Forging Fridays, a virtual workshop series starting Jan. 30, focuses on first-hand practice with emergent relational design strategies. The goal is to explore how we can each apply these emerging strategies to your own life. In partnership with the Systematic Design Association and the Future of Design in Higher Education, this opportunity allows educators and practitioners from across the globe to meet and learn directly from acclaimed relational designers.

Sessions are scheduled for the last Friday of the month at 2 p.m. January through May and feature a different design thinking creator that will share practical, actionable strategies we can implement across our professional, personal and civic lives.

There will be five total Forging Friday speakers: Michael Osterweil, Lesley-Ann Noel, Haley Fitzpatrick, Rafe Steinhauer, and Wayne Li. Sessions will be January 30, February 27, March 27, April 24, and May 29, leading up to the FDHE conference on June 24-26, 2026. Sessions will focus on social impact, how systems shape daily lives, generative AI, and what mindsets to use during the design thinking process.

The first session will be with Michal Osterweil, one of the closing keynote speakers at Design Forge last year, with a workshop called 鈥淪lippages to Portals: A Laboratory for practicing and implementing relationally鈥� that explores relational politics and how 鈥渟lippages鈥� can become portals.

Forging Fridays will culminate in the Future of Design in Higher Education (FDHE)聽 hosted at 黑料不打烊 and Duke University this June. FDHE is an international organization of design educators committed to building community and exchanging ideas about teaching and running programs in human-centered design in higher education.

The Center for Design Thinking invites anyone interested to register and learn more on our website.

Leaders in design and higher education met at 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Center for Design Thinking on March 27-28 for the annual Design Forge focusing on relational learning and living. This year the conference welcomed 35 guests in-person and over 50 virtual participants from across the globe to share stories and research-backed strategies for relational and joyful learning and living.

Inspired by last year鈥檚 conference, the Forge opened with a keynote talk from Eugene Korsunskiy, associate professor of engineering and co-director of the Design Initiative at Dartmouth College. Korsunskiy guided participants through 鈥淭ogether by Design: Joy, Community, & Forging Better Worlds鈥� with activities from the “Little Book of Joy.”

The Forge also featured a number of 黑料不打烊 faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Professor Evan Small worked with his students to design opportunities for conference guests to explore relational design opportunities in nature. Professor Tim Peeples took participants through mapping mentoring constellations, Professor Elena Kennedy helped participants think through聽 how they might redesign their relationship to time, and聽黑料不打烊 counselor Bonny Buckley led a session on how to bring joy through 鈥淢usic, Making, & More.” In addition, Alumni Tyson Glover and Mackenzie Hahn returned to 黑料不打烊 as virtual cohosts of the Forge.

DiMitri Higginbotham, assistant professor and Director of the University of Texas at Austin鈥檚 Center for Integrated Design, had participants explore practices to create relational and transformational learning environments. As a music educator, he has brought design thinking into the classroom to enhance his students鈥� learning and think about the world in different ways.

鈥淵ou give kids the power to imagine 鈥� learn from people, empathize, and create 鈥� instead of just making boring school projects, or making caterpillars out of egg cartons,鈥� Higginbotham said. 鈥淗ow can you design a plate for a caterpillar to help them so they love that? It’s a new way of approaching learning that I think should be in every school.鈥�

The Center’s community-engaged workshop brought Diya Abdo back to campus. Abdo is the Lincoln Financial Professor of English at Guilford College, author of “American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience,” and Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR) founder. Abdo returned to 黑料不打烊 to facilitate a powerful discussion on actionable change through cross-cultural dialogue among students, organizers and community members. Participants were asked to reflect on their lives and the communities they live in now.

黑料不打烊鈥檚 Center for Design Thinking Research Lead Joshua Franklin ’25 attended his fourth and final Design Forge as an 黑料不打烊 student. In comparison to other years, this year he presented with student director Adam Kanowitz on the work of the Center over the past five years. Using data collected from over 900 Center workshops and over 20,000 responses, the session highlighted the tools and strategies the Center has designed and facilitated to support student learning.

鈥淣ow it’s such a different conference. The first time we were sitting in there in the middle of the room with all the faculty and people that came to present,鈥� Franklin said. 鈥淭his year, I haven’t had a chance to sit. It’s wonderful. It’s amazing. I love it. Now I get to present. This is the goal now, especially as a research lead. This is what we’ve been working towards for the past three years.鈥�

Closing keynote speakers and authors of “Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human” Arturo Escobar, Michal Osterweil, and Kriti Sharma shared compelling stories and transformative strategies drawn from their lifework, followed by an engaging Q&A session open to both virtual and in-person attendees.

鈥淥ne cannot be on this planet right now and not feel grief,鈥� Osterweil said. 鈥淚 was born in a land where there is war right now. In order to feel joy, you need to feel grief. Do not try to change the world. Make new worlds. Design new worlds.鈥�

More information about the conference, including recordings from each session, can be found on the 黑料不打烊 by Design website under Design Forge 2025.

The workshop is based on The Little Book of Joy, a crowdsourced collection of resources that started during Design Forge at 黑料不打烊 in March 2024. Korsunskiy says that joy is an important catalyst of 鈥� not a distraction from 鈥� the rigorous work of teaching and learning.

鈥淐ollected [in this little book] are lots of little ideas for how we can all infuse a little more joy into our work,鈥� Korsunskiy said. 鈥淓ach idea describes an activity that comes from an educator who has tried it in their classroom. These are things we can do to make ourselves feel joyful [and] things we can do to make others feel joyful.鈥�

Pulling ideas from literature that focuses on humor and positive psychology thirty-six activity cards explain benefits and provide tips to get the most out of the activities. Check out the book here:聽

鈥淎 growing body of research [shows] that joy helps with focus, creativity, problem-solving, teamwork, perseverance in the face of challenges, and so much more,鈥� Korunskiy said. 鈥淏y inducing the release of 鈥榟appy hormones,鈥� activities and environments that spark joy have significant cognitive benefits for learners.鈥�

Inspired by this year鈥檚 Pre-Forge Design Read, Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human, participants will consider how joy is a foundational element of design in community, and explore how people can prepare themselves, students, and communities for the important work of collaboratively designing brighter futures.

You can register to attend the opening keynote online. Registration for all Forge sessions can be seen on the website.

This community lunch will help participants design actionable opportunities for moving towards radical hospitality and accountability across their communities. Participants will get the chance to engage in intergenerational and cross-cultural conversations among students, youth, organizers and elders.

Diya Abdo will facilitate conversation on fostering change through intergenerational and intercultural collaboration. Abdo is a Lincoln Financial professor of english at Guildford College, founder of Every Campus a Refuge, a program for resettling and housing refugees on college and university campuses, and author of “American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience.”

On Friday, March 28 the Design Forge will close by featuring “Relationality: An Emergent Politics of Life Beyond the Human” by Arturo Escobar, Michal Osterweil, and Kriti Sharma (the selected book for Design Forge 2025). The book鈥檚 central theme focuses on constructing livable worlds that lie in knowing and acting on the awareness of the interdependence of everything that exists 鈥� what the authors refer to as “relationality.”

The authors will be the closing keynote speakers at the Design Forge, sharing compelling stories and transformative strategies drawn from their lifework, followed by an engaging Q&A session open to both virtual and in-person attendees. You can register to attend the closing keynote online. Registration for all Forge sessions are located online.

The Center for Design Thinking invites participants to join other book club sessions and events we hold by registering on our website.

Leaders in design and higher education met at 黑料不打烊鈥檚 Center for Design Thinking on March 13-15 for the annual Design Forge conference focusing on health and wellbeing. This year they welcomed 40 guests in person and 85 virtual participants to share stories and research-backed strategies for redesigning higher education to support holistic wellbeing.

The event began with a session on Wednesday night open to the surrounding community at the 黑料不打烊 Community Church as part of the Power + Place Collaborative. The two facilitators, Visitor Udoewa and Savannah Keith Gress from the , led a session utilizing social presencing theater. Participants physically expressed how they felt stuck as individuals and moved throughout the space to get unstuck as a community. Insights from this evening together will be put together in a report shared with the community this spring.

The opening keynote presented by kinesthetic practitioner and researcher Andrea Mecquel and design and engineering professor Rafe Steinhauer showed how we can design with our bodies in mind. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not as important how we sense information. The essence is how we interpret it and integrate it into our bodies,鈥� said Mecquel.

They led the group in an workshop connecting what our bodies sense and what we think in our minds. One participant noted that 鈥淚 leaned in, closed my eyes and I realized I feel so many more things with senses I don鈥檛 usually use. I felt pressure but I underestimated some of the things in the process.鈥�

Tyson Glover ’17, who was a founding student catalyst for the Center for Design Thinking, has been a part of every Design Forge conference, first as a student and then as a guest and supporting staff. This year he found himself in front of the podium presenting his own experience on intentionally designing physical spaces, such as classrooms, to foster the engaged learning.

Glover recently opened the at Virginia Commonwealth University, a place for all students to develop an idea from start to finish and present it to the community. He enjoyed, 鈥渃reating a space where everyone was welcomed and failure is encouraged鈥� and hopes to incorporate the success into discovering what the future classroom of higher education looks like.

To conclude the first day, Shanice Webb was the HealthEU wellness speaker at an event open to the rest of the 黑料不打烊 community.聽From there, participants went to one of six different breakout sessions focusing on a different aspect of wellness according to 黑料不打烊鈥檚 HealthEU initiative.

On the final day, two colleagues, Dawn Bohn, a professor of food science and Saadeddine Shehab, director of the Siebel Center for Design, shared how they combined disciplines to redesign a capstone course at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Bohn received some negative feedback from her course in 2018 and united with Shebab to incorporate more human-centered design thinking practices to increase her students鈥� engagement.

Two presenters, Liz Chen and Melissa Eggleston first met at the Design Forge conference two years ago and have been working together ever since. This year they presented their joint research on trauma-informed design and how to account for trauma in research. They recommend having counseling resources available for participants and being prepared for anything.

鈥淲henever you ask an open-ended question, you need to be ready to hear the worst possible answer back,鈥� said Eggleston.

Eugene Korsunskiy closed the conference with an uplifting keynote about designing with joy in mind. 鈥淢y thesis is that joy is an important catalyst of rigorous work or teaching and learning, and it plays a critical role in liberation,鈥� Korsunskiy says.

He ended the session in the same way he ends聽all of his classes: a moment of zen. By reflecting on everything that has happened and socking it all in, everyone was able to leave the conference feeling better than when they started.

More information about the conference, including recordings from each session can be found on the 黑料不打烊 by Design website under Design Forge 2024.

The fair is a part of the Center鈥檚 annual Design Forge conference. The kickoff event focuses on 鈥淒esign for Belonging鈥� with a keynote session from Shanice Webb, a Stanford University Life Design Lab fellow. Set to begin at 2:30 p.m. in McKinnon Hall, her keynote will show how taking one small step can allow for design connection and inclusivity in our spaces.

From there, participants will have a choice of six different lightning design sessions, each focused on a different aspect of wellness.

• Community – Engage in creative making as a form of care and connection with an incredible group of conscientious troublemakers from N.C State University.
  
• Emotional– It can be easier to suppress negative feelings rather than face them. Join Reverend Boswell to explore ways you can create productive pathways for processing difficult emotions.
  
• Financial– We know that time is money, so whether you are not sure where to start your financial journey or just want to hear a new strategy, this session will share design principles and practical strategies to support your financial wellbeing.
  
• Physical–聽 Where does physical and mental health connect? This session will answer that question and empower you to walk away with habits that improve both.
  
• Purpose– It is hard to find your purpose, but an easy start can be to identify your strengths. This session, presented by Corinne Townley, will help cultivate your talents and leverage your strengths to create a purpose-driven professional journey
  
• Social– This session will practice strategies to cultivate all sizes of relationships in your life. From individuals to community groups, coming together is the first step.

More information, including the speakers and locations for each follow-up session can be found on the conference website. Registration is not required and all students, faculty, and staff of the 黑料不打烊 community are invited to attend.

Reach out to the Center for Design Thinking to learn more at elonbydesign@elon.edu.

Over the two-day conference, attendees were able to share their own stories and strategies regarding intergenerational design thinking and connect with others focused on the area as well. Intergenerational design thinking relates to the collaboration of people from different generations in all areas for the betterment of society.

“We’ve been using this time and space to address a lot of different critical issues.聽Each year, the vision is different … and I’m honored, this year, to focus on the role of intergenerational design,” said Danielle Lake, director of Design Thinking at 黑料不打烊.聽“Two of the strongest concerns about design is its lack of situating itself in place and failure to understand the histories and long-term futures of what we’re designing.”

On day one of Design Forge, Ela Ben-Ur delivered the visioning keynote. Ben-Ur is the founder of the Innovators’ Compass, a method of asking five “powerful questions” which can help people navigate various challenges. Ben-Ur’s keynote was interactive, asking participants to work through the Innovators’ Compass on a particular issue they were facing.

Associate Professor of Geography Sandy Marshall led a session during the first day on Place-Based Storytelling as Participatory Design Practice. During his session, Marshall made note of his work with the Power and Place Collaborative 鈥� a partnership between 黑料不打烊, the African American Cultural Arts and History Center and Burlington’s Mayco Bigelow Community Center which strives to preserve and present stories from and about people and places in Alamance County’s Black communities.

“Part of our vision is to start to pop some of these bubbles to create connections to valorize and hear the stories of communities and the rich histories but also to surface some of these problems and tensions and thinking how can we undo some of these damages that have been done,” Marshall said.

The Design Forge concluded with a closing keynote workshop, titled “Designing Futures: Social Science and Design for Intergenerational Centers,” with Raja Schaar, program director of Product Design at Drexel University.

Recordings and presentation slides from the two-day event can be found on the Design Forge website.

This spring, the Center for Design Thinking is excited to announce that the Design Forge will happen from March 29 through March 31. The schedule is jam-packed with amazing guest speakers excited to share their expertise, experiences and knowledge.

This year we are building momentum with a speaker and workshop series exploring the following questions:

• How might we design with and across intergenerational communities?聽
• How might we cultivate pluralistic, participatory communities?

Design Forge will be a transformative three days. This event will allow participants to spend time exploring the “how-might-we” questions in an environment that is part design and part convening, launching new relationships and generating questions, resources, ideas, and frameworks that advance the value and impact of design thinking practices.

To increase access, sessions will be offered for free to in-person and Zoom participants.

• On Wednesday, March 29, the center will be hosting a kick-off community event at the 黑料不打烊 Community Church with special guest Camilo Ramero. Camilo will be facilitating a story-healing toward intergenerational peace and empowerment workshop.
• Thursday, March 30, features sessions from Ela Ben-Ur, Jasmine Whaley and Sandy Marshall, Foad Hamodi, Rachel Switzky and June He. The center is extremely excited to announce that Ela Ben-Ur will be talking about a tool that is used throughout the 黑料不打烊 community workshops – . Ela Ben-Ur has co-experimented with organizations and educators fascinated by the strength of design thinking. She will be sharing her experience with the innovators compass, which she describes as, 鈥渇ive questions that move us forward, distilled from many different practices, which have been used from preschools to global conferences and rural communities.鈥�
• On Friday March 31, the center will welcome guest speakers Fred Leichter, Executive Director of the Hive and Alden Burke, Program Manager of Design for America, alongside amazing Design Thinking practitioners including Michelle Janning, Lesley-Ann Noel, Alessandra Bazzano, Saad Shebab, Dhvani Toprani and Raja Schaar.

For free virtual registration, visit the Design Forge website.

Focusing on the impact of design thinking pedagogies, the goal of this year鈥檚 forge was to critically study these pedagogies while infusing them into their teaching and connect with others across institutions of education.

鈥淧art of the vision for the 黑料不打烊 Center for Design Thinking is to create spaces like this, where we get to be together and learn together across our communities,鈥� said Danielle Lake, director of Design Thinking at 黑料不打烊.

Over the years, Design Forge has focused on different areas including project-based learning, service design, well-being and wellness and participatory placemaking.

鈥淭his year, I鈥檓 excited to focus on trying to understand the impact and the value of these practices, as well as the challenges,鈥� Lake said. 鈥淲hat do we know if we dig into the research? What do we need to know? And how can we do that together?鈥�

According to Jeanne Liedkta, strategist, professor of business administration at the University of Virginia and keynote speaker for the Design Forge, the answer to that question is relatively simple.

鈥淔or design thinking to have the kind of transformational impact it is possible to have in order to create something new, learners have to become something new,鈥� Liedtka said. 鈥淭he essence of it is pretty simple. As educators, we bring students on a journey in which we teach them and encourage them to do a set of activities.鈥�

Liedtka breaks those activities up into six familiar steps: gathering data (immersion), identifying insights (sensemaking), establishing design criteria (alignment), generating ideas (emergence), prototyping (imagining) and experimenting (learning in action).

But one common mistake often puts a wrench in the process: valuing the discovery portion of the process more than the testing portion.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a prescription for disaster to get the front end of design thinking right and the back end wrong. It鈥檒l result in less expensive mistakes, but it鈥檚 still not going to get us to scale-level solutions with any higher degree of accuracy,鈥� Liedtka said.

Students have experiences, and behind those experiences, they become someone new. Students are well-aware of the concept of 鈥渄oing,鈥� whether it be through projects or research. But an authentic experience has to result from those projects and research to change the way a student thinks, which starts with changing how educators teach.

鈥淎s educators, the 鈥榙oing鈥� part isn鈥檛 enough. We have to get students to the genuine experiences,鈥� Liedtka said. 鈥淭hat is fairly complex. But if we do it, then they come out at the end more empathic, more competent and inspired, more able to collaborate successfully and more comfortable with co-creation. [Those] the magic outcomes we鈥檙e shooting for,鈥� she added.

On the Thursday of the forge, attendees heard from Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, director of the Equity Innovation Studio at Think Rubix LLC, and Adam Royalty, the founder of the Entrepreneurship Design Studio at Columbia University on practicing justice in social change design and storytelling.

There were also a series of breakout Zoom sessions hosted by 黑料不打烊 faculty Tracey Thurnes, Phillip Motley and Rozana Carducci; students Soniyah Robinson and Morgan Kearns; and alumni Tyson Glover and Mackenzie Hahn.

Saturday, April 9 was the final day of the forge and attendees had a choice between one of two 鈥淐hoose Your Own Adventure鈥� sessions. The 2022 Design Forge concluded with a closing keynote and interactive workshop from Carlye Lauff, assistant professor of product design at the University of Minnesota, on strategies for assessing and articulating the value of iterative design.

Recordings and presentation slides from the three-day event can be found on the Design Forge website.

鈥淚 would love attendees to take away resources and strategies relevant for enhancing their design thinking teaching practices and assessment efforts within their communities as well as relationships for supporting their future efforts,鈥� said Danielle Lake, director of Design Thinking at 黑料不打烊.

Registration links for all sessions during Design Forge 2022 can be found here.聽Many sessions will also be streamed live for virtual attendees.

The first day of the forge includes virtual visioning talks led by Pierce Otlhogile-Gordon, director of the Equity Innovation Studio at Think Rubix LLC, and Adam Royalty, the founder of the Entrepreneurship Design Studio at Columbia University.

There will also be a series of breakout Zoom sessions hosted by 黑料不打烊 faculty Tracey Thurnes, Phillip Motley and Rozana Carducci; students Soniyah Robinson and Morgan Kearns; and alumni Tyson Glover and Mackenzie Hahn. Other prominent figures across the design thinking community will host breakout Zoom sessions as well.

Friday is the cornerstone day of the three-day event and kicks off with a keynote and interactive workshop from Jeanne Liedtka, strategist and professor of business administration at the Darden School of the University of Virginia. Liedtka is one of the leader researchers in the field. She has published over seven books, innumerable articles and taught thousands of students from the business, nonprofit and government sectors.

From 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., attendees will get the chance to 鈥渟tay and play鈥� via a Maker Madness lunch. The connecting doors between the Center and the Maker Hub will be opened for them to work on unique projects to commemorate their time at 黑料不打烊.

At 1:30, Lesley-Ann Noel, assistant professor of design studies at North Carolina State University, and Omari Souza, a design scholar and activist, will hold a Story & Strategy Session on redesigning higher education and co-design pedagogies. The last session of the day is an interactive workshop facilitated by Eugene Korsunskiy, the Future of Design in Higher Education executive director and associate professor of design thinking at Dartmouth College.

The final day of the forge will have a choice between one of two 鈥淐hoose Your Own Adventure鈥� sessions from 9 to 9:55 a.m. on Saturday. From 10 to 11:30 a.m., the 2022 Design Forge will conclude with a closing keynote and interactive workshop with Carlye Lauff, assistant professor of product design at the University of Minnesota.

Created to be a more of a collaborative convening of minds, as opposed to a passive conference, the forge also relies on a lot of work from students, Lake said.

From photographers to graphic designers, Lake said that planning and setup of the Design Forge depend heavily on the dedication and work of the students involved.

鈥淭he overall goal is to explore what we know about the impact of design thinking practices for supporting high impact learning opportunities, framing what we need to know moving forward and generating strategies for critically studying the value and challenges of these practices across higher education,鈥� Lake said.