CARRIER BAG NARRATIVES FOR
MORE-THAN-HUMAN CARE
Rethinking Design, Maintenance, and Worldmaking in HCI
burcu nimet dumlu
hamed seiied alavi
sarah barns
berk göksenin tan
joseph lindley
takatoshi yoshida
kouta minamizawa
13-14 June 2026 / Singapore
designing interactive systems 2026 conference workshop
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
​Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) has long been shaped by narratives of progress, innovation, and problem-solving. These “heroic arc” stories, echoed in Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, frame technology as a tool of conquest, disruption, or transformation. While productive, such narratives often obscure other ways of designing and living: those rooted in maintenance, repair, care, and more-than-human entanglements.
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​Through collaborative storytelling, annotation, and speculative narrative exercises, participants will engage with ongoing projects brought by the group, including their own and those of others, to explore how narratives actively shape what counts as design work in HCI.
What does it mean to design-with, think-with, and care-with more-than-human agencies?
How might care-centered narratives challenge dominant progress-driven imaginaries?
What futures emerge when HCI embraces the slow, messy, and generative practices of care and repair while staying with ongoing relations?
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​This workshop invites participants to experiment with alternative narrative forms for HCI, inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s notion of carrier bag theory of fiction (stories centered not on heroes and breakthroughs, but on gathering, holding, sustaining, and caring). Drawing on feminist and posthuman scholarship (including María Puig de la Bellacasa, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad), the workshop approaches care as situated, ambivalent, and political. We attend to how technologies, infrastructures, environments, and living beings require ongoing maintenance, and how care unfolds through relational, temporal, and material practices rather than discrete design outcomes.
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​We welcome researchers, designers, artists, and practitioners from HCI, STS, philosophy, architecture, XR, and the arts who are interested in narrative as a design method and care as a mode of worldmaking. Participants are encouraged to bring a project, research question, or conceptual framework to collectively re-articulate through care-oriented narrative practices.
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WHO WE INVITE?
We invite 15–20 participants from diverse research, design, and practice-based communities, including but not limited to:
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Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human–Building Interaction (HBI)
Interaction, experience, service, and systems design
Extended Reality (VR, AR, MR) research and design, particularly work engaging embodiment, spatial interaction, and multisensory experience
Architecture, interior architecture, urban design, and media architecture, especially practices concerned with spatial experience, infrastructures, and environmental systems
Design research and STS, including work on care, maintenance, repair, sustainability, and more-than-human or multispecies perspectives
Digital arts, speculative design, and material practices that explore narrative, worldmaking, or alternative design imaginaries
Participants apply by submitting a short description of an ongoing project, research question, or topic of interest using either the ACM article format or the ACM pictorial format. Submissions will be collected via the official workshop website.
There is no minimum page requirement. Submissions should be no longer than 4 pages, excluding references, and may describe empirical, practice-based, theoretical, or conceptual work. Submissions do not need to present finished results.
Accepted submissions will be used as shared material during the workshop and will not be archived or formally published.
The workshop welcomes researchers, practitioners, and artists, including early-career researchers and PhD students, who are interested in rethinking dominant design narratives and experimenting with care-oriented, relational, and more-than-human approaches. We also welcome participants who approach these perspectives with curiosity, ambivalence, or scepticism, and who are interested in exploring what productive tensions and frictions might offer collective reflection. Participants are highly encouraged to bring an ongoing or recent project, which may be practice-based, empirical, theoretical, or conceptual. Projects may take the form of design artifacts, spatial interventions, research studies, critical or theoretical frameworks. These contributions will serve as shared material for collective annotation, narrative re-articulation, and care-oriented reflection. Multiple contribution formats will be supported (e.g., text, images, diagrams, videos, or physical artifacts). Accessibility and access needs will be collected in advance to ensure inclusive participation.
SCHEDULE
Peer annotation exercise I: Diagnosis (30 min)
Participant lightning presentations
(45–60 min)
Welcome and introduction (15 min)
9:30-12:00
DIAGNOSIS AND SURFACING
Brief talks (5–8 minutes each) introducing:
Narrative as a design method,
Care, maintenance, and repair in HCI,
Carrier bag narratives as an alternative to heroic design stories
*Exact timings will be fine-tuned based on number of participants.
Participants present a project, artifact, or research question (2–3 minutes each), focusing on what is at stake rather than polished outcomes.
MORNING SESSION
Participants annotate each other’s submissions to surface dominant narratives, assumptions, and implicit values
Short provocations by organisers
(30–40 min)
Workshop goals, participant introductions, outline of the day.
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES
Re-reading the same materials through care-focused prompts (maintenance, holding, dependency, more-than-human agency).
Collective synthesis and discussion
(60 min)
AFTERNOON SESSION
13:30 - 16:30
INTERVENTION AND REWRITING
Peer annotation exercise II: Care-oriented re-reading (60 min)
Material and narrative re-articulation
(60 min))
Closing discussion and next steps
(30 min)
Small-group work using prompt cards and simple material probes to re-write or re-compose narratives.
Sharing re-articulated narratives, reflecting on shifts in language, agency, and responsibility.
Reflection on how care-oriented narratives can inform design research, teaching, and practice beyond the workshop
Anticipated outcomes may include:
A shared vocabulary for articulating care, maintenance, and relationality in HCI
Rewritten project narratives that foreground interdependence rather than innovation alone
A lightweight toolkit (prompt cards, worksheet templates, or zine draft)
A collective reflection on narrative as a method, not just representation
These outcomes are significant in that they offer concrete methodological alternatives to dominant progress-driven design narratives, supporting more responsible and sustainable design practices in HCI.
INCLUSION AND ACCESSIBILITY CONSIDERATION
Participation does not require advanced technical skills
Activities are designed to accommodate diverse disciplinary and cultural backgrounds
Written, visual, and verbal modes of participation are supported
Clear instructions and flexible pacing will be used
Physical materials will be lightweight and easy to manipulate
Participants may contribute at their own comfort level in group discussions
Accessibility and access needs will be collected in advance, and reasonable accommodations will be made where possible. The organisers will remain attentive to participants’ comfort, energy levels, and differing modes of engagement during the workshop.
PLANS FOR DISSEMINATING WORKSHOP RESULTS BEYOND DIS 2026
Post-workshop dissemination may include:
A publicly shared PDF (booklet) or zine documenting the outcomes.
A workshop report on the website and/or institutional repositories.
A follow-up pictorial or reflective article might be submitted to an HCI venue.
Use of outcomes as teaching and research materials in future courses and workshops.
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE ORGANIZERS
Burcu Nimet Dumlu is a designer-researcher and PhD candidate whose work spans HCI, architecture, and design research. She investigates care, maintenance, and more-than-human relations through narrative-driven workshops, speculative artifacts, and embodied methods situated in physical and virtual spaces.
Burcu Nimet Dumlu
Keio University
Hamed S. Alavi
University of Amsterdam
With a PhD in Computer Science from EPFL and postdoctoral research at UCL, he is a tenured assistant professor and founding member of the Digital Interaction Lab at the University of Amsterdam. He previously led an educational technology startup for eight years. His research examines human–environment relations and intelligent spaces.
Dr. Sarah Barns is a multidisciplinary scholar-practitioner with two decades of experience in digital urbanism, policy, and creative practice. A Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT, she explores platform civics and climate vulnerability. She authored Platform Urbanism (2019) and co-founded STORYBOX.CO, advancing civic storytelling and cultural collaboration.
Sarah Barns
RMIT University
Berk Göksenin Tan has a PhD from Koç University working at the intersection of human–building interaction, more-than-human design, and critical heritage studies. He examines heritage environments to understand how buildings’ agency, values, care, and maintenance shape spatial and technological adaptation through interpretive and experimental approaches.
Berk Göksenin Tan
Koc University
Joseph Lindley
Lancaster University
Joseph Lindley is a Senior Research Fellow at Lancaster University where he leads Design Research Works, a project exploring the value of design research in addressing emerging technologies. He has published widely on More-Than-Human design, Speculative Design and World Building, and emerging issues around Artificial Intelligence.
Takatoshi Yoshida
Keio University
He completed a PhD in Information Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo in 2023, following an MSc from the MIT Media Lab in 2019. He has worked on interactive exhibitionis at Miraikan and is currently with the KMD Embodied Media Project, focusing on experience design for intelligent living environments.
He received his PhD in Information Science and Technology from the University of Tokyo in 2010. He directs the Embodied Media Project at Keio University Media Design, conducting research on embodied media, haptic design, and superhuman sports, and serves as a project manager in the Moonshot Cybernetic Being program.
Kouta Minamizawa
Keio University
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