Almost exactly two years ago, I began a long journey of writing, thinking, and revisiting questions around prosthetic design, disability, embodiment, and transformation. I am very happy to share that the article has now finally been published in Design Issues as part of the Special Issue The Design Turn: Design Studies Beyond Design:

Melike Şahinol, Robert Stock; “Beyond Hands: A Design Exploration of Hand Prostheses and Their Transformative Impact on Disability Perspectives.” Design Issues 2026; 42 (1): 70–84.
https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI.a.708

In this article, Robert Stock and I explore hand prostheses not merely as functional devices, but as sites where bodies, technologies, aesthetics, and social norms become entangled. Drawing on Crip Technoscience, disability history, soma design, and co-design, we ask how prosthetic design can challenge conventional understandings of disability as well as established design paradigms.

Rather than approaching prostheses only through questions of replacement, normalization, or technical optimization, we examine their transformative potential: how they participate in reshaping bodily experience, self-techniques, vulnerability, resilience, and hybrid forms of connectivity. Through historical and qualitative examples, the article reflects on how disabled individuals can and must be understood as active contributors to design processes — not as passive users, but as knowledge producers and co-designers.

The article is part of a Special Issue introduced by Anke Gruendel and Claudia Mareis, “In Defense of Disciplinary Discomfort: An Introduction to Design Studies Beyond Design.” The issue asks what happens when design studies moves beyond its established disciplinary boundaries and engages more deeply with social, political, epistemic, and ethical transformations. I am very pleased that our contribution forms part of this broader conversation on “Design Studies Beyond Design.”

My warm thanks go to Anke Gruendel and Claudia Mareis for their editorial work, intellectual framing, and care in bringing this Special Issue together. I am also grateful to the reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive engagement with the article.

I am very happy — and also a little proud — to see this work finally out in the world.