Agreements for collective real-time sketching practice in design research
Paper in proceeding, 2026

Designers often converse without speech, for example, through sketches and artifacts. These conversations traverse across layers through gestures, time, and materialities. In this paper, we report on a demonstration at a design conference, where we brought together the practices of two designers into a collaborative real-time sketching environment. Through this unfolding exchange, we explore how sketching can move beyond individual expression to become a collective emergent record of thought and relation. The demo drew together digital and physical media while listening to a theoretical prompt, in a shared conversation with the audience. From this process and its tensions, we derive a set of agreements and actions for designing collective layered sketching practices: considering voice, encouraging relationality, and supporting the embodied performative choreography of drawing together. In doing so, we propose sketching as a shared, relational practice of conversation and reflection within design research.

performance

feminism

sketching

live sketching

Author

Mafalda Samuelsson-Gamboa

University of Gothenburg

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering

Elvia Vasconcelos

Eindhoven University of Technology

Proceedings of Drs

23983132 (eISSN)

Vol. 2026


Edinburgh, United Kingdom,

Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)

Human Computer Interaction

Information Systems

Design

DOI

10.21606/drs.2026.787

More information

Latest update

6/16/2026