March 27th – 28th, 2025
Design Forge is Elon’s annual convening of design thinking educators, practitioners, and thought leaders. Each year, Design Forge addresses a topic of interest to higher education, strengthens collaboration in the design thinking community, and searches for new opportunities for design thinking to enhance student learning.
Design Forge is a hybrid/hyflex, interactive, and collaborative convening designed to support your efforts to cultivate educational design opportunities that foster well-being.
The goal? We spend time together exploring the how-might-we question 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.
Design Forge Schedule
Thursday, March 27, 2025
9:00 am – 5:00 pm EST
Opening Keynote 9:00 – 10:00 am EST
Together By Design: Joy, Community, & Forging Better Worlds
Eugene Korsunskiy
Design Methods Workshop 10:00 – 11:00 am EST
From Relational Ways of Being to Relational Design Methodologies
Savannah Keith Gress & Victor Udoewa
Mapping Workshops 11:15 – 12:00 pm EST
Relational Mapping
Tim Peeples
The Art of of Adaptive Relationship Architecture
Nicola Brown
Lunch Session 12:00 – 1:45 pm EST
Radical Hospitality, Radical Accountability Community
Diya Abdo
Stories & Strategies: 2:30 – 3:45 pm EST
Healing Can Design as a Process Facilitate Relational Healing?
Julia Kramer & Avery Station
Relationality & Design Thinking: Beyond Sustainable Solutions
Tyler Fox
Cultivating Relational Design Networks: The Human Centered Design Outcomes Collaborative
Bill Romani, Stacy Grau, Montana Cherney, Liz Royea, Liz Chen, Saad Shehab, Aashka Dave
In-Person Breakout Opportunity 2:30 – 3:45 pm EST
Reengage, Reimagine, Redesign (& Get Outside)
Evan Small & Experiential Facilitation Students
Living and Learning Workshop 4:00 – 5:00 pm EST
Beyond Content: Designing Relational Experiences for Transformational
Dmitri Higginbotham
Co-Designing Family Memories Through Conversations
Michelle Janning and Robin North
Friday, March 28, 2025
9:00 am – 3:30 pm EST
Stories & Strategies II 9:00 – 10:00 am EST
Panel Designing for Outcomes Through Ethical Design Processes
Lisa Elzey Mercer, Eugene Korsunskiy, Natacha Poggio, Raja Schaar, & Chris Baeza
Power-Shifting Workshops 10:15 – 11:00 am EST
Participatory Designs for Power-Shifting
Jasmine Whaley
Stories & Strategies III 11:15 – 12:15 pm EST
One-Off Design Thinking Workshops (The Value & The Limitations)
Adam Kanowitz & Joshua Franklin
The Role of Dyadic Relationships in a Human-Centered Design Summer Internships
Saadeddine Shehab
The Roots of Design Thinking at Stanford: The Relationality of Art and Engineering
Steven McCarthy
In-Person Break Out Opportunity 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST
Connecting to Place Through Pattern and Motif
Emily Smith
The Stories & Strategies IV 1:00 – 2:00 pm EST
The Orchestra + You
Christina Hnatov & Mira Azarm
Designing for Ritual Closings
Katrina Mitchell
Closing Keynote 2:15 – 3:30 pm EST
Closing Keynote 2:15 – 3:30 pm EST
Arturo Escobar, Michal Osterweil, Kriti Sharma
2025 Keynote Speakers
Arturo Escobar
Michal Osterweil
Kriti Sharma
Victor Udoewa
Savannah Keith Gress
Eugene Korsunskiy
