Did you have @dignified futures conference FOMO? We have your cure right here.
We heard from people who attended the conference that they wish they were able to attend ALL the workshops and we heard from people who didn’t attend the conference that they wish they were there!
So, we created a Virtual Workshop Week to enable people to attend the workshops they weren’t able to. We are so grateful to our workshop leaders for doing this ENCORE series!
Monday 5/11: Navigating Tension and Creating New Possibilities with Polarity Thinking
Tuesday 5/12: Grief Doesn't Clock Out
Wednesday 5/13: Influence: Using Your Powers for Good
Thursday 5/14: Future of US Healthcare 2050
Friday 5/15: Reciprocity by Design: Reconnecting People, Place & Purpose
The series will be hosted on Zoom each day from 12:00-2:00 Eastern.
Workshops are complimentary for all those who were on the attendee list of the 2026 Dignified Futures Conference, using the discount code IWASTHERE.
Get ready to roll up your sleeves and listen, feel, communicate, envision and immerse in new ways! Don’t miss out again and register today!
Proof that Dignified Futures is:
• thoughtful panels that actually spark something
• conversations where people lean in
• big ideas that make it past the buzzwords
Come for the systems change.
Stay for the group chat energy.
Register here: https://lnkd.in/git3n2p8
🏅 The Olympics may be over… but we’re still handing out gold medals.
This one goes to Takeda, our Gold Sponsor at Dignified Futures 2026. 🥇
No ski jumps required. Just bold leadership, real commitment, and a shared belief that the future of health should be built with dignity at the center.
Thank you for bringing true gold-medal energy to this work. We’re proud to have you on the team as we build what’s next.
Dignified Futures, served fresh. 🌱
Rebecka Sexton is flipping the script on healthcare and asking:
What if food wasn’t an afterthought… but actual infrastructure? 🍓🏥
Think: 🥦 Reimbursable food programs 🤝 Cross-sector collabs 📊 Tech + learning systems ❤️ Outcomes rooted in dignity
📍 Chicago Institute of Design 📅 March 18–19, 2026
🔗 Get your tickets at https://lnkd.in/git3n2p8
This Valentine’s Day, we’re breaking up with 😐 design and falling hard for 🥹💖✨ design.
Introducing the Love & Joy Ignite Talks with Himanshu Bharadwaj, MDes, MFA and Matthew McCurdy— where love is strategic, joy is mandatory, and designing from deficit is dumped via text.
Expect: 💌 Health equity through bodegas 🫶 Care-first systems that actually care 🧠 Big-brain ideas with soft, beating hearts 😭 Light crying. Deep connection. New besties.
💘 VALENTINE’S GIFT: Use code LOVE for $200 off ⏰ Valid through Sunday at midnight PT (don’t ghost this)
📍 Chicago Institute of Design 📅 March 18–19, 2026
We’re excited to invite everyone in our community to Dignified Futures 2026, March 18–19th at the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech in Chicago.
Dignified Futures 2026 brings together designers, social innovators, health leaders, systems thinkers, and community changemakers to explore both wildly positive futures and potentially detrimental possibilities, so that we can ensure that dignity is delivered to the populations we serve.
Over two days, attendees will engage in workshops, keynotes, ignite sessions, and open space sessions—a mix of structured talks and co-created conversations that honor the wisdom of the community. You’ll connect with peers who are redefining what equitable, human-centered systems look like in practice.
Why Attend?
Learn from practitioners applying futures thinking, systems thinking, and human-centered design to advance equity, inclusion, and social impact. Get hands-on experience using new frameworks that embed dignity into systems, policies, service experiences, and products. Build relationships across disciplines and sectors—health, civic innovation, social services, education, and beyond. Special Discount for Our Community. As a member of the Service Design Network community, you can save $100 off registration with code SDN at checkout. We hope you’ll join us and invite your friends to imagine and design more dignified futures together. Registration Link in Bio!
We’re so so excited to welcome Rachel Kantrowitz with her talk 🔥 Epistemic Dignity: Designing for Collective Liberation 🔥
This isn’t design as extraction or trend-chasing “innovation.”
It’s design that names erasure, rejects colonial shortcuts, and honors where ideas actually come from.
Food is doing…a LOT. 🌱😮
Medicine. Systems. Equity. Care.
Our next Ignite Talks go from farm to Rx to community impact—spotlighting the people and ideas reshaping how food nourishes bodies and systems.
These Ignite Talks are fiery, and full of ideas you’ll be thinking about long after your lunch break. 👀🔥
📍 March 18–19, 2026 | Chicago Institute of Design
👉 designfordignity.com
🚨 SPOILER: It’s not a motivation problem. It’s a design problem. 🚨
Meet Steph Habif, EdD, MS 👋
Behavioral scientist. Design leader. Human-first tech truth-teller.
From advancing automated insulin delivery at Tandem Diabetes Care to advising teams building the next generation of adaptive health tech, Steph lives at the intersection of behavior change, AI, and real human life.
🎤 In her talk, “Avoid a One-Hit Wonder: Design for Intermittent Use,” Steph flips the script on engagement: What if people don’t “drop off” because they failed… What if our systems failed to honor how humans actually behave?
Health isn’t continuous. Motivation isn’t linear. Life is seasonal.
Watch her video 👇 and get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about engagement.
#DesignForHumans #BehavioralScience #HealthTech #SystemsOfDignity #IntermittentUse #HumanFirstDesign
What if our systems didn’t just track outcomes…
but actually measured dignity? 👀💥
At Dignified Futures 2026, these Ignite Talks go straight for the heart of housing + healthcare systems — redefining impact, honoring lived experience, and designing for the long, messy, very human reality of care. From Chicago’s ReVive Center for Housing and Healing to trauma-informed, creative, patient-led healthcare innovation, this is what happens when we stop counting people and start seeing them.
🔥 Persistence over “resolution” 🔥 Care over checkboxes 🔥 Rigor with compassion
🩺 Trust in healthcare is fragile. 🚧 Access is shrinking. 🤔 So… what do we design now?
🎥 Meet Laura Santoso, MD—internal medicine physician, design leader, and systems thinker at Cityblock Health.
In “Bridging the Divide: Designing for Access and Trust in a Turbulent Healthcare Landscape,” Laura takes on the big questions: ⚡ How do we expand access when resources are tight? 💻 Can tech and virtual care connect—without isolating? 🧑🤝🧑 Can community-based care scale in a broken system?
This talk is about designing healthcare that works with people, not around them. You don’t want to miss this one. 💥
#DignifiedFutures #SystemsOfDignity #HealthcareDesign #HumanCenteredDesign #SocialImpact
You’ve got the ideas.
The research.
The vision for healthier futures.
So… why is getting clients to actually move so hard? 😅
This workshop by Jenn Schiffman and Jeffrey Wetherhold dives into the real work behind adoption: 🗣️ Conversations that unlock intrinsic motivation 🧠 Decades of research you should be using 💛 Influence rooted in respect, dignity, and care
🎥 Hear why they are coming to Dignified Futures March 18–19, 2026 in Chicago
👉 Register here: https://lnkd.in/gffieiKA
