Design Research Week is a weeklong event that showcases design-led research projects and initiatives. Keynotes, panels, workshops, exhibitions and industry award ceremonies connect Northeastern’s research community with external stakeholders, partners, and guests across the design ecosystem in the Boston area and beyond.

Some of the events were recorded and are now available to watch on the Center for Design’s YouTube channel. View the playlist here. Keep an eye out for a comprehensive DRW 2025 recap, coming soon.

Click on each day or continue scrolling to view specific event details.

Monday, March 17 – Health + Wellness

Tuesday, March 18 – Creativity + Play

Wednesday, March 19 – Community + Civic Futures

Thursday, March 20 – Data + AI

Friday, March 21 – Form + Materials

Saturday, March 22 – Graphic Voices of Latin America Exhibition

Sunday, March 23 – Interventions: Shift

Monday, March 17: Health + Wellness

Schedule of Programs:

Magic and Design Hackathon: Reducing Children’s Anxiety in Healthcare Settings
Curry Student Center Senate Chambers
1 – 6 PM

Register to attend in person.

In collaboration with Vinay Aggarwal, Jeanette Andrews and the Magic & Medicine Lab, Eugene Buff and Health Sciences Entrepreneurs, Khyle Hannan, Miso Kim, Michael Arnold Mages, Juhan Sonin, Stephen Wood and the Bouvé College of Health Sciences.
Prize provided by Pitch Bob.

At the intersection of creativity and problem-solving, design empowers us to tackle complex issues in innovative ways. This year, we’re taking a design-centered approach to a challenge that impacts families everywhere: reducing children’s anxiety in healthcare settings.

Calling all innovators! We invite you to join our hackathon, where participants will collaborate to reimagine tools, technologies, and approaches that transform stressful medical visits into moments of comfort and empowerment for kids. Throughout the day, your ideas will take shape through brainstorming and hands-on work sessions, culminating in final presentations where teams will showcase their solutions.

From playful designs for intimidating devices to personalized tools for unique fears, let’s create ideas that truly make a difference. Submit your ideas at this link, and together, let’s build a brighter, calmer future for young patients!

Bridging Gaps, Co-Creating Access: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Improving Rural Healthcare in Maine
Center for Design
1:30 – 2:30 PM

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In collaboration with the Knox Clinic, Scout Labs, Bouvé College of Health Sciences and The Roux Institute.
Presentation by Sara Carr, Estefania Ciliotta, Shannon Haley, Michael Arnold Mages, Susan Mello and Katherine Simmonds.

Over the past two years, our interdisciplinary research team composed of collaborators from experience/service design, public health, nursing, architecture, and communication has been partnering with a nonprofit clinic in rural Maine to identify, design, prototype, and evaluate innovative models of rural, community-based care through a participatory research approach. In this presentation, we will share our progress in addressing health inequities and access in rural areas through the design and implementation of a mobile healthcare van, as well as other operational and systemic interventions such as blueprints and frameworks to help healthcare providers replicate alternative ways to healthcare delivery.

Using Participatory Design to Develop Voice User Interfaces with Older Adults
Center for Design
3 – 4 PM

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Presentation by Smit Desai.

As Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) become more prevalent in everyday life, designing effective and engaging conversational AI for older adults requires a thoughtful, user-centered approach. Older adults have distinct needs, preferences, and challenges when interacting with voice-based systems, making participatory design a crucial tool for creating intuitive and accessible experiences. In this talk, Dr. Smit Desai will share his expertise in designing conversational AI systems for older adults, developing systems that can serve as teachers, storytellers, and exercise coaches. He will discuss best practices for VUI design, strategies for effectively engaging older adults in participatory design workshops, and key insights into how they perceive and interact with conversational systems. Through real-world examples and research-backed findings, attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how to design VUIs that are functional and meaningful for older adults.

Tuesday, March 18: Creativity + Play

Schedule of Programs:

Critical Futures Lab Showcase
Center for Design
9 – 11 AM

Register to attend in person.

In collaboration with the Critical Futures Lab.
Presentation by Laura Forlano and Sasha de Koninck.

This presentation will give an overview of the interdisciplinary research from Critical Futures Lab, a group that combines critical thinking from the social sciences with generative methods from art and design. Topics include: understanding the role of gender in the field of user experience design; storytelling about experiences of disability in higher ed; using textiles to create data physicalizations about ethics and AI; and speculative futuring. After the presentations and discussion, we’ll guide participants through a short workshop, “Knitting a System,” that explores the interconnections among science, technology, environment, and society.

Food for Thought: Alexandra To and Clareese Hill
Center for Design
12 – 1 PM

Registration is not required.

In collaboration with the College of Arts, Media and Design Dean’s Office.
Presentations by Alexandra To and Clareese Hill.

Two CAMD faculty members, Alexandra To and Clareese Hill, present their work in the fields of XR/VR and Game Design. Registration is not required to attend.

Crafting Ecological and Health Narratives in Public Space Presentation and Making Public Workshop
Center for Design
1:30 – 4 PM

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In collaboration with José R. Menéndez, Grafica Latina and La Linterna.
Presentation and workshop led by José R. Menéndez.

The Crafting Ecological and Health Narratives in Public Space presentation illustrates community centric approaches to environmental and health communication design. Through the lenses of publishing, printmaking, branding, public programming, and tactical interventions in public space, José Menéndez’s research examines the design practice as a platform for multicultural communication, access, and visibility at multiple scales.

This presentation will be supplemented with the workshop Making Public, a Letterpress and Risograph workshop where participants will be introduced to methods of community activation through publishing.

Portfolio Review Night
Center for Design
4:30 – 6:30 PM

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In collaboration with CAMD Co-op.

Art + Design students will have the opportunity to have their portfolios reviewed by A selection of Faculty and Co-op Employers during one-on-one discussions. Pre-registration for a time slot is required at the link above.

Wednesday, March 19: Community + Civic Futures

Schedule of Programs:

Design in the Public Sector: Global Approaches
Center for Design
10 AM – 12 PM

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Presentations by Sofia Bosch Gomez, Catherine Gore, Francesco Leoni, Stefano Maffei, Tina Rosado, Lara Salinas, Federico Vaz and Diana Pamela Villa Álvarez.

In this presentation, we bring together researchers and practitioners from different parts of the world to discuss practices and approaches to designing for the public sector. Join us to learn more about how the speakers embrace challenges through interdisciplinary research methods. The 2024-2025 Center for Design Bridges Fellow, Sofia Bosch Gomez, will present her civic design project, Co-Designing a Network of Public Sector Design Scholars and Practitioners in Latin America. Lara Salinas will present projects from her lab, the Service Futures Lab at the University of the Arts London. Stefano Maffei will discuss his work in food donation with The Collective Kitchen and the water resilience experiment with the Design Policy Lab.

Design, Music and Education Panel
Center for Design
1:45 – 2:45 PM

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Presentation by Sara Lenzi and Nikita Saner.

Sara Lenzi and Nikita Saner will present work in the fields of music and education.

Impacting the System from Within: Collaborative Approaches to Participatory Budgeting in Boston
Center for Design
3 – 4 PM

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In collaboration with the City of Boston’s Office of Participatory Budgeting.
Presentation by Renato Castelo, Estefania Ciliotta, Maria Fernanda and Michael Arnold Mages.

In this conversation, the research team will share a project that they worked on with the City of Boston’s Participatory Budgeting Office. The project involved systemic approaches and frameworks to co-create a deliberative community conversation toolkit for use by community partner organizations within the city of Boston to host idea generation workshops to prioritize needs from community members. This aimed to empower community members to distill priorities relevant to their neighborhoods so that the City could translate into project proposals to better serve its communities.

Community Data Book Launch with Rahul Bhargava
Center for Design
5 – 6:30 PM

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Presentation by Rahul Bhargava with Lisa Brukilacchio, Marcus Santos and Josie Ross.

Join the Center for Design and The School of Journalism for a book talk and signing with Professor Rahul Bhargava. His just-published book, Community Data (Oxford University Press), pushes data storytellers to think beyond the visual when working with information in community settings. Community Data introduces a broader toolbox of arts-based methods that are designed to engage publics in civic data-centered dialogue, overcoming growing challenges of polarization and mistrust.

Bhargava argues that traditional data visualization techniques—charts, graphs, and dashboards—were not designed to foster participation or empowerment. Community Data introduces a broader framework through case studies and original research. He introduces how creative arts-based approaches such as data sculptures, data murals, and data theatre, are creating more inclusive, engaging, and action-oriented interactions with data.

Bridging global examples, academic insights, and hands-on projects, Community Data offers a playful yet rigorous set of strategies that reframe the role of data in community settings. Designers, journalists, educators, and community organizers will leave with inspiration and practical tools to rethink how data can be used to support participatory meaning-making and collective social change.

Thursday, March 20: Data + AI

Schedule of Programs:

Data Visualization + AI Exhibition
Center for Design
All Day

Registration is not required.

Exhibitions by Derek Curry, Steven Geofrey, Jennifer Gradecki, Ilya Vidrin and Kelin Zhang.

View and interact with three data visualization and AI-related projects, Deconstructing Proxies by Steven Geofrey and Ilya Vidrin, Generative Persuasion by Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry and Poetry Camera by Kelin Zhang.

Deconstructing Proxies, authored by Steven Geofrey and Ilya Vidrin and based on the choreographic work titled Proxies produced by Vidrin, is a case study on interactions between dance, technology and design. The exhibition will demonstrate how Proxies investigates the use of data visualization to translate data captured by wearable pressure sensors into a real-time visual representation that renders visible the invisible dimensions of somatic partnering.

Generative Persuasion, a collaboration between Jennifer Gradecki and Derek Curry, is an interactive installation that invites viewers to generate tailored propaganda and conspiracy theories on a military-style portable computing center using advanced artificial intelligence and personality-based microtargeting. The project revels how effective LLMs are at generating inauthentic content designed to influence politics or polarize the public.

Poetry Camera is a camera that prints poems of what it sees. It is a toy for creative experimentation with Large Language Models, inviting the photographer to see the world around them in a new light.

Data, Algorithms, Sound and Design (Research)
Raytheon Amphitheater
9 – 11 AM

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Presentations by Paolo Ciuccarelli, Sara Lenzi, Israel Salmon Ruiz and Aiur Retegi Uria. Participation from Fábio Duarte and Simone Mora.

As an intentional, design-driven approach to data sonification continues to evolve at the intersection of scientific analysis and artistic exploration, this session highlights emerging research directions and community-driven initiatives, with topics ranging from autographic sonification to the application of machine learning in machine listening. Updates from the field include the Data Sonification Archive, now featuring over 500 projects; the newly launched Data Sonification Awards, which received 80+ applications and engaged 15 jurors; and the Dagstuhl seminar, “What You Hear is What You See? Integrating Sonification and Visualization,” where faculty, scholars, and researchers from more than 20 institutions examined the integration of data sonification and visualization.

In addition to these discussions, a hands-on activity invites students, faculty, and practitioners to explore how soundscape analysis can support sustainability in the textile industry. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers critical environmental insights, it is a slow and retrospective process. By contrast, machine learning-driven sound analysis can provide real-time diagnostics, identifying inefficiencies in manufacturing by detecting patterns in machinery and production noise. It is well known that the textile industry consumes large amounts of water and energy and, consequently, generates wastewater and energy waste that requires comprehensive intervention. Circularity, therefore, becomes a necessary avenue to achieve the minimization of the planet’s finite resources waste while guaranteeing the social and financial sustainability of the sector. For this purpose, the state-of-the-art tool applied is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the related water, carbon or energy footprints, which provide a diagnosis of the situation and allow the proposal of environmental (and, consequently, socioeconomic) improvements. However, LCA is a complex and asynchronous process that requires data collection over a long period of time. While many industries carry out these assessments on a regular basis, they are still far from providing real-time information which would dramatically increase the stakeholders’ agency and the possibility to optimize water and energy consumption – and the consequent footprint – of a production facility. Recent research has shown that the analysis of the soundscape in an indoor environment (i.e. the sounds produced by the different agents such as humans or machines) are a valuable source of information: for instance, the sound of an engine can inform listeners on its correct functioning. If automatized by leveraging ML techniques, soundscape analysis can provide users with insights on the ‘auditory footprint’ of sound events which, conversely, provide information on the actions that are behind the sound – for instance, the different steps of a production chain. During this activity at the DRW we invite participants to brainstorm – starting from a collection of sound recordings from a shoe manufacturing plan – on the ‘autographic’ value of audio data, potential technological solutions that include Machine Listening techniques, other application scenarios, and the relationship between data, sound, and sustainability.

Incorporating Data, Algorithms and Systems in Design Teaching
Raytheon Amphitheater
12 – 1:30 PM

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Panel discussion with Paolo Ciuccarelli, Hugh Dubberly, Nathan Felde, Jodi Forlizzi, Eric Paulos, Kyle Steinfeld and Kelin Zhang.

The information revolution is accelerating an ongoing transformation of culture, society, markets, and politics. It continues to change how we work, learn, play, spend, vote… and design.

Design practice and teaching have long grappled with “computing,” first as a new tool, then as a new communications medium, and now as a new material that can augment existing systems and enable new ones.

This panel will discuss early efforts to incorporate data, algorithms and systems into design learning-by-doing, as well as historical roots of thinking-by-making with information, and possible futures.

Media Studios Organization Tour
Immersive Media Lab (Holmes 374)
2 – 3 PM

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In collaboration with the CAMD Media Studios Organization (MSO).

Join the Northeastern College of Arts, Media and Design Media Studios Organization for a tour of the Immersive Media Lab, the Game Design Lab and the Makerspaces.

Sonification in Ableton Live with Manifest Audio
Online via Zoom
3 – 4:30 PM

Register to attend virtually.

In collaboration with Noah Pred and Manifest Audio.

Join us for an interactive introduction to Manifest Audio’s Sonification Tools, led by artist and lead developer Noah Pred. This session will explore the creative potential of these Max for Live devices designed to bring data-driven composition into modern music production workflows. Pred will demonstrate the fundamental capabilities and various sonification modes of these tools and show how they can be applied in various contexts, highlighting applications in music, multimedia, and beyond. Following the one-hour presentation, a 30-minute AMA/Q&A session will provide attendees with the opportunity to engage directly with Pred, delving into the technical and conceptual aspects of his approach to sonification, Max for Live, and generative instrument design.

Learn more about Manifest Audio’s Sonification Tools here.

The Data Sonification Awards Concert
Phillips Auditorium at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
5:30 – 6:30 PM

Register to attend in person.

This concert showcases some of the awarded entries for the first edition of the Data Sonification Awards.

Friday, March 21: Form + Materials

Schedule of Programs:

Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Design
Center for Design
9 – 11 AM

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Keynote with Gioia Laura Iannilli, Nathan Felde and Simon Treille.

This event juxtaposes multiple philosophical perspectives to set the stage for discussion and conversation on the nature of form. While “form (ever) follows function” was advocated as the single law* by the American architect Louis Sullivan, and has been a dominate dictum of modern design. Another expression, devised by the philosopher G. Spencer-Brown and published as “The Laws of Form” was hailed as a new calculus by Bertrand Russell.

Professor Iannilli, a Philosopher of Aesthetics at the University of Bologna will bring these abstract yet fundamental laws to ground in her talk on aesthetics in everyday life.

Philosophical aesthetics has only recently recognized design as an aesthetically relevant phenomenon and therefore worthy of analysis. This shift is due to a growing awareness on the part of the discipline that, in general terms, is linked to an urgency to focus on the concrete, operative, practical and material dimensions of experience understood in its sensible, perceptual, and expressive (i.e., aesthetic) bearing.

More specifically, this awareness concerns a) the acknowledgement that aesthetics runs on a spectrum spanning artistic and extra-artistic aspects; b) the fact that while being a theory, it fundamentally relies on practices in which it is rooted and which constitute its test-bed; c) an increasingly anti-dualistic approach to phenomena which aims to overcome dichotomies such as theory-practice; passivity-activity; mind-body; organism-environment; beauty-usefulness; nature-artifice; extraordinariness-ordinariness; form-function, to name a few.

In this framework design, meant as a crucial conceptual device, proved itself capable of affording a discipline such as philosophical aesthetics the opportunity to radically reconsider and renew itself in the light of a pervasive and complex phenomenon which concretely affects everyday life; but can philosophical aesthetics be equally fruitful for design practice? In this presentation I will offer a possible model for an aesthetics of design relying on contributions spanning pragmatist and everyday aesthetics.

SPECIAL GUEST: Mathematician Simon Treille will be joining us to introduce “Laws of Form” by G. Spencer Brown and the work of the topologist Lou Kauffman into our philosophical discourse.

“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.” – Louis Sullivan

Living Textiles Workshop
Center for Design
12 – 1:30 PM

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In collaboration with the BioInteractive Design Lab.
Workshop led by Katia Zolotovsky, Ganit Goldstein and Avantika Velho, with support from students Sebastian Gonzalez Quintero, Bryn Grespan, Peter Loughlin, Katherine McDonnell and Varenya Sethumadhavan.

Join us to learn and experience the world of interactive textiles. How can textiles be responsive to their environment? Can textiles be tangible data interfaces, communicating information about pollution, biomarkers and harmful chemicals through visible and tangible changes like odorants and colors? Can textiles be living and hosting skin biomes or even new probiotic communities of engineered microbes? This session will include the newest Biosensing Textiles project data from Northeastern’s BioInteractive Design Lab, as well as a guest presentation from Ganit Goldstein, MIT researcher and textile designer. Explore interactive activities with textile samples and fabricate your own living textile to take home.

Beyond the Logo Branding Redesign Competition Awards Ceremony
Center for Design
2 – 4 PM

Registration is not required.

In collaboration with CAMD Co-op. Sponsored by Slay Technology.

Over the past nine weeks, student teams have been working with local businesses and non-profits to redesign their brand, create a new website, and come up with a strategic communications plan. During the awards ceremony, each team will present their work to their peers and business partners, and a panel of alumni and faculty judges will be awarding prizes to the top three teams for their work. We invite you to come celebrate the work of these emerging designers and learn more about the local businesses they have been partnering with.

Artist & Curator in Conversation: Textiles and Technology in “Cat Mazza: Network”
Center for Design
4 – 5:30 PM

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In collaboration with the Center for the Arts, Gallery 360, Amy Halliday and Cat Mazza.

From knitted video animations to participatory pandemic stitching, join Gallery 360 guest curator Amy Halliday and exhibiting artist Cat Mazza for a discussion about textiles, technology, and “finding form” for historical research in her practice.

“Cat Mazza: Network” Reception and Gallery Visit
Gallery 360
5:30 – 7 PM

Registration is not required.

Following the artist and curator conversation, enjoy a reception and an opportunity to view “Cat Mazza: Network” in Gallery 360.

Saturday, March 22: Graphic Voices of Latin America Exhibition

The Center for Design invites you to view Graphic Voices of Latin America, a Latin American poster exhibition at The WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, RI. The show will run through March 23.

Learn more about the exhibition and plan your visit.

Sunday, March 23: Interventions: Shift

Interventions: Shift
ISEC
8:30 AM – 5 PM

Get tickets here.

Hosted by Scout. Sponsored by the Center for Design.

The Center for Design invites you to join us at Scout’s annual conference on design, where ideas spark, disciplines unite, and disability takes center stage as a lens to reimagine our world. Together, we’ll challenge norms, inspire transformative change, and shift towards a future that’s inclusive, innovative, and empowering.