The Center welcomed the FDHE attendees to learn the long-term effects of design thinking, participate in embodied learning activities and engage in diverse conversations.
In the early morning on June 26, 2026, attendees of the Future of Design Thinking in Higher Education (FDHE) Conference arrived for a full day of meaningful discussions, playful games and collaborative workshops on Elon University’s campus. The conference, hosted by Elon’s Center for Design Thinking and Duke University, is dedicated to bringing together individuals who study and practice design thinking into one community-focused space.
The day’s festivities began with an aerial performance by Michelle Spurlock, local business owner of Upside Aerial Arts & Fitness at Elon University.
“I think it’s so cool that an educational conference is starting with circus arts,” says Spurlock. “It just feels like a special treat to be able to perform here.”
Spurlock says she wanted to focus her performance on joy, connection, and possibility, which best describes the FDHE conference. She also hosted a partnered yoga session for the conference attendees, full of “laughter and playful connections.”
“I think Danielle’s done an incredible job organizing a lot of different modalities, a lot of different content, but all connected by this theme of human-centered design as a practice, a process, and mindset, so I’m very excited,” says Vivek Rao, co-organizer of the FDHE Conference, associate dean for master’s and professional programs, and executive director for the Design & Technology Innovation Master’s Program at Duke University.
The morning’s activities continued in Elon’s Innovation Hall with Danielle Lake, director of the Center for Design Thinking, sharing findings from the Center for Design Thinking’s most recent study exploring how Elon alumni continue to use design thinking processes in their post-grad careers as well as their civic and personal lives after working for the Center for Design Thinking. Not only does the study serve as a culmination of the Center’s successful work, but it also provides groundbreaking data on the long-term value of design thinking outside the “Elon bubble.”
Instead of sharing the findings as just another “research presentation,” the Center for Design Thinking team created an interactive trivia game testing attendees’ knowledge in the design thinking field that they all study. Additionally, Lake invited five of the alumni interviewed for this study to join in on the dynamic presentation. These alumni included Tyson Glover ’17, Mackenzie Hahn ’20, Kait MacIntyre ’22, Emily Joss ’23, and Chase Soloman ’23.
“Actually getting a chance to go out into the real world and use some of the skills that we learned right here at Elon is a full-circle moment right now,” says Glover.
Soloman says that he has used his skills from his experience at the Center for Design Thinking in his professional, academic, and personal life, ranging from relationship management to structuring his own research.
Not only did the attendees listen to the experiences of these Elon alumni, but they playfully engaged in the overall game activity. The room was full of boisterous laughter, surprised gasps and animal noises as the guests took their animal-inspired team names to heart.
Once the prizes for the best three teams were awarded, the attendees were guided on a walk through Elon’s campus to continue the day’s activities inside the Center for Design Thinking.
Inside the Center, guests could choose to attend one of two workshops. The workshop in the main Center space focused on hands-on crafting to prompt a creative avenue to explore the design thinking process. The goal of this “Creatively Unprompted” exercise, according to the presenter, Sarah Rottenberg, executive director of the Integrated Product Design Master’s Program at the University of Pennsylvania, was to simulate idea generation without using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
One FDHE attendee, Raja Schaar, associate program director and assistant professor of product design at Drexel University, says she chose the “Creatively Unprompted” workshop to expand on her love of creating ideas and prototyping with her hands “to cultivate ideas and turn them into something else.”
In the next-door Maker Hub space, participants could choose to participate in the “Maker AI Challenge,” which focused on framing AI usage through a creative lens. The Director of the Maker Hub and Assistant Director of Creative Learning Technologies at Elon, Dan Reis, describes this workshop as a way for individuals to bring their ideas to life with AI working as a teammate instead of a generator.
“I’m very curious about broad-based exploration of how AI is being used in education, design, design thinking and teaching design in particular,” says Abbe Don, interim director of The Hive at Pomona College, on why she chose the Hub’s AI workshop.
Once the two-group workshops ended, the conference concluded with a creative four-piece puzzle exercise. On the first day of the conference, participants answered four different prompts assigned to each puzzle piece. These prompts were designed to encourage participants to set intentions on the content they wanted to learn and share, as well as the connections they wanted to make and receive. Instead of keeping these pieces with them, each piece was given to other participants. On the last day, participants received all of their original puzzle pieces to reflect on whether they achieved their intentions and goals.
This activity served as an end to a conference dedicated to encouraging attendees to further their knowledge in the design thinking field through play, exploration and connection with others. Not only was the activity a meaningful experience, but for the Center’s Danielle Lake, the overall opportunity to host the FDHE Conference was “a dream come true.”
“This year is the start of my eighth year at Elon University, and since the beginning of my time here, one of our goals has been to form a deeper connection with the FDHE community,” said Lake. “I have been able to have such a good support system through this creative and fun group of people.”
While this year’s FDHE conference served as “a chance to show the culmination of our work here at Elon and to collaborate with our co-hosts at Duke University,” according to Lake, the Center for Design Thinking will continue to provide Elon University and the surrounding Alamance County community with opportunities to create, grow and thrive through the design thinking process.