keynote speakers peter lloyd e jeanne liedtka – DTRS’15
17 > 19 JUNE 2026 | FBAUL AND IADE
DTRS’15
Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon
17-19 June 2026
Keynote Speakers
Wednesday, 17 June 2026
9:30 (AM)
Lagoa Henriques Auditorium (FBA)
“Intelligence Reframed: A Journey through Design Thinking”
Where has design thinking come from and where is it going to? In this keynote, Peter Lloyd will explore the conceptual evolution of design thinking, first through the DTRS symposiums, then expanding out into the broader uses, cultures and meanings of the term, and finally considering the possible future for design thinking in the current context of rapid developments in AI.
Over the past 35 years, design thinking has become what Donald Schön, a contributor at the first DTRS, terms ‘an idea of good currency’. Ideas of good currency are effective boundary objects; potent expressions of an idea in a word or short phrase. The term design thinking has shown extraordinary longevity and resilience in its journey from the representation of cognitive expertise to the corporate and governmental innovation process.
Schön is one of only a few major thinkers originating outside the discipline of design to see exceptional value in the approaches, methods, and processes of design. He also articulated the key role of language in capturing and giving form to design activity. This makes the recent development of language models particularly relevant and amenable to processes of design.
In this keynote Peter will talk about their own journey through design thinking – as a researcher, educator, editor, practitioner, and now as someone grappling to understand the implications of AI for designers, designing, and design thinking. Peter will explore what an AI enhanced design thinking might look like, what it might do, and how we might feel if it does that.
Peter Lloyd is Professor of Design Methodology at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, where he is also a co-founder of the Designing Intelligence Lab and co-director of the Center for Law, Design, and AI. He is Chair of the Design Research Society, President of IASDR, and Editor-in-Chief for the journal Designing. His research focusses on how language is used during processes of design, broadly defined.
Friday, 19 June 2026
10:30 (AM)
Faculty of Design, Technology and Communication (IADE)
“Design Thinking: Fad, Fraud, or the Future of Business?”
Is Design thinking a) dead, b) a fad, c) a fraud or d) the most powerful yet undervalued new business methodology of the last 50 years?
In this reflection on her decades of personal experience as an academic and researcher, strategist and corporate executive, Jeanne Liedtka will argue why the answer is “d” and what to do about it. She will argue that DT offers exactly the skills that organizations and their employees most need to continuously adapt to the accelerating change in the world around us. So why do we continue to struggle to demonstrate its value in practice? To address this, we will explore the aspects of today’s organizations that stand in the way of achieving Design’s potential and that require us, as its advocates, to think creatively about how to design to remove them.
Jeanne Liedtka is the UTC Emeritus Professor of Business at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. With interests at the intersection of strategy and design, Jeanne has written eight books and multiple articles on the subject of strategy, innovation, and design thinking, and consulted with a diverse set of organizations including IBM, Samsung, NASA, The United Nations, and the government of Singapore. Her most recent book is The Experimentation Field Book: A Step-by-Step Project Guide, co-authored with Natalie Foley, David Kester and Elziabeth Chen.