Design@Large

The Design@Large speaker series highlights a different central theme within design during each fall, winter, and spring quarter to inspire attendees and showcase the brightest minds tackling issues impacting humanity. Design@Large is a course at UC San Diego and is also open to the public as a way of sharing cutting-edge research and innovative insights with a wider audience. Undergraduate students can sign up for DSGN 119 and graduate students can enroll in DSGN 219 (cross-listed with COGS 229 and CSE 219).

Design@Large was pioneered as a collaborative effort with UC San Diego faculty who shared the collective vision of drawing together a community of individuals from various design disciplines. A new wave of societal challenges, cultural values, and technological advancements is creating exciting opportunities for designers everywhere to make a global impact, and Design@Large provides the chance to learn about these opportunities as they emerge.

Winter 2026: Design to Action–Building Innovation and Impact

Design@Large Winter 2026 centers on a simple but critical question: How does innovation actually get built—and sustained—in the real world?

This year’s series, Design to Action: Building Innovation and Impact, positions design not as a set of ideas or isolated projects, but as a practical method for turning possibility into action, momentum, and lasting systems. Across the quarter, the series makes visible the often-hidden work behind innovation: the decisions, relationships, tools, and structures that allow good ideas to take root and endure.

The thematic arc follows a clear and teachable progression: Path, Practice, and Work—that reflects how design operates over time and at scale.

PATH — How Design Begins

Building belief through shared understanding

PATH focuses on the early moments of design, when ideas are still forming and direction is not yet clear. This theme highlights how design begins by listening, learning, and creating shared understanding—helping people see what is possible and see themselves within that future. PATH emphasizes curiosity, alignment, and early visible actions that invite broader participation and spark momentum.

PRACTICE — How Design Scales

Building momentum through tools, capability, and collaboration

PRACTICE explores what happens once belief exists. This theme shows how design scales when methods, tools, and roles are shared—allowing many people, organizations, and sectors to lead together. PRACTICE highlights coalition-building, talent development, and distributed ownership, demonstrating how innovation gains speed and strength when capability is built across a system rather than held by a few.

WORK — How Design Endures

Building change that lasts through systems and humanity

WORK focuses on continuity: how design becomes embedded in systems that persist beyond a single project, leader, or moment. This theme is explored in two dimensions. First, how design is integrated into infrastructure, governance, data, and technology so the work continues over time. Second, how enduring systems remain grounded in humanity—centering dignity, belonging, stewardship, and care so that what lasts is worth sustaining.

Together, Path, Practice, and Work frame design as a way of operating—one that turns imagination into capability, capability into systems, and systems into long-term impact. The series invites participants to understand not only what design can do, but how it builds futures that are collaborative, resilient, and deeply human.

As always, Design@Large is open to the public. Register via our Eventbrite page. 

Past D@L

Watch all recorded D@L series here:

Spring 2025: Design and Politics in Transition

Full Design@Large Video Archive