Agreements for collective real-time sketching practice in design research

Paper i 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.