Call for papers

Healthcare presents some of the most complex and meaningful challenges for product design. As healthcare systems, technologies, and patient needs evolve, there is an increasing need for products and solutions that are safe, effective, accessible, inclusive, and responsive to diverse users. This track invites research and practice-based contributions exploring the role of design in improving healthcare products, experiences, and systems. We welcome design case studies, research-led projects, and critical reflections that demonstrate how design can address contemporary and emerging healthcare challenges.

Sub-themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Design and development of healthcare products and medical devices
• Design case studies and practice-based research in healthcare
• Inclusive and accessible healthcare design
• Design for ageing, disability, rehabilitation, and assistive technologies
• Patient-centred and caregiver-centred design
• Usability, ergonomics, and human factors in healthcare products
• Digital health and technology-enabled healthcare solutions
• Design for home-based and community healthcare
• Healthcare infrastructure, equipment, and care environments
• Emerging technologies and innovations in healthcare design

Product design is continually evolving in response to changing technologies, social contexts, and professional practices. This track invites contributions that examine how product design is taught, learned, understood, and theorised in this changing landscape. We welcome research and practice-based reflections on pedagogical approaches, curriculum development, design methods, and theoretical perspectives that contribute to the development of product design as a discipline. The track encourages critical discussions on preparing future designers while questioning and expanding the knowledge, values, and foundations that shape product design.

Sub-themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Product design education and curriculum development
• Innovative pedagogical approaches and learning experiences
• Design studio pedagogy and learning through making
• Teaching design methods, creativity, and problem-solving
• Theories, philosophies, and foundations of product design
• Design knowledge and ways of knowing
• Assessment and evaluation in product design education
• The role of emerging technologies and AI in product design education
• Industry–academia engagement and professional preparedness
• Critical and future perspectives on product design as a discipline

The track explores the evolving relationship between craft, technology, and culture. It examines craft resilience, hybridisation, and continuity through communities, traditional practices, and rural innovation, alongside new materials, processes, and fabrication techniques informed by product design knowledge. The track welcomes material-driven design studies, prototyping cultures, and making-based pedagogies, inviting forward-looking perspectives on how craft and emerging technologies together reshape design practice, learning, and education.

Sub-themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Material innovation and process innovation, and material-driven experimentation at the intersection of craft and design
• Craft hybridisation, where low tech and high tech meet
• Rural innovation, local practices, prototyping cultures, fabrication in learning
• Technology's role in craft-making, resilience
• Shifting perceptions of craft

Products are not isolated artefacts; they are embedded within networks of materials, technologies, manufacturing processes, markets, communities, infrastructures, behaviours, and ecosystems. As societies confront climate change, ecological degradation, resource constraints, social inequality, and economic uncertainty, product design has an increasingly important role to play in shaping how these systems evolve. This track explores design approaches that seek to create sustainable, resilient, and just futures across products and the wider systems surrounding them.

The track invites original research spanning individual products and services to systems, organisations, communities, and broader socio-technical systems, with particular interest in contributions addressing sustainable transitions. Within this broad scope, the track adopts a multidimensional perspective on design impact through the interconnected dimensions of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership, recognising that meaningful sustainability requires attention to human wellbeing, ecological integrity, economic resilience, justice, inclusion, and collaboration across the systems in which design operates.

Contributions may address, but are not limited to:

• Circular and regenerative design
• Responsible and ethical design
• Social innovation
• Sustainable materials and manufacturing
• Sustainable product-service systems
• Sustainable business models
• Sustainable transitions for climate challenges & planetary boundaries
• Approaches for evaluating the broader impacts of design

Design for play examines how physical objects, such as toys, board games, and puzzles; environments; and concepts of play can foster meaningful, engaging, and inclusive experiences for people of all ages. It considers play as a valuable medium for learning, creativity, social interaction, exploration, and overall wellbeing. The focus ranges from designing playful objects to creating environments and play theories that facilitate active participation, collective imagination, and sensory engagement. By connecting play theory with design practice, this theme encourages innovative approaches that address the physical, cognitive, emotional, and social needs of children, adults, and older adults, ultimately enhancing everyday life through purposeful and enjoyable play across contexts.

Submissions are invited under the following sub-themes, which may include, but are not limited to:

• Design of physical objects (toys, board games, and puzzles) for play for different age groups
• Playful environment and space design
• Physical play, health, and wellbeing
• Theories, methodologies, and frameworks for play
• Design of play experiences for diverse abilities
• Speculative futures of physical play
• Physical play-based approaches for training and skill development
• Physical play for global problem solving

As modern-day advanced technologies become embedded within products, designers face new questions around form-giving, product architecture, human interaction with physical products, and material selection. This track investigates how emerging technologies are reshaping the form, function, usability, desirability, prototyping, and manufacturing of physical products. It invites contributions exploring how these technologies are integrated into product design and development processes and how they alter consumer behaviour and physical user experience.

Sub-themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) embedded in physical products
• Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) enabled product design
• Internet of Things (IoT) enabled product design
• Smart product design
• Connected devices and product systems
• Wearable product design
• Sensor-integrated product design
• Physical human-machine interaction