopian Cities, Programmed Societies” (http://programmed-societies.info) (2019-2020), “Attempts, Failures, Trials and Errors” (2017-2018) and “Repertories of (in)discreetness” (2015-2018).

1. Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

Recently, I became the convenor of the Interdisciplinary Textiles Design Research SIG within the DRS. The SIG brings together some of the main voices of contemporary textiles design research. The aim of the SIG is to encourages a systemic perspective that enables to reflect on textiles objects, environments, and contexts, to investigate textiles design processes and practices and the dynamics between them. 

The first event of the SIG is the organization of TEXTILE INTERSECTIONS Conference which will take place between 20-23 of September 2023 at Loughborough University London Campus (https://www.textile-intersections.com). TEXTILE INTERSECTIONS is a four-day conference, doctoral consortium and exhibition explores and celebrates the nature of collaborations in textile design research through six themes: Textiles and Architecture, Textiles and Sports, Biotextiles and Sustainable Textiles, Interactive and Performative Textiles, Advanced Textiles Materials and Processes, Critical Textiles. 

1. What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

DRS has proved over the years to be a dynamic platform for the promotion of design research. It creates the premises to connect design practices with design studies and design engineering and to bring together researchers from all over the world. The biannual DRS general conference, the establishment of SIGs, the organization of the Digital Library are just some of activities under the DRS’s umbrella which allow the exchange between peers and the support of young researchers. As a DRS member you will have the chance to discuss the latest issues related to design as profession, to contribute to the discourse related to the place of design in society, and by doing so, to become an active member of a discipline and profession whose actions have a direct impact on the way we live and we will live our lives.

1. Choose 5 items from the DRS Digital Library

The selection of texts from the DRS Digital Library was driven by several topics that I would like to highlight when it comes to design research. Therefore, there are more than just 5 papers.

INTERDISCIPLINARY TEXTILES DESIGN PRACTICES

The first topic is related to textiles, more precisely to electronic and reactive textiles. In the latest 20 years there have been major changes when it comes to the way we use and interact with textiles, and the electronic and reactive textiles played an important role in the development of interactive and physical computing design practices. E-textiles require a collaborative approach and knowledge in areas such as textiles, materials sciences, electronics, and programming. Moreover, the establishment of the Interdisciplinary Textiles Design Research SIG was driven by the need to bring together the multiple facets of textiles design research. There are many inspiring papers related to textiles in the DRS Digital Library. Here are some of them:

Anne Louise Bang – Fabrics in Function - Emotional Utility Values (2007) (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1157&context=nordes). 

Linnea Nilsson, Anna Vallgarda, Linda Worbin – Designing with Smart Textiles: a New Research Program (2011). (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1273&context=nordes).

Ramyah Gowrishankar, Katharina Bredies - The Music Sleeve: Fabric as an Electronic Interface Medium (2011) (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1281&context=nordes ).

Erin Lewis – Between yarns and Electrons: A Method for Designing Textural Expressions in Electromagnetic Smart Textiles (2021). (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1127&context=nordes0)  

Alice Buso, Holly McQuillan, Kaspar Jansen, Elvin Karana - The unfolding of textileness in animated textiles: An exploration of woven textile-forms (2022). (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3006&context=drs-conference-papers)

MATERIALS EXPERIENCES

The second topic I searched for in the DRS Digital Library is related to materials experiences perspective. Along with the “materials way of thinking” paradigm that defines the development of materials sciences since 1980s, the “materials experiences” paradigm helped to connect with the users’ perspective when it comes to the materials’ selection. One of the researchers that contributed to the development of this paradigm is Elvin Karana. Here is one of her texts:

Serena Camera, Elvin Karana - Experiential Characterization of Materials: toward a toolkit (2018)(https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1612&context=drs-conference-papers)

DESIGN AND PHILOSOPHY

Design and philosophy are maintaining close tights when it comes to design research in spite of the apparent tensions between theory and practice. As someone who had the chance to study under Pierre-Damien Huyghe at Paris 1 University and read his work on “Art and Industry. Philosophy of Bauhaus” (http://pierredamienhuyghe.fr/publicationsartetindustrie1.html ), I came to appreciate the philosophical stances of those involved in the establishment of the institution considered to be the first modern design’s cornerstone. From the DRS’s Digital Library, I selected three papers that discuss the relationship between design and philosophy. The first one is Betti Marenko’s inquiry into what can philosophy do for design? The second paper is Sander Mulder’s one on the place of Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy in defining responsibility in design.

Betti Marenko - Introduction: Design-ing and Creative Philosophies (2016) (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1495&context=drs-conference-papers)

Sander Mulder - Responsibility in design: applying the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon (2016).

(https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1358&context=drs-conference-papers)

Last, but not least I would like to mention the text of one of my colleagues, Avsar Gupinar, -Towards an object-oriented design ontology (2022). (https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3071&context=drs-conference-papers). 

OPEN DESIGN

The last area I am discussing here is that of open research and open publication. There is no doubt that we assist to a change in the model of science mediatisation and publication. For the best! Still, this situation doesn’t come without critical points to address. Here is a text that explores the application of open design framework in the development of a more-than-human and citizen science project.

Robert Phillips & Sharon Baurley: Exploring Open Design for the Application of Citizen Science; a Toolkit Methodology (2014)

https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2016&context=drs-conference-papers. 

1. Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research. 

My name is Paulina Contreras Correa. Since 2016, I have been serving as Director of Research at the Design School at Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile. And in 2022, I joined as a member of the International Advisory Council of the DRS.

My primary research interest lies in positioning the design discipline and design research as an articulator between institutions, academia, and businesses to enhance competitiveness and sustainable development of territories. This focus is evident in the projects found at www.tidem.udd.cl and www.redbios.udd.cl. Together with my research teams, we have been honored with recognitions for our applied research efforts, including the UDD Innovative Researcher Award in2018 and 2022, as well as the Chile Design Award in2022. The latter was awared for our contributions to a policy proposal to incorporate Design for innovation in the Regional Development Strategy ERD 2030. I invite you to review our work further in this publication https://repositorio.udd.cl/items/f9de64c4-cc58-46ae-8894-3d22b2580cc6

2. Could you talk about the initiatives you’re involved with in the DRS and any upcoming events you’d like to share?

My initial interest as a member of the IAC, with the support of UDD and the institutions I collaborate with, is to strengthen design research and DRS in the region and promote design research among undergraduate students in Latin America.

3. What do you see as the benefits of being involved with the DRS and how can those interested become more involved in the Society?

Participation in DRS provides an open platform for dialogue and international collaboration. I value its mission greatly, particularly its commitment to connecting multicultural and interdisciplinary design research groups dedicated to the discipline of Design and its essential role in addressing global challenges.

The networking opportunities provided by DRS through their Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are noteworthy. They enable to actively partake in building interdisciplinary global communities, thereby expanding the horizons of design research. Additionally, access to resources like the Design Library platform, along with consistent updates on design research activities and events from around the world, are immensely valuable.

But the primary revenue lies in the opportunity to collaborate for the advancement of design research.

DRSelects: Exploring the History of Design Research through the DRS Design Library 

Diving into the digital library of the Design Research Society has been a captivating journey to the core of design research. On this platform, documents and publications dating back to the first DRS conference in 1971 coexist alongside current research primarily sourced from the biennial DRS conferences. 

Beyond being a mere repository, this platform is a constantly evolving space that mirrors the growth of the field of design research. While navigating this user-friendly interface, one can observe the dedication and collective effort of numerous professionals, designers, and researchers who have contributed to building and strengthening the field of design research. 

This platform inspired me to delve into the valuable historical record of design research. Article by article, this digital library enables us to stand on the shoulders of giants and engage in conversations with pioneering researchers as well as our contemporaries. In my exploration, I selected five articles that capture the evolution of the design research field. 

In the article "Mapping Design Knowledge: 36 Years of Design Studies" (Burns et al., 2016), we are led into a profound reflection on the relationship between research, knowledge, theory, and the practice of design. This exploration of 36 years of writings in Design Studies (from 1979 onward) traces the evolution of central themes and analyzes the essence of design research, knowledge, and theory. From this analysis, future challenges also emerge, such as the need to develop a unique epistemology for the discipline. 

The article "Design Research: Towards a History" (Margolin, 2010) offers us a glimpse into the development of design research, highlighting the formation of the Design Research Society and the global expansion of this research. Similar to Burns et al. (2016), it also underscores the challenge of unifying discourse in a rapidly evolving field. 

A similar challenge is highlighted by Atkinson and Oppenheimer (2016) in "Design Research – History, Theory, Practice: Histories for Future - Focused Thinking." The article emphasizes the need for collaboration between design historians and researchers to enhance the quality of design work and promote ethical and sustainable design practices. 

When exploring the current landscape of design research, Rodgers and Yee (2016) emphasize the values of plurality and interdisciplinarity present in the field. This diversity gives rise to a wide range of theoretical approaches, methods, applications, and academic collaborations in design research. The authors also propose a thought-provoking list in which "good" design research should be disruptive, useful, messy, political, impactful, critical, enduring, not necessarily quantifiable, reflective, and clear. 

In "Communicating the Value of Design Research" (Lindley et al., 2022), the intrinsic ambiguity of design research is addressed, stemming from a complex and interdisciplinary space inhabited by diverse individuals. While there is a shared tacit understanding of the value of Design Research, a significant lack of consensus persists regarding where this value originates and how it manifests. 

In a world where other disciplines do not require justifying their research, pioneers in design research have forged and defended spaces for discussion and collaboration. These successive studies address the tension between the dynamic, diffuse, complex, and interdisciplinary nature of design research and its constant challenge of consensus-building and the consolidation of its own epistemology. Nevertheless, it's evident that throughout its history, the academic design community has grown both in size and cohesion. 

Navigating the diverse references that address this topic offers a profound, diverse, engaging, and captivating understanding that invites further study.

DRS Digital Library - DRS Biennial Conference Series: Mapping design knowledge: 36 years of Design Studies (designresearchsociety.org)

DRS Digital Library - DRS Biennial Conference Series: Design Research: Towards a History (designresearchsociety.org)

DRS Digital Library - DRS Biennial Conference Series: Introduction: Design Research – History, Theory, Practice: Histories for Future - Focused Thinking (designresearchsociety.org)

DRS Digital Library - DRS Biennial Conference Series: Design Research is Alive and Kicking... (designresearchsociety.org)

DRS Digital Library - DRS Biennial Conference Series: Communicating the value of design research (designresearchsociety.org)

 Please introduce yourself, your role in the DRS and your research.

I am Rachel Cooper, I am currently President of DRS, an honour that as a graduating design student over 40 years ago, I would never have perceived possible. Especially because when I graduated the Design Research Society was in its early years. I am a Distinguished Professor of Design Management and Policy at Lancaster University, where I formed ImaginationLancaster in 2006.   Imagination is an open and exploratory design-led research centre conducting applied and theoretical research into people, products, places, and their interactions.   When I formed Imagination, I specifically didn't use the term design in its title because I want our research to continually push the boundaries of design.

My own research interests cover design thinking; design management; design policy; and across all sectors of industry operating in the physical and digital world, a specific interest of mine is design for wellbeing and socially responsible design. I am series editor of the Routledge series Design for Social Responsibility and also founding editor of The Design Journal.

Choose 5 items from the DRS Digital Library

The DRS Digital Library is an amazing resource, especially if you are interested like me on the transformation and development of design research over the past 50 years. Hence, I choose to look back at the first conference, organized by Reg Talbot in Manchester in 1971, the proceedings were edited by my predecessor as President of DRS Nigel Cross. The focus of the conference was User Participation, and it was interesting to learn how much effort they put into designing the conference for delegate participation, much, if not more than we do today, and that the conference was recorded so that participants could watch again. 

The first speaker was Rayner Banham who said ‘'Participation', in any radical sense, is about giving all the people access to the tools, resources and power which have been the jealously guarded prerogatives of the professionals.’  We are still working on participation today, through participatory design, co-design etc.

There are papers on participation research in urban planning, in architecture, in automotive and in medicine. Alongside this discourse, there was  also discussion on the socio-technical issues of computer-aided design techniques.

Nicholas Negroponte's paper explores the bridges necessary between environmental hardware and computing software to achieve a 'res- ponsive' architecture. The Architecture Machine Group at MIT concerned itself with aspects of artificial intelligence in the context of architectural design. He identified three aspects of intelligence which the environment must possess - recognising, responding, and learning - and discusses alternative examples of achieving these through computation.  Today everyone it seems is concerned about Artificial Intelligence but with much more concern about the pervasive nature it is having on  society and economies.

There are many more names we recognise, such as Bill Mitchell (who I had the pleasure to spend time with at MIT Design Lab in 2006). Bill’s paper covered experiments with participation-oriented computer systems in urban planning and architecture. While Chris Evans discussed doctors who ‘when they are diagnosing ulcers, employ very simple algorithms. Yet they take seven or more years of training to acquire these simple algorithms’. Not today 50 years on.

The conference was summarised by two well known people.  John Chris Jones, the first professor of design at the Open University, he commented that ‘every professional role shrinks us into being simple algorithms. If we can move away from being professionals, we will be moving into personal growth, rather than personal shrinkage. ‘

Robert Jungk, Austrian writer, journalist, historian, and peace campaigner, who later in 1986 he set up the International Futures Library in Salzburg. He said ‘What I missed… was discussion of what kind of changes in people might occur in the next twenty or thirty years. When we talk about participation, we have been talking about the people who are in control today. If we could have a new Karl Marx who would base his vision of a new social order not only on economic change, but also on psychological or anthropological change, then I think we might be getting somewhere.’ He said what he missed was the political dimension of the discussion.

The whole set of papers in the proceedings are fascinating to read and I urge you to take a look, many topics we are concerned with today are covered; socio-technical and socio-political issues, the environment, user participation, and finally algorithms.  What I found fascinating too is the discipline breadth of the participants this included design, building science, engineering, architecture, political sciences, environmental sciences.  As DRS has matured and grown, we have of course become a large community of design related disciplines, it would be great to have another cross disciplinary conference to yet again engage with a diverse community to look at planetary and human futures. 

The people involved in this first conference played a key role in the future of the discipline, the DRS now relies on a new generation of academics, to take us forward. This is what membership of the DRS community can do, help us all think about how to apply design research to help humanity and the planet flourish in the next 50 years.

To share research interests, put faces to names within the DRS governance and highlight contents of the Digital Library, the Design Research Society is launching a new series called ‘DRSelects’. As part of this series, a DRS International Advisory Council or Executive Board member will share a selection of pieces from the Digital Library that relate to any subject of their choosing. Through their exploration, they will share a few words about the works they’ve chosen and how it relates to their research and broader DRS initiatives. In this edition, we have reflections from International Advisory Council Member Sampsa Hyysalo.

Expanding participatory design and codesign in time, space and scope 

Design researchers and practitioners alike have come to grasp that it is a great idea to involve users and other stakeholders in design. The practice of conducting codesign in face-to-face workshops supported by work analysis, visioning and design ideation tools became mainstream during the first decade of this millennium. But just as it did so, codesign and participatory design already started to change for good. All the insights about early stage f2f codesign continue to be highly relevant, and the DRS Digital Library holds a nice trail of conference papers on key themes in the expansion of codesign and participatory design. Botero et al. ‘Expanding Design Space: Design-In-Use Activities and Strategies’ from DRS 2020 opens up the themes of why and how participatory design should and could be moved from early concept design to continued design-in-use at the sites of use. For one, this addresses the common dilemma in participatory design efforts: that they tend to initiallly thrive but then wither once the designers leave – so maybe the designers should not leave! It equally addresses users’ difficulties during concept design in anticipating how exactly their work (or everyday life) ought to be changed – so maybe instead we should give them tools to try in their own settings so they can elaborate better during the codesign process! Continuing this line of work, Saad-Sulonen et al.’s 2021 Nordes paper ‘On DIY cloth face masks and Scalar relationships in design’ traces collective design through a taxonomy of what all users have been found to design during use, and in so doing, shows the power of temporally, spatially and actor-wise expanded design approaches. 

Parallel to the collective design being organized differently in time and space is of course the whole movement of designer-user collectives in digital and digital-physical design. The DRS Digital Library holds great many good examples of this from different areas of design, but I decided to highlight a recent piece from 2020 DRS by Särmäkari & Vänskä ‘Open-Source Philosophy in Fashion Design: Contesting Authorship Conventions and Professionalism’ as it shows how these alternative ways of organizing (co)design are now invading even the last bastions of authorship-prone-design.  

Finally, the expansion of participatory design has not only been in how it is re-orchestrated, but also in the nature of issues it addresses. Codesign and participatory design have been used to solve problems and raise issues in countless empirical domains. But recently, they have crossed with long-term sustainability transitions that require typically hundreds of intertwined societal actions to proceed. Such change cannot be designed. There is no one solution or any one vision that will fix the problems. Yet design has much to contribute as the DRS 2018 piece by Gaziulusoy & Erdoğan ‘design as a catalyst for sustainability transitions’ illustrates. Furthermore, codesign for transitions has proven particularly vital in orchestrating diverse stakeholders in knowledge sharing, pathway building and envisioning across perspectives and competencies in typically several months long serial processes. An early piece on this work can be found in the same DRS 2018 proceedings Hyysalo et al. (2018) Catalysing Pathway Creation for Transition Governance. 

I purposefully made all my five picks from DRS Digital Library from among the works from Aalto University, just to demonstrate the power of DRS Digital Library – there is so much good material there that most of the main contours of any changing subfield can be represented from just the contributions of a single school.  

Sampsa Hyysalo is professor of codesign at Aalto University, department of Design. His research examines designer-user relations in sociotechnical change. This includes interest in areas such as participatory design, codesign, open and user innovation, open design, peer knowledge creation, citizen science, and particularly their deployment in furthering environmental sustainability. Sampsa is DRS international advisory council member and regularly chooses DRS conferences and affiliated journals as the venues to present and publish his work. 

Botero, A., Kommonen, K., and Marttila, S. (2010) Expanding Design Space: Design-In-Use Activities and Strategies, in Durling, D., Bousbaci, R., Chen, L, Gauthier, P., Poldma, T., Roworth-Stokes, S. and Stolterman, E (eds.), Design and Complexity - DRS International Conference 2010, 7-9 July, Montreal, Canada.  https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2010/researchpapers/18 

Gaziulusoy, A., and Erdoğan Öztekin, E. (2018) Design as a Catalyst for Sustainability Transitions, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland.  https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.292

Hyysalo, S., Perikangas, S., Marttila, T., and Auvinen, K. (2018) Catalysing Pathway Creation for Transition Governance, in Storni, C., Leahy, K., McMahon, M., Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Design as a catalyst for change - DRS International Conference 2018, 25-28 June, Limerick, Ireland. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2018/researchpapers/71/

Joanna Saad-Sulonen, Andrea Botero, Mille Rosendahl Hansen (2021) On Diy Cloth Face Masks And Scalar Relationships In Design, No 9 (2021): Nordes 2021: Matters Of Scale, Issn 1604-9705 https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/nordes/nordes2021/exploratorypapers/15/

 Särmäkari, N., and Vänskä, A. (2020) Open-Source Philosophy in Fashion Design: Contesting Authorship Conventions and Professionalism, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2020/researchpapers/46/

To share research interests, put faces to names within the DRS governance and highlight contents of the Digital Library, the Design Research Society is launching a new series called ‘DRSelects’. As part of this series, a DRS International Advisory Council or Executive Board member will share a selection of pieces from the Digital Library that relate to any subject of their choosing. Through their exploration, they will share a few words about the works they’ve chosen and how it relates to their research and broader DRS initiatives. First up, we have Stella Boess, Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology and DRS International Advisory Council member. 

To kick off this new series in which DRS International Advisory Council and Executive Board members explore the DRS Digital Library (DL), I’m happy to dive right in. I take it as an opportunity to seek out some papers that interest me in looking back and forward. In browsing the DL, it inspires me to understand better the positioning in design research of my own research questions, which revolve around the relationship between design and use, inclusivity and emerging technologies.

The DRS Digital Library, launched in 2020, mainly through the dedicated efforts of Darren Umney and Peter Lloyd, has some excellent functionalities to find, download and reference DRS proceedings and other design research sources over the years. Research papers are directly downloadable and citable, evidencing a commitment to open science. 

By digitalising DRS conference proceedings and related documents dating back to 1971, The Digital Library makes available an important part of the history of the relatively young discipline of design research – right back to the first DRS conference proceedings. From those initial conceptual and methodical origins that engaged broadly with the relevance of design, the design research field went on for some time to engage much more with the industrial context of design - how to understand and improve it, and how to understand product user needs. An example might be Chamorro-Koc, Popovicand Emmison (2004) who sought to describe the context of use and user's experience through an exploratory study in the product design domain. While the scope widened again, valuable efforts still continue to define and improve the relationship between design and use, for example in studies of how the user is represented in the practice of architects (Van der Linden, Dong, and Heylighen, 2016). Acharya and Wu (2020)’s paper, in contrast, is a highly evocative and personal example of a completely different approach to design research. Perhaps it is just as important an approach: using design itself as a catalyst to reveal circumstances and dynamics in society.

The DRS Digital Library also reflects the DRS conference series’ ambition to champion both quality and inclusiveness. Quality is sought by striving to conduct in-depth as well as fair review procedures. Inclusiveness is sought by embracing the breadth of topics and approaches of interest to design researchers. This has not always gone smoothly, as Leitão and Noel (2020) explain in their editorial of the new Pivot conference series:

“Usually, designs and designers from colonized countries, marginalized and indigenous communities and minorities (the so-called Global South) are judged as “less good” than their counterparts from the GlobalNorth —probably because they are not completely aligned with the “grammar” and values of the Western template. We started in this line of work at the DRS2018 conference, when we chaired (with Dr. Aija Freimane) the track “Not just from the Centre: Multiple voices in Design”.”

I followed the sessions in this track at DRS2018, along with many others, and learned new perspectives. I look forward to seeing future work in the DL that explores these avenues further. Turtle (2022) highlights a related key challenge for the future, which is to investigate “the increasing complexity and dynamism of (socio)technical systems that actively learn”, through AI. Turtle proposes “queering as a strategy that may help subvert existing sociotechnical systems and codings of hegemonic worldviews”. I look forward to seeing – and hopefully, participating in - future design research that develops strategies such as these. 

Happy to hand over the baton now to the next IAC member, and curious to hear of their research interests!

Stella Boess is Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology interested in inclusion in relation to designed systems in the areas of sustainability, mobility, health. She is a DRS International Advisory Council member and was one of the three chairs of the DRS2020 conference, chairing the paper review procedure. She regularly chooses DRS conferences as the forum to publish – for example her and a colleague’s recent paper “Values arising from participatory inclusive design in a complex process”. (Jansen and Boess, 2022). 

References

Acharya, K., and Wu, Y. (2020) “Where is your other half?”: A Wedding shaped by the Profile, Politics and Potential of the Indo-China Border, in Boess, S., Cheung, M. and Cain, R. (eds.), Synergy - DRS International Conference 2020, 11-14 August, Held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2020.220

Boess, S., and Jansen, F. (2022) Values arising from participatory inclusive design in a complex process, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.704

Chamorro-Koc, M., Popovic, V., and Emmison, M. (2004) Context of Use and User's Experience: An Exploratory Study in the Product Design Domain., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/157

Leitão, R.,and Noel, L.(2020) Pivot 2020: Editorial, in Leitão, R., Noel, L. and Murphy, L. (eds.), Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers - DRS Pluriversal Design SIG Conference, 4 June, held online. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2020.002

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