Elon By Design offers ongoing workshops and events for students, faculty, staff, and surrounding communities. We have pre-set days & times you can register for below! We will also work with you to create special events to bring design thinking to your course, organization or activity. Just ask!
Review the offered workshops below and submit a request for your group using this form.
frame
fall in love with the right problem
explore
listen to people, gather evidence, reveal insights
generate
create options based on what you gathered
prototype
use what you created to make to learn
cultivate
choose a solution to nurture and grow
About Our Workshops
Elon By Design offers a variety of workshops connected to Elon’s design thinking process to support design thinking learning paths, design projects in courses, service learning projects, entrepreneurship, and higher education innovation at Elon. All workshops are hands-on experiences where participants apply the design methods and design thinking concepts.
Also, check out our Professional Development Collaborative for more workshop opportunities in the Better Together Series.
Elon By Design Workshops
All toolkits for applicable workshops can be accessed here.
Introduction to Design Thinking
What is design thinking? What are basic methods and approaches? How and when might we use these methods to support our educational professional, personal, and civic goals?
This introductory workshop answers these questions and more through a customizable ideation session of relevance to the audience. Participants leave the workshop with an understanding of Elon’s unique approach to design thinking; ideas for applying design thinking to their personal, academic, and/ or professional projects; and a new way to approach problems, challenges, and opportunities.
Watch our video on the Introduction to Design Thinking workshop here and download this toolkit to practice using basic, design thinking techniques.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
| This workshop is customizable for every goal and can help with advanced, collaborative vision and project planning.
Groups interested in having dedicated support for designing advanced, project-based work especially benefit from this session (i.e., fellows cohorts, team-based projects). |
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Designing for Wellness and Well-being
How might we design for daily wellness and well-being?
This workshop explores the six dimensions of wellness and Elon’s Act, Belong, Commit framework to help participants cultivate practices for holistic wellness and well-being. Students frame their wellness goals, explore the latest research on well-being, and generate actionable opportunities for achieving short- and long-term wellness goals.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
| This workshop is helpful for student groups looking to dive deeper into improving their wellness and well-being. Classes or groups interested in creating a more holisitic wellness lifestyle would benefit from this workshop. | This is a new workshop we’re holding starting this year in partnership with the HealthEU task force to further Elon’s commitment to positive physical and mental health. |
Cocreated by the Center for Design Thinking in partnership with the Council on Wellness and Well-being.
Designing Purposeful and Playful Teams
How might we each bring our own sense of purpose and play to our collaborations and our teams?
This workshop harnesses research on purpose and play in order to help participants foster successful collaborations and teams. Ideal for both new and seasoned collaborations/teams, this workshop guides participants through the process of framing barriers and challenges to collaboration, exploring the relevance of project goals, and visualizing the preferred play styles or collaborators/teammates. Participants will design a learning prototype for their collaborative projects or their teams that integrates their goals and play styles.
Watch our video on the Designing for Purposeful and Playful Teams workshop to learn more here.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
Useful in building leaders by breaking down collaboration
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Designing Liberatory Cycles
Exploring the 2022 Common Reading
How do cycles of socialization play a role in our daily lives and impact our mindsets? How might we unlearn oppressive cycles and generate liberatory cycles that support more diverse, equitable, and inclusive places?
Participants in this workshop will explore opportunities for unlearning oppressive cycles, generate actionable strategies for transformation, and leave with prototypes for creating more inclusive and equitable places.
Practice designing for liberation with this toolkit.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
| Business, nonprofit organizations, and other groups |
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Designing for Failure
How might I fail forward instead of falling flat?
Sign up for this workshop and gain a better understanding of what it means to be resilient in the face of life’s challenges! Through design thinking, we investigate how to better understand and cope with failure, how to reframe our flops, and how to support others in navigating disappointment. Participants leave with actionable strategies to help them fail forward versus falling flat.
Watch our video on the Flop Shop workshop here and discover how you can practice failing forward with this toolkit.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
Groups and courses interested in reframing their perception of failure and learning how to move forward in the face of future adversity.
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Experience Mapping
How might we better understand how people experience complex situations differently? How might we apply what we learn to change how we engage others and address problems together?
Experience mapping is a key design research method that helps participants understand how they and others are experiencing situations. Building on the empathy and understanding fostered through the experience mapping process, individuals and groups may target areas for deeper exploration, and generate novel ideas for addressing the focal challenge.
Create your own experience map with this template.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
Individuals and groups who are interested in generating a shared understanding of diverse experiences and cocreating a framework for navigating problems.
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Learning to Prototype
How and why do students and professionals prototype their ideas? How might we build effective prototypes that address real-world constraints and imagine new possibilities?
The workshop discusses the importance of prototyping (thinking by making), provides actionable strategies for testing designs, and allows participants to practice prototyping techniques. Participants will leave the workshop equipped with a variety of prototyping methods they can apply to their personal and professional projects.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
| Learn-by-making, project-based learning
Research heavy courses Valuable for everyone, just ask how we can help customize! |
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Addressing Implicit Bias
How might we recognize and address our own implicit biases?
Implicit bias is a distorting lens that influences the way humans think and act in the world. This workshop helps participants frame the role of bias in their own lives, explore the current impact of bias, and generate actionable opportunities for how they might contribute to redesigning oppressive systems.
Use this handout to map your journey with implicit bias.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
| Anyone and everyone! |
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Designing {Your} Grad Plan
How might we help students design graduation plans that genuinely support their personal, professional, and civic goals?
In this workshop, first and second-year students reflect upon their past learning experiences, explore their preferred learning styles, and design more creative and intentional graduation plans.
Cocreated by Academic Advising/Elon1010, the Center for Engaged Learning, the Student Professional Development Center, and the Center for Design Thinking.
| Potential Participants | Past Participants |
| First and second-year students as well as anyone at the beginning of their work in a particular program or organization hoping to design more intentional, creative possible projects and experiences. |
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Cultivating Mentoring Constellations
How might we design a constellation of mentors to support our current and future goals? How might we learn to build developmental networks that include peers, staff, and faculty, as well as people beyond the university?
Recognizing Elon’s commitment to center relationships and mentoring, this workshop supports the design of mentoring constellations. Students generate a mentoring constellation, explore actionable day-to-day opportunities for enhancing their connections, and leave with an array of next-step strategies for cultivating a lifelong network of support.
Customizable Workshops to Fit {Your} Needs
Do you have a unique design problem that might require a more customized approach? Do you have a new idea for a Design Thinking workshop?
Contact us to collaborate on a workshop specifically tailored to your needs!
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Workshop Request Form
Please fill out the google form to request a workshop through the Center for Design Thinking
If you do not receive a response to your workshop request within three business days, please email dlake@elon.edu.