To make the start of new year less daunting, AIGADC’s Board of Directors are sharing some of their creative goals for 2026.

Even after using industry best practices, designers can lead public engagement efforts that fail. Despite our temptation to conceal the ways we don’t always center humans during human-centered design, we can’t grow our practices without embracing failures. In this AIGA DC salon, Facilitator Chyanne Eyde – Deputy Chief of School Planning for the Government of the District of Columbia – will guide attendees through a roundtable that reframes failure to center humans in human-centered design as signals for how to refine our approaches. Eyde will highlight two common methods for community engagement – surveys and working groups – to share standard best practices, perceived failures of each, and ways to reframe or refine each approach.

With 2025 in the rearview, we’re taking time out to recap a few of our favorite things from the past year.