Speaking and Keynotes
Operational Application of AI
CoDesign Collaborative LinkedIn Live Event, Nov 2025
As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in everyday systems, organizations across sectors are asking how to move from experimentation to responsible, effective use at scale. This discussion explores the operational applications of AI, with an emphasis on real-world challenges, ethical considerations, and opportunities to improve public service and organizational effectiveness.
Building the Plane as it Flies Through a Black Hole: Revising Five UX Research Practices for Generative AI Development
UXPA Boston, May 2025
Samantha shares five critical shifts for evolving traditional UX research into a high-impact, agile practice tailored for the fast-paced and unpredictable landscape of generative AI R&D at IBM.
Designing Better Problems: Research-Led Impact in the More-Than-Human World
Boston Design Week, April 2024
This talk explores how designers can contribute to wildlife conservation by leveraging design research and strategy to bridge the gap between art and science as illustrated by Samantha's seven years of collaboration with the non-profit Creature Conserve.
Playing with our Futures: Enabling Play as an Essential Design Tool for Envisioning Solutions to Serious Problems
Primer21, July 2021
I illustrate how designers can harness the power of play to change our mindsets, collaborations, and processes when envisioning solutions to serious problems.
Design Strategy: Figuring Out What the Heck to Design
Design for Healthcare, June 2020
In this interactive workshop, I share the essential design strategy tools and mindsets tailored for healthcare, guiding participants through the collaborative process of transforming research and assumptions into validated solution concepts through rapid prototyping. View the event.
Ethics in Design: Breaking Down Barriers to Conversation Through Play
World Interaction Design Day 2019
Participants experience first-hand the powerful blend of ethics and game design in this interactive workshop by playing a game that guides them through the collaborative creation of a code of ethics to apply to their real world design practice.
Designing for Health Equity
Better World By Design 2018
This talk explores how designers are uniquely positioned to help all people achieve their fullest potential by focusing on health equity and draws on case studies from Samantha's work at Hennepin County Medical Center.
Root Causes: Overcoming Barriers to Health Equity (Keynote)
Healthcare Refactored Conference 2017
This keynote reframes health equity as a design challenge demanding we look past immediate symptoms to fix the fundamental root causes through inclusive, community-centered co-design.
The Mythology of Plug and Play
Safety Net Innovation Network, May 2017
Drawing on my experience implementing a digital social determinants of health tool within a complex healthcare ecosystem, I explain that successful implementation relies less on the technology and more on cultivating flexible partnerships, prioritizing end-user needs, and maintaining a commitment to continuous impact measurement. Learn More
Community Participation in Healthcare: A Designer’s Inside View of the Link Between Authentic Co-Creation and Health Equity
Association for Community Design 2017
In this talk, I share how designers must move beyond performative community engagement by addressing systemic power imbalances and leveraging transparent co-creation in order to transform healthcare into a true driver of health equity.
Compassion & Inclusion: Participatory Design in Health (Keynote Panel)
Better World by Design 2016
This keynote panel explores the role designers play creating opportunities for patients and care teams alike to co-create the delivery and experience of healthcare.
Designing for Hope & Health
Better World by Design 2016
This talk explores how designers are using co-design methods to redefine health beyond clinical treatment, integrating social determinants and emotional well-being into a more holistic, data-driven vision for the future of care.
The Designer's Oath
SustainableUX 2016
The curators of The Designer’s Oath share the history and motivation behind the Designer's Oath project, a collaborative effort inspired by the Hippocratic Oath to highlight the importance of ethics in designers' practices as our influence expands to impact both people and the planet.
Design for Good: Collaboratively Defining Designers’ Codes of Ethics
Interaction Design Association 2016
This workshop applies game mechanics to ethical conversation using a roleplaying design ethics game that allows participants to experience tough ethical situations, define their personal ethical stance, and learn strategies for discussing ethics in a group environment. Learn more.
The Designer's Oath
Mayo Clinic Transform 2015
This PechaKucha-style talk introduces the "Designers' Oath", a tool to establish ethical guidelines for multidisciplinary design teams, emphasizing the importance of collaborative conversations to ensure desigers "do only good".
Collecting Visual Patient Narratives
Graphic Medicine 2014
This talk explains how to bridge the gap between clinical data and the human experience using the Visual Patient Narrative Kit. This Kit empowers patients to share their stories through non-linear visual tools, uncovering essential insights that drive meaningful improvements in healthcare delivery.
Designing Change
American Association for the Advancement of Science: Visualizing Science Policy, 2013
Samantha explores the power of visual communication in healthcare by sharing her journey from traditional illustrator to "visual change-maker," drawing on her pivotal experiences with the RISD STEAM movement and her fellowship at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation.