Abstract
This paper explores the intersection of new materialism and co-design workshop practices, suggesting that design materials are not passive resources but active agents in collaborative meaning-making and future-making processes. Drawing on new materialist philosophy and care ethics, particularly the work of Barad, Haraway, and Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine how workshop artefacts such as canvases, sticky notes, tactile tools, and other ephemeral materials participate in and shape co-design processes and engender more care-focussed design futures. Through observations of co-design workshops in health futures contexts, we demonstrate how attending to material agency extends the value of workshops and forms sites of collaborative meaning and future making. In this paper we explore how materials actively constitute the social fabric of co-design work. This perspective builds on the material affordances of workshop assets and challenges human-centred design paradigms by recognising materials, environments, and other non-human actors as active participants in imagining and enacting futures.
Keywords
new materialism, co-design, material agency, care ethics
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.919
Citation
Coombs, G., and Heiss, L. (2026) Material Agencies in Co-Design: A New Materialist Perspective on Workshop Practices, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.919
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Material Agencies in Co-Design: A New Materialist Perspective on Workshop Practices
This paper explores the intersection of new materialism and co-design workshop practices, suggesting that design materials are not passive resources but active agents in collaborative meaning-making and future-making processes. Drawing on new materialist philosophy and care ethics, particularly the work of Barad, Haraway, and Puig de la Bellacasa, we examine how workshop artefacts such as canvases, sticky notes, tactile tools, and other ephemeral materials participate in and shape co-design processes and engender more care-focussed design futures. Through observations of co-design workshops in health futures contexts, we demonstrate how attending to material agency extends the value of workshops and forms sites of collaborative meaning and future making. In this paper we explore how materials actively constitute the social fabric of co-design work. This perspective builds on the material affordances of workshop assets and challenges human-centred design paradigms by recognising materials, environments, and other non-human actors as active participants in imagining and enacting futures.