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.