Center for Design, CAMD Northeastern University

The summer season may mean that Boston’s campus is quieter than usual, but the Center for Design stays busy by attending conferences all around the world. 🌍 The Design Thinking Research Symposium 15 starts later this week in Lisbon! PhD student Maria Fernanda Ramirez will be presenting a paper on behalf of the City of Boston Participatory Budgeting research team. 🎉

📄 Paper:
“Using AI to Support the Design of Participatory Budgeting in Boston”
Maria Fernanda Ramirez, Mariana Villamizar, Estefania Ciliotta, Michael Arnold Mages
https://dtrs15.belasartes.ulisboa.pt/

comes to a close today! Members of the Center for Design and the Northeastern University College of Arts, Media and Design had a great showing at the conference, presenting to and connecting with the international community of design researchers.

Congrats to all on their hard work! And congrats especially to Sofía Bosch Gómez for receiving the Award for Emerging Design Research Leadership from the Design Research Society in memory of Professor Rachel Cooper.

We will surely be back for !

Data has become the default language of business communication. With generative AI entering the workflow, the assumption is spreading that visualization is becoming a commodity. However, the world’s largest conference on human-computer interaction tells a different story. Read our newest Medium article to hear CfD Founding Director Paolo Ciuccarelli’s observations from CHI 2026, held recently in Barcelona.

AI can make your charts. It may not make them work Notes from CHI 2026 on the future of data visualization, in business and practice

takes place next week in Edinburgh! Members of the Center for Design have contributed to five theme tracks, seven papers and one conversation in the conference’s program. Congratulations to all! 🎉

🟠 Theme tracks:

1.5 Restaging Doing and Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design
Corresponding Chairs: Tau Lenskjold, Li Jönsson
Co-Chairs: Alex Wilkie, Pablo Hermansen, Martin Carlos Tironi, Sissel Olander, Laura Forlano

4.2 Reframing Practice: Architectural Design Research and the Expanding Role of the Architect in Multidisciplinary Collaboration
Corresponding Chairs: Manuela Triggianese, Juan Sádaba
Co-Chairs: Lee Moreau, Paolo Ciuccarelli, Kees Kaan, Georg Vrachliotis, María Risueño

5.2 More-than-Human Design in the Real World: Resistance, Regeneration, and Radical Solidarity
Corresponding Chairs: Cristina Zaga, Iohanna Nicenboim
Co-Chairs: Elisa Giaccardi, Joseph Lindley, Arne Berger, Claudia Garduño García, Laura Forlano

7.2 Toward LongevityTech Cities: Designing Age-Inclusive Urban Futures
Corresponding Chairs: Sheung-Hung Lee, Sofie Hodara
Co-Chairs: Satu Miettinen, Bruce Hanington, Carla Sedini, Andreas Sicklinger, Miso Kim, Joseph F. Coughlin

8.1 Public Design Education: Plural Practices and Situated Teaching and Learning
Corresponding Chairs: Luis García, Lara Salinas Alejandre
Co-Chairs: Sofía Bosch Gómez, Geert Brinkman, Francesco Leoni, Estefania Ciliotta Chehade

🟠 Papers:

Care-ful reorientations in design
Irem Tekogul, Laura Forlano, Carlos Teixeira
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2252

Design education in multicultural contexts: Student perceptions of cultural inclusivity in the classroom
Jasmine Yiming Sun, Najla Mouchrek
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2713

Occupying the sensors: Underwater sound in an urban river
Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Dietmar Offenhuber
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2397

Designing with care for the end of life: a reflective co-design workshop using material facilitation
Chenfei Yu, Michael Arnold Mages
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.462

Mediating Borders Through Sound: Sonic Boundary Objects in Infrastructural Listening
Paula Martin Rivero, Dietmar Offenhuber
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2336

A Design Continuum for Autographic Sonification
Kajetan Enge, Dietmar Offenhuber, Sara Lenzi
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.750

Sustained Memory for Public Design in Latin America
Sofia Bosch Gomez, Luca Gaspari, Tina Rosado
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.753

🟠 Conversations:

Exploring Temporalities for Transformative Futures
Dan Lockton, Femke Coops, Chris Speed, Laurene Vaughan, Kristina Lindström, Ann Light, Laura Forlano, Colin M. Gray, Sarah Teasley

CfD Founding Director Paolo Ciuccarelli has joined the Advisory Council of The Doodle Time Institute! This institute is a global research lab dedicated to understanding time as a core driver of human and organizational wellbeing. Stay tuned to see what becomes of this new connection! 💡

Learn more on their website:

The Doodle Time Institute The Doodle Time Institute is a global research lab exploring humanity’s most undervalued resource: time.

Meet our Spring/Summer 2026 Student-in-Residence! 👋 Amelie Eng is a rising junior studying Computer Science and Design in the Northeastern University Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Northeastern University College of Arts, Media and Design.

Her residency project, entitled “From Civic to Clinical: A Data Design Residency,” is in partnership with GoInvo and CAMD Co-op, featuring Juhan Sonin and Isabel Dmitruk as mentors. The residency encompasses a variety of data visualization projects that make statistics about healthcare, civic policy, economics and other institutional behavior more readily available and understandable for everyday people.

Keep up the great work, Amelie! Details about the different projects she has worked on so far are available at the link below.

https://camd.northeastern.edu/featured-work/from-civic-to-clinical-a-data-design-residency/

Ken Nakagaki of The University of Chicago's Actuated Experience Lab (AxLab) is visiting the Northeastern University College of Arts, Media and Design next month to give a talk about his lab’s work. Join us on Thursday, June 11, at 11 a.m. to attend Nakagaki’s presentation about a series of AxLab’s latest research projects. These projects are themed around actuated tools and devices for creativity, tangible and user-agentic interaction with robotic objects mediated via AI, and redefining our relationship with modern computing by adding friction.

Learn more: https://camd.northeastern.edu/events/actuated-experience-with-ken-nakagaki/

Over the past year, the research project in partnership with Scout Labs and the Knox County Health Clinic expanded significantly. After designing the Mobile Health Clinic and envisioning the services it may provide, the team moved on to create wellness kits, a digital dashboard and other health resources.

Check out Scout’s updated website to explore the different stages of this project, linked below.
🔗 https://scout.camd.northeastern.edu/work

Congrats to CfD core faculty member Michael Arnold Mages on the publication of his new book, “Somaesthetic Design!” 📖👏

This book, co-written with Stephen Neely, focuses on the experiencing body as a key source of design knowledge. It draws from embodied practices and performance traditions to give designers a shared vocabulary and framework for understanding, crafting and evaluating lived experience as it is felt and sustained in time.

“Somaesthetic Design” is available in print or open access at the link below. Add it to your summer reading list!

🔗 https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-8128-4/somaesthetic-design/

The Data Sonification Awards have announced the 2025-2026 winners! 🏆

Congratulations to CfD affiliate member Rahul Bhargava for winning in the Arts category with his project, “Data Drums: A Rhythmic Call to Action,” in collaboration with Marcus Santos and Lily Gaba.

The Data Sonification Awards initiative is a collaboration between the Data Sonification Archive, co-founded and co-curated by CfD Founding Director Paolo Ciuccarelli and affiliate member Sara Lenzi, and Duncan Geere from Loud Numbers. The awards recognize and celebrate the remarkable work of researchers and practitioners while promoting best practices across the field.

View the full list of this year’s winners: https://www.sonificationawards.org/winners-2526