The FDHE Convention, occurring in late June, will bring together experts in design thinking to the Center for Design Thinking, Duke University’s campus.
The Future for Design in Higher Education Convention will be cohosted in dual locations of Elon University’s Center for Design Thinking and Duke University this year on June 24-26.
These universities are two of many institutions that collaborate and represent FDHE, an international organization that specializes in human-centered design thinking in higher education. The organizers of the FDHE convention are committed to building a community built on exchanging new ideas about design thinking and interdisciplinary work programs.
The concluding day’s activities will be held at Elon University and hosted by Elon’s Center for Design Thinking and Maker Hub. These activities will include presentations on the long-term values of design thinking, integrating artificial intelligence into the design thinking process and a closing celebration.
In preparation for this three-day-long conference, the Center has been hosting small virtual sessions every third Friday of the month since January called Forging Fridays. These sessions are hosted by various design thinking leaders who focus on emerging strategies, methods and ideas. Participants leave these workshops with strategies that make a significant impact, but are practical implementations in their professional, personal, and civic lives.
There have been four of these sessions so far, with the fifth and final session occurring on May 29 at 2 p.m. This session will feature Professor Wayne Li, who specializes in integrating mechanical engineering with industrial design processes at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Li’s focus within this Forging Friday session will focus on how to identify when and what mindsets will be the most meaningful and transformative to an individual within their design thinking process.
Previous speakers for the Forging Fridays series include Michal Osterweil, Lesley-Ann Noel, Haley Fitzpatrick and Rafe Steinhauer.
The lead-up to the FDHE convention with these Forging Fridays sessions is replacing the Center’s typical Design Forge convention. These meetings are the Center’s project on gathering design thinking educators, practitioners, and thought leaders to address a topic of interest in higher education, collaboration within the design thinking community, and establishing new opportunities for enhanced student learning.
For more information on past Design Forge topics, a full archive of the conventions since 2018 can be accessed here.