SDGC26 Pre-event: Beyond the Boundaries of a Lifetime
During this pre-conference event series, we'll be exploring projects and practice experiences related to death, dying, grief, and end of life. Speakers will be sharing details about their practice and projects and may also share personal stories related to death and dying.
We invite you to join this time together in any way that works for you. This might include listening, observing, sharing your own experiences, asking questions, stepping out and returning, or staying quietly in the background. All ways of participating are welcome.
During each session, we'll open and close with a grounding activity. You're welcome to join these moments with us or simply observe.
Our intention is to create a space for conversation and exploration of service design practice related to end of life. Let's hold this space with care and be gentle with one another as we do.
If anything that comes up for you today feels like a lot, please take care of yourself however that looks for you, whether that's stepping away, reaching out to someone you trust, or taking the time you need afterward.
Interactive Workshop: Beyond Boundaries: Dancing with Uncertainty, Loss, and Future Possibilities
Design leaders are at a threshold: expected to lead with certainty while managing constant reinvention, decision fatigue, and the unacknowledged grief of organizational change. Join this interactive session to experience rituals and practical frameworks designed to hold space for vulnerability and the emergence of new possibilities.
Speaker: Joumana Mattar
How to Fix What Bereavement Leave Broke
Bereavement leave was never meant to solve what grief leaves behind. But the back to "business as usual" hustle has created an environment where a moment in time solution stands in for a social-emotional reckoning. In this workshop, participants will learn how the history of bereavement leave shapes our thinking about loss, the hidden costs of unaddressed grief, and how we can design systems and cultures that meet better match the realities of living with loss.
Speaker: Sarah Kagan
The Space Between: Exploring death, dying and grief through participatory installations
Death, dying, and grief are among the most deeply human experiences we all share, and yet they can be some of the hardest to talk about. This talk looks at how participatory installations in public spaces offer a different way to engage with these topics: outside the clinical, and through creative, collective experience. Drawing on experience creating installations across project work, collaborations with health services researchers, and community arts events, Karen reflects on what becomes possible when people are invited to participate in something shared, and how what they leave behind can also become a meaningful, complementary way of understanding human experience alongside more familiar research methods.
Speaker: Karen Oikonen
A Conversation about Inheritances
What is like to launch a creative and collaborative project from a place of personal grief? How does it evolve as grief evolves We'll ask Adam to share his experiences creating and evolving the 2026 GRAMMY® nominated work, Inheritances, through the lens of service design. Join us for this informal conversation between Adam Tendler and SDGC Virtual Event Lead Agusta Callaway.
Speaker: Adam Tendler
Pixel Debate: “When a patient may be dying, a doctor should need a reason to intervene, not a reason to stop.”
Medicine can almost always offer one more thing: another test, another procedure, another day. In 2013 the NHS withdrew the Liverpool Care Pathway, a national default for the last days of life, after an independent review found it could be applied as a tick-box exercise to people nobody could be sure were dying.
Today the default usually runs the other way: treatment continues unless someone decides to stop. Sometimes that extra time is exactly what a person wants; sometimes it means more pain, more hospital and less time with the people who matter. Knowing more will not settle it: when a clinician says they would not be surprised if a patient died within a year, six in ten are alive a year later. The question is which decision has to be justified: treating or stopping.
For the people who design care pathways, the answer decides which option is the default before anyone has had the conversation.
Speakers: Ivor Williams · FOR; Dr Matthew Doré · AGAINST
Welcome to Life Waltz & Networking
Join us for a networking activity brought to you by one of the 2025 SDN Student Award Finalists, The Life Waltz Project.
The Life Waltz Project was created by students in Jiangnan University, China to help health care providers facilitate end of life reflections and decisions. The Life Waltz Project team have provided us with a digital version of their original hard-copy board game that they played with nursing home patients.
The SDGC version is a fun and thoughtful way to reflect on your life and get to know fellow SDGC attendees.
Join us at 10 am on Saturday at three times globally:
10 am Beijing
10 am EST
{10 am CEST is CANCELLED; please join 10 am EST}
We'll meet in a video call to get organized and then play the game in Airmeet's Networking Lounge.
Event Schedule
13 Oct, 2026
06:00 PM - Interactive Workshop: Beyond Boundaries: Dancing with Uncertainty, Loss, and Future Possibilities
07:15 PM - How to Fix What Bereavement Leave Broke
08:00 PM - Q&A with Joumana and Sara
14 Oct, 2026
06:00 PM - The Space Between: Exploring death, dying and grief through participatory installations
07:00 PM - A Conversation about "Inheritances"
08:00 PM - Q&A with Karen and Adam
15 Oct, 2026
CANCELLED --- THIS EVENT IS CANCELLED. MORE DETAILS TO COME. 07:00 PM - Pixel Debate: "At the end of life, one more intervention means a worse death."
17 Oct, 2026
04:00 AM - 10 am in Beijing: Welcome to Life Waltz & Networking
04:20 AM - Join a table! Play Life Waltz & Network
10:00 AM - CANCELLED: 10 am in CEST: Welcome to Life Waltz & Networking
10:20 AM - CANCELLED: Join a table! Play Life Waltz & Network
04:00 PM - 10 am in Eastern: Welcome to Life Waltz & Networking
04:20 PM - Join a table! Play Life Waltz & Network