Keynotes
Story from SCD Practice: Digital Inclusion by Design (ESCollab)
Tomasz Jaskiewicz (professor Civic Prototyping at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences) and Kristel Thieme (founder and CEO New Future Lab)
Digital accessibility and inclusion can only take root when treated as a systemic co-design challenge rather than a checklist exercise. Drawing from the Digital Inclusion by Design project, they show how real progress depends on confronting structural blind spots, sharing responsibility across disciplines, and creating spaces where lived experience, regulation, design practice, and institutional constraints can productively collide.
Weaving ESC and Systemic Co-Design
Wina Smeenk (chair of ESC and professor Societal Impact Design at Hogeschool Inholland)
Co-Design has become somewhat of a buzzword—so what does it mean to add “systemic”? Systemic Co-Design emphasizes relational collaboration in a generative and imaginative way. What can a Systemic Co-Design approach contribute to addressing societal challenges and supporting transitions?
Story from SCD Practice: Polarisation & The Silent Middle (ESCall)
Erwin Elling, Fundamentals Academy, theRevolution
Polarisation often forces us into “us or them,” leaving little room for nuance or doubt. How can design help reopen that space? This talk introduces the practice-based tool The Silent Middle, creating space for constructive conversations beyond the poles. It explores how designers and communities can co-shape spaces where ambiguity is allowed, perspectives can shift, and something genuinely new can emerge.
Systemic Experiences in Personal Health Care
Caroline Hummels (professor Design and Theory for Transforming Practices at the department of Industrial Design, TU Eindhoven, and part of ESC’s Expert council)
Healthcare is undergoing profound transformation. How can design help bridge the gap between individual experiences and complex systemic realities? In this talk, Caroline explores fifteen years of research on designing for healthcare transformation and reflects on her own recent experience as a patient to examine how Systemic Experiences can inspire new propositions, methods, and more attuned futures in personal health care.
The ESMEE project – Ecosystem Innovation
Joeri van den Steenhoven (Vice-President Executive Board of Leiden University of Applied Sciences and Chair South-Holland Impact Alliance)
Mission-driven ecosystems don’t emerge by accident. What does it take for them to grow, evolve, enable and lead ecosystems and drive real system change? In this keynote, Joeri will talk about adaptive leadership, drawing on insights from his work on building innovation ecosystems in the Netherlands and Canada, and explore how we can hold transition spaces, what roles people play within them, and why systems thinking must be complemented by systems doing.
Design for Good – Global Impact stories
Cecilia Brenner (Managing Director of Design for Good)
Global challenges demand collective action. In this talk, Cecilia shares impact stories from Design for Good, a global alliance where designers co-design with charities and NGO’s to create open-source products and services for the UN SDGs. Learn how they tackle one SDG challenge at a time and shift whole systems – from providing access to clean water, to changing children’s hand hygiene behaviors, and beyond.
Start for Future – Ecosystems that enable transitions
Klaus Sailer (CEO at Start for Future Cooperative, Professor for Entrepreneurship at Munich University of Applied Sciences)
Systemic innovation emerges when diverse actors dare to build together across borders. In this keynote, Klaus Sailer opens up the international Start for Future ecosystem, showing how universities, startups, and public organizations in more than 30 countries co-create pathways for system innovation and what this reveals about enabling transitions at larger scales.
Workshops
The Making of Knowledge Products
Koen van Turnhout (Professor Human Experience & Media Design), Wina Smeenk (Professor Societal Impact Design), Daan Andriessen (Professor Research Capacity), Miriam Losse (Education maker)
Research has impact only when its outcomes are taken up in practice—so how do we design tools that professionals truly want to use? In this workshop, the authors of Kennisproducten uit praktijkgericht onderzoek (‘Knowledge products from applied research’, launched later that evening) explore how to turn research insights into meaningful, actionable knowledge products.
Let her in network
Vione consultancy
Get inspired by this international network made up of organisations with diverse expertise and experience, ready to share their knowledge, skills and values in order to eliminate the obstacles that women encounter in their equal educational, labour, political, and social environments.
Getting started with youth care: a national systemic design approach
Team of Design agency Shoshin
Long waiting times in youth care have large consequences and stem from systemic disruptions at local, regional, and national levels. Design agency Shoshin helped shape the program ‘Team Approach to Waiting Times’, developing a thorough systemic design approach and portfolio of interventions across regions. In this workshop, lessons from this program will be discussed and translated to other contexts.
ESC EXPO: Dialogue with Doers (Open walk-in)
Step into an interactive space where you can explore tools, cards, methods, and knowledge products from across the ESC network. Browse, test, and discuss prototypes and new publications directly with the makers and researchers behind them. In this workshop you can explore the richness of approaches and tools from ESC designers who will be present to explain and share experiences.
ESMEE Quarterly (Closed Session)
A private meet up for the ESMEE consortium
SINO Quarterly (Closed Session)
A private meet up for the SINO consortium
Evening book launch
Knowledge Products from Practice-Based Research
Koen van Turnhout, Wina Smeenk, Daan Andriessen, and Miriam Losse
This book shows how practice-based researchers can design knowledge products—from card sets and games to podcasts and guidelines—that ensure research insights are effectively applied in the real world. Developed collaboratively by over 40 researchers, it offers guidance on integrating knowledge sharing into research projects from the start, making both content and form count. Curious? Join this festive launch and book presentation by the authors.
