About Design Thinking

Where heads, hearts, and hands come together to explore, create, and play!

At the Design Thinking Initiative (DTI), we encourage responsible innovation by integrating design methods, mindsets, and opportunities for hands-on making into the Smith experience.

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We believe in being

Accessible

Providing the lowest barrier of entry to making, democratizing design practices, and demystifying processes so that everyone might consider themselves a maker/designer.

Hands-On

Introducing people to materials and methods for hands-on making as an act of building, reimagining, and taking care of our tangible shared experiences.

An arrow coming out of the center of a horizontal line

Circular

Considering the full lifecycle and impact of the products and materials we use as an act of creating a more reciprocal and sustainable relationship with our environment.

Life-Centered

Engaging those most impacted by a design in the process of design in order to break down systems of inequity and emphasizing the value in the messy process of figuring stuff out.

Relational

Recognizing all that we do is connected to larger systems and structures and intentionally engaging people with diverse perspectives and experiences to co-create with.

Four arrows pointing at each other in the center

Design Methodologies and Opportunities for Hands-On Making

Smith College has a long history of educating women for social change. We believe designing and the making of our worlds is foundational to transitioning towards just futures. This requires responsible innovation, a process that promotes creativity and ethical considerations of the social, economic, and environmental impacts of bringing new ideas to fruition. The design methods and mindsets we promote are guided by the Design Justice Principles and we introduce students to making as an interdisciplinary practice.

What is design justice?

This is a commitment to make space for the agency of the people and more-than-humans most impacted by any given design scenario to come together in enacting new ways of being. It is a centering of the voices and experiences too often excluded, silenced or forgotten. It is a practice of examining underlying assumptions and highlighting inequitable and world-negating conditions. It is a means of making alternate futures tangible and testing new ways of operating in this world. This is a reimagining of design as a means to “dismantle structural inequality and advance collective liberation and ecological survival.” It is a collaborative, cognitive and compassionate capacity for wonder and discovery, navigating uncertainty, and allowing change to emerge through the process.

What do we mean by interdisciplinary making?

Making is a form of learning through experimentation – where students navigate constraints, bump up against limitations, are pushed to think beyond binaries, translate the cerebral into something tangible, work through inevitable failures, learn from what is revealed by mistakes, and discover a unique sense of self-efficacy that comes with having materialized a vision. Making allows students to contextualize learning through, and between, disciplinary practices and fields of knowledge within the liberal arts. At Smith we question what kinds of making are, and have been, valued by whom and why.

The Design Thinking Initiative began as a pilot program launched in 2015 by a group of faculty from across disciplines to incorporate design methods, mindsets and practices into interdisciplinary work across new and existing classes, and to support student- and faculty-led design projects.

It’s our 10th anniversary!

Throughout the 2025–26 academic year, we are celebrating our decennial year through a strategic planning process. Stay tuned for more information on how to get involved!

Our Team

Alix Gerber

Assistant Director

Interim Director until Fall 2025
Alix (she/her) joined the DTI as a post-graduate fellow in interdisciplinary design practices in 2022, and now serves as assistant director, where she supports Smith faculty to incorporate design practices into their pedagogy and scholarship. She has worked with design research in multiple capacities, from investigating people’s needs to inform human-centered products and services, to designing for transformed social systems and collaboratively creating things to imagine worlds without capitalism or policing. Alix has a B.S. in design and environmental analysis from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in transdisciplinary design from Parsons School of Design. She has also served as a Visiting assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis and part-time faculty at Parsons.

Meet with Alix

Forrest Hudes

Prototyping Studio Manager

As an artist, maker, and designer Forrest (they/he) believes passionately in the transformative power of participating in the making of the world around you. Forrest has worked in arts education in settings from early childhood to college, and is driven by supporting learners of all ages and kinds to discover their own confidence and agency in creating and working with their hands. Forrest also maintains a studio practice primarily exploring gender norms, codes, and histories through the making of wooden furniture. Forrest holds a B.A. in theater and dance from Amherst College, and an M.F.A. in 3D design from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Meet with Forrest

Jennifer Kennedy

Senior Operations Coordinator

Jennifer (she/her) is the senior operations coordinator at the Design Thinking Initiative and the Conway Center. She is the primary contact for Smith students and external offices. Jennifer has worked at Smith College since August 2018 and has previously been a member of the Administrative Assistant Leadership Team (AALT) and Staff Council. She has a master’s in education in athletic administration from Springfield College and a bachelor’s degree in Communication and English from Cedar Crest College.

Sara Kragness AC ’21

Communications Coordinator

Sara (she/her) is a social impact-driven entrepreneur, community organizer, and creative. Hailing originally from the Midwest, Sara relocated to the Valley in 2018 to attend Smith College as an Ada Comstock Scholar and has called the region home ever since. After graduation, Sara launched Crip Consulting to help small businesses align their marketing and branding to their values and a podcast to address social media’s growing influencer culture. Outside of work, Sara enjoys crafting, gardening, and spending time on the porch with her partner and dog.

Emily Norton

Director and Lecturer of Practice

On leave until Fall 2025
Emily (she/they) is fascinated by the ways we design our worlds and how those designs in turn design us. She is committed to designing towards justice and resilience. Emily’s own design education led her to a career spanning international residencies, research in wetlands preservation, teaching social innovation and leading cultural change campaigns in communities, organizations and institutions. She believes in the power of thinking through making as a means of bridging divides and feeling into the future. Emily holds a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.Des. from Design Academy Eindhoven.

Studio Design Partners

(SDPs)

The Studio Design Partners are the life force of DTI! They keep the center operating into the evenings and weekends, offer workshops to the community, and are available to help you learn how to use a machine. Need help figuring out where to start on a project? They can help you design a process to make your idea come to life—just find someone in a tie-dye apron.

Meet the SDPs

Collaborative Innovation

The Collaborative Innovation partners—Conway Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, Design Thinking, Reflective Practices, and Wurtele Center for Leadership—share a mission to help students develop agency, take purposeful action, and reflect on their journey.

An infographic of a triangle composed of four smaller triangles, labeled Conway Center, Wurtele Center, and Design Thinking Initiative. The fourth triangle is in the center, reading Collaborative Innovation. A circle goes around the whole image, labeled Reflective Practices.