Design Meets

Name: Design Meets
Address: 187 King Street East, Toronto, ON, M5A1J5, CA
Telephone: 416-203-1660

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Design Meets

DesignMeets is all about people and sharing ideas. It’s a place where everyone in our design community can meet and get to know one another.

And where they can share their ideas about meaningful design and its power to transform our daily life. The design meets and mixers are about bringing together Canadian designers from all walks of life. We are about creating a truly interdisciplinary platform where designers have the opportunity to meet and mingle with other design professionals. This is about collaboration and building a stronger, more connected Canadian design community — and having a little bit of fun while we’re at it too!

02/02/2026

🎙️ Meet Dr. Mark Nowaczynski, Clinical Director of House Calls

Dr. Nowaczynski is the Clinical Director of House Calls, an interprofessional program providing ongoing comprehensive home-based primary care to frail, marginalized, and house-bound seniors whose needs cannot be met by typical office-based primary care delivery due to a combination of medical, social, and cognitive frailty.

Using photography to raise awareness and advocate for change, his work has been profiled in national print, radio, and television media as well as in the Gemini Award winning National Film Board of Canada documentary film ‘House Calls’. A solo exhibit of his photographs, ‘House Calls with my Camera’, opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2010 and remained on display for over a year. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

February 11, join us alongside Dr. Nowaczynski as we explore the ways in which love might become a more intentional design principle for the futures we create.
🔗 Tickets available at the link in bio

01/29/2026

🎙️ Meet Ryan Donais, founder of Tiny Tiny Homes ()

Ryan’s work is deeply rooted in lived experience. Having experienced firsthand the trauma of homelessness and addiction, he founded Tiny Tiny Homes with a clear belief: everyone deserves a safe place to sleep.

With over 15 years in the construction industry, Ryan uses this expertise to provide dignified transitional housing that replaces unsafe tent encampments with a secure place for individuals to breathe, rest, and rebuild. Storytelling, system design and community building all intersect in his work — because he knows that housing is not just a structure, but a platform for transformation.

🔗 Join us on February 11 to hear Ryan’s story and perspectives. Link in bio.

01/27/2026

We’re thrilled to welcome Sarah Tranum as the moderator for our upcoming conversation on the Love Economy 🎉

Sarah is an Associate Professor of Social Innovation Design at OCAD University and Founder & Design Strategist at TrickleUp Design. She is an expert in participatory design projects for women’s economic empowerment and has collaborated with a broad range of international stakeholders to develop systems-based solutions to complex challenges.

Her global research initiatives include a multi-year study on women’s health and women-centred production in India, an investigation of food waste and opportunities for a circular food economy in Canada, and implementation of system-based approaches for delivering menstrual hygiene products and education in low-resource communities in Zimbabwe.

Sarah has created and taught courses across the Faculty of Design at OCAD University that guide students in using design as a tool for social change. She co-authored and guides the OCAD University’s popular Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation Minor program and spearheads the Social Innovation Design Pathway.

Join us February 11 and be a part of the conversation.
🎟️ Tickets available in bio.

01/15/2026

Join us for our first event of 2026 💌

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, DesignMeets and are coming together for a timely conversation on how design can more intentionally support the Love Economy—the essential yet often undervalued space where care, connection, and nurturing take place.

Through real-world examples and insights from community innovators, we’ll explore what the Love Economy is, why care-centred systems matter, and how love might become a more intentional design principle.

🎟️ Tickets available at the link in bio

01/08/2026

DesignMeets is built for our community— and that starts with you.

As we kick off the new year, your feedback can help us design more exciting, intentional events for 2026.

Take the anonymous survey and enter for a chance to win a free ticket to any 2026 DesignMeets event of your choice! The winner will be contacted February 2, 2026.

✍ Fill out the survey at the link in our bio

11/27/2025

How do we make humans more humane in how we design AI? How do we use AI as a visible collaborator rather than letting it work quietly in the background? How do we balance convenience with caution?

If there was one unspoken mantra running through our most recent DesignMeets x , it was this: just because we can, doesn’t mean we should, and that’s exactly what makes this moment interesting.

📖 Read the full event recap and key takeaways at the link in our bio

11/20/2025

Great minds, big ideas, and a sold-out room alive with curiosity 💥

Last night’s event exploring AI and human-centred design covered everything from leveraging AI tools to boost creativity to navigating risks like shifts in critical thinking and collaboration.

One thing is certain: so long as we continue this open dialogue, designers can act as “bridge builders” for more effective and ethical AI implementation.

Thank you to our panelists Stefanie Hutka, Alex Ryan, Kem-Laurin Lubin, Patrick Bach, Emma Jo Aiken-Klar and Michael Anton Dila and collaborators BDI for making our final event of 2025 a memorable one 💭

📩 Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to hear about event recaps and upcoming events (link in bio)

11/12/2025

Get to know the panelists guiding next week’s discussion around how AI is reshaping our work— and how human-centered design is adapting to thrive alongside it.

💬 Alex Ryan is the CEO of Synthetikos, a boutique global strategy and innovation consultancy based in Toronto that helps transformational leaders to shift systems. He previously led partner solutions at MaRS, helping government and corporate partners accelerate the adoption of innovation in their organizations, markets and cities with a focus on youth employment, energy transition and tech stewardship.

💬 Kem-Laurin Lubin is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo, where she researches Computational Rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and the role of artificial intelligence in shaping digital identity. Her scholarship examines how AI and computational methods influence identity construction, with a focus on equity, ethics, and representation.

💬 Patrick Bach leads Manulife’s Wealth & Asset Management Experience Design team supporting Public Sites, Secure Experiences, Mobile Apps and AI tools. Previously, Patrick lead Design & Digital Product teams at Accenture where he worked closely with Canada’s largest Financial Services companies and before that lead “in-house” design teams at TD, CIBC and TELUS.

💬 Stefanie Hutka helps teams bring useful, usable AI, XR, and robotics products to market. She is the founder of Sendfull, a boutique consultancy for emerging technology teams. Previously, Stef led design research and strategy for 0-to-1 product launches at Adobe, Meta, and DAQRI.

🎟️ Join the waitlist at the link in our bio

11/05/2025

Due to popular demand, we’ve moved to a larger space!

This means more tickets and more opportunity for meaningful conversations 💬

Join us! Tickets available at the link in our bio

10/22/2025

As AI accelerates into our organizations, creative tools, and frameworks, we need to ask ourselves: what assumptions about human-centered design are being challenged by AI? What new skills, practices, or mindsets might we need next?

Our next event, in partnership with , gathers industry leaders Alex Ryan, Kem-Laurin Lubin, Patrick Bach, and Stefanie Hutka alongside moderators Emma Jo Aiken-Klar and Michael Anton Dila to discuss and reflect on how AI is changing our work— and to build a collective picture of what human-centred design looks like in the age of AI.

Join the conversation!
🎟️ Tickets available at the link in our bio

10/09/2025

Last week’s event with Andrew McLuhan served less as a keynote and more as an excavation site. Every few minutes, he’d unearth another gem of media theory, brush it off, and invite us to sit with it a while.

It left us inspired, stumped, and hesitantly hopeful. It was a conversation that sparked more questions than answers… which is exactly the point.

🔗 Read the full event recap at the link in our bio.

💡What was your key takeaway?

09/24/2025

Less than a week away! 📣

This Monday, join us at , alongside Andrew McLuhan, as we unpack the ideas of Marshall McLuhan— what they mean, their profound impact, and how we can revisit them through a modern lens as agents of empowerment and change.

🔗 Tickets available at the link in bio

Address

187 King Street East
Toronto, ON
M5A1J5

Telephone

416-203-1660

Website

http://designmeets.ca/

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